Is my SEO agency working? A 5-minute self-check

The fastest way to answer «is my SEO agency working» is to look at three signals together rather than any single metric. If you only watch positions, you miss whether the right pages are growing. If you only watch traffic, you miss whether the right intent is landing.

Signal 1 — Are positions improving on the queries you actually care about? Not just any queries — the commercial-intent ones. Ask your agency to pull GSC and show you the position trend for 10 keywords with buying intent over 90 days. If 7+ are flat or dropping, that’s the answer.

Signal 2 — Is the content they ship aligned with search intent? Read the last 3 articles your agency published. Could a competitor article be swapped in and nobody would notice? If yes, the work isn’t differentiated. Good SEO content should be opinionated, structured for SERP features, and obviously written by someone who knows the niche.

Signal 3 — Are they upfront about what didn’t work? Every SEO programme has misses. If monthly reports are 100% green-arrow-up dashboards with no «here’s what didn’t move and why», you’re getting marketing, not consulting. Ask for the failure list.

Most SEO agencies love vague metrics. «We’re building authority.» «Rankings take time.» «Traffic is improving.» None of this tells you if you’re getting value for money.

Here’s what actually matters — and what to look for when it doesn’t.

Three months in: what should you see?

Nothing dramatic, honestly. Competitive keywords take 6–12 months to move. But you should see something — technical issues resolved, more pages crawled, some long-tail keywords starting to appear in Search Console.

If three months have passed and your Search Console shows zero new indexed pages and no movement on any keyword you didn’t already rank for, that’s a problem worth naming.

The metrics that matter vs. the ones that don’t

Agencies love reporting organic sessions. That number can go up while your business gets nothing. Someone searches «what is SEO,» lands on your blog, bounces in eight seconds, never converts. Traffic: up. Revenue: flat.

What to actually track:

Keyword rankings for terms your customers actually search
Clicks from Search Console — not sessions, clicks
Leads or sales from organic traffic (set this up in GA4 if you haven’t)
Number of indexed pages month over month

Red flags at 90 days

Your agency can’t show you where your keywords rank right now. Monthly reports have lots of words and no actual ranking data. Technical issues from the original audit are still open after two months. You’ve asked for the keyword list three times and still don’t have it.

These aren’t rookie mistakes. They’re usually obfuscation by design.

One check you can do yourself, right now

Go to Google Search Console → Performance → Search results. Set the date to «Last 3 months.» Open the Queries tab.

If your best ranking query is your brand name and a variation of it — and everything else is position 40+ — you’re not ranking for anything that drives new business. Fine at month 1. Not fine at month 6.

When to actually fire your SEO agency

After six months: no new pages ranking in the top 20 for target keywords, no documented link building activity, technical issues from the original audit still unresolved, and you’re getting reports that mostly talk about «ecosystem development.»

Good SEO is slow. Bad SEO is also slow — which is exactly what some agencies exploit. The difference is whether the slow period has a documented plan behind it or just a monthly invoice.

If you want a second opinion on what you’re actually getting, we offer a free technical audit — no pitch call required, just a real look at where your site stands.