The monthly report arrives, it says twenty optimisations performed and four blog posts published, and you still have no idea whether any of it is working. How to know if SEO is working is not a question that report is built to answer, and that is not your failure to understand it. It is a report built to show effort rather than results. Five checks, all in free tools you already have access to, will tell you more in fifteen minutes than a year of those documents.
First, make sure you own the accounts
Before anything else: the Search Console property, the Google Business Profile and the analytics account should be in your name, with your agency added as a user. If they sit inside an agency account you cannot check anything independently and you lose your history if you change providers. This is a reasonable thing to insist on and a revealing thing to ask about.
The five checks
1. Are impressions rising?
In Search Console, open Performance and compare the last three months to the previous three. Impressions are how often you appeared at all. This moves before clicks do, so a rising line with flat traffic is progress, not failure. A flat line over six months of paid work is the finding that matters.
2. Are you appearing for more different searches?
Same screen, look at the number of distinct queries. Going from forty queries to three hundred means Google is matching you to far more of what people ask, which is the foundation everything else sits on. A site stuck on the same handful of queries is not growing regardless of what the positions do.
3. Is average position improving where it should?
Filter to the handful of searches you actually care about and watch those, not the site average. Movement from twenty eight to seventeen produces no traffic and is real progress. The site wide average is a vanity number, dragged around by irrelevant queries.
4. Are your pages actually indexed?
Search Console shows indexed pages and the reasons pages were excluded. Compare that to what has been published. Four new pages a month for a year with no growth in indexed pages means something is wrong, and it is a question your provider should be able to answer immediately.
5. Are you getting more enquiries?
The only one that pays for anything. Calls, forms, bookings, direction requests from your Business Profile. If the first four are improving and this is flat, the traffic is arriving and the site is not converting it, which is a different problem and usually a cheaper one to fix.
Reading the result
Four broad patterns, and each points somewhere specific.
Everything rising. It is working. Keep going and resist the urge to change the approach.
Impressions and queries rising, clicks flat. You are being shown and not chosen. Titles and descriptions, or positions still too low to click. Encouraging, and early.
Clicks rising, enquiries flat. The site is the bottleneck, not the SEO. Fix what happens after arrival before buying more traffic.
Nothing moving after six months. Time for a direct conversation. Google is clear that some changes take effect in hours and others take months, and suggests waiting a few weeks to assess a change, but six months of nothing at all is not a timeline issue.
Three things that are not evidence
A ranking screenshot. Positions vary by location and personalisation. For anything local, a single number is not a measurement, because distance from the searcher is one of the three factors Google names for local ranking.
Domain authority scores. Third party metrics invented by tool vendors. Useful for rough comparison, not produced by Google, and not something to pay for movement in.
Activity counts. Optimisations performed, keywords researched, posts published. None of these are outcomes. Ask what changed, not what was done.
On guaranteed results
Google states plainly that it does not guarantee it will crawl, index or serve a page, and that it does not accept payment to crawl a site more often or rank it higher. So a guaranteed first page position by a set date is not a service anyone can deliver.
It is also worth knowing that in Canada, representations that are false or misleading in a material respect fall under the Competition Act, and the Competition Bureau assesses both the literal meaning and the general impression created. A guarantee nobody can honour is not just a weak promise.
What a good report looks like
Short. Impressions, clicks, queries and position for the searches that matter, compared to the previous period. Enquiries received. What was done and, specifically, what it was meant to change. What is planned next and why. One page is plenty.
If your current report cannot be summarised in those terms, the issue may be the reporting rather than the work. Ask for it in this shape and see what comes back.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to pay for a tool to check this?
No. Search Console and your Business Profile are free and cover all five checks. Paid tools add competitor data and convenience, not necessity.
My rankings jump around week to week. Is that normal?
Yes. Results vary by location, device and personalisation, and they fluctuate naturally. Judge over months and by trend, never by a single check.
How long before I should expect movement?
Impressions often move within a couple of months, meaningful traffic usually later. The full timeline discussion is in how long does SEO take.
Traffic is up but I have no more customers. What now?
Check what the traffic is for. More visits on searches unrelated to what you sell is not progress. If the searches are right and enquiries are not following, the problem is on the page.
Should I switch providers?
Have the conversation first, with these five numbers in front of you. A provider who can explain a flat period honestly is often worth keeping. One who cannot produce the numbers at all is the answer to your question.
Want a second opinion on what you are paying for? Book a free audit and we will run these five checks on your account and tell you straight, including when the answer is that it is working fine.
Technocure Digital Solutions is a bilingual digital agency specializing in website design, SEO and Google Ads. We have served clients worldwide since 2012 and have been based in Montreal since 2020. More about us.
