How to Audit Your Current SEO Agency’s Work
Five concrete ways to check if your SEO agency is doing real work: Search Console data, published content, backlinks, and free tools you can use today.
To find out if your SEO agency is doing anything, pull three things and check them yourself: Google Search Console performance data (does organic clicks and impressions trend match what your reports claim?), the actual list of pages published or changed in the last 90 days, and a record of backlinks placed. Search Console keeps 16 months of historical data, so comparing the period before and after the agency started is straightforward once you know where to look. Google’s own guidance, from former webmaster trends analyst Maile Ohye, is that meaningful SEO results take four months to a year to materialize, so judge a new engagement on activity and leading indicators before month four, and on actual traffic and ranking movement after that.
Start With Search Console, Not the Agency’s Report
Every SEO report is, to some degree, a summary written by the people being evaluated. That doesn’t mean it’s dishonest, but it does mean you shouldn’t treat it as the only source of truth. Log into Google Search Console directly (you should already have owner-level access; if you don’t, that’s a red flag on its own) and check the Performance report under Search Results.
Compare clicks, impressions, average position, and click-through rate over the period the agency has been working, against the equivalent period before. Use the built-in comparison tool: Performance, Date, Compare, then select a custom range. If organic clicks and impressions are flat or declining months into an engagement, that’s a real signal worth raising, not something to wait out indefinitely.
Check What Was Actually Published or Changed
Reports can describe “ongoing optimization work” in ways that sound substantial without being specific. Cut through that by checking concretely:
- New or updated content. Pull a list of blog posts or pages published in the last quarter. Does the count match what the retainer promised? Are they live, or sitting as drafts?
- Technical changes. Ask for a changelog: what was fixed, when, and how you can verify it (a before/after screenshot from a crawler tool, a Search Console coverage report showing fewer errors).
- Backlinks placed. If link building is part of the retainer, ask for the actual list of domains links were placed on, not just a count. A vague “12 links this month” with no domain list is worth pushing back on.
- Internal linking and on-page changes are harder to see externally, but a competent agency can show a before/after diff of a page’s title tag, headers, or internal link structure on request.
If none of this exists in a form you can independently check, that alone tells you something. A capable agency can produce this evidence in minutes because they’re already tracking it internally for their own workflow.
Check Rankings Independently, Not Just From Their Report
Agencies often report rankings using their own rank tracking tool, checked from their own location and device settings, which can differ from what a real customer sees. It’s worth spot-checking a handful of your priority keywords yourself using an incognito browser window and a India-based VPN or location setting if your business targets a specific city or region. You won’t get a perfectly clean read this way, Google personalizes results, but if your agency claims a keyword sits at position 3 and you can’t find your site anywhere on page one after a reasonable search, that gap is worth asking about directly.
The same goes for domain authority or “SEO score” metrics some agencies lead with in reports. These are third-party metrics invented by tool vendors (Moz, Ahrefs, Semrush each have their own version), not a Google ranking factor. A rising domain authority score with flat organic traffic is not evidence of progress. It’s evidence that a metric moved, which isn’t the same thing.
A Simple Scorecard for Your Next Review
| Area | What to Check | Good Sign | Warning Sign |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search Console data | Clicks/impressions trend vs. pre-engagement baseline | Gradual upward trend after month 3-4, or a clear technical/content explanation if flat | Flat or declining with no explanation offered |
| Content output | Actual published pages vs. contracted deliverable count | Matches or exceeds contracted volume | Consistently short, or content sits unpublished |
| Technical fixes | Verifiable changelog with before/after evidence | Specific, dated, checkable | Vague descriptions like “ongoing technical improvements” |
| Link building | Named domains, not just a monthly count | Domains are relevant, checkable, and diverse | Agency won’t disclose domains, or links are on clearly irrelevant sites |
| Reporting quality | Does the report explain what happened and why, or just export numbers | Narrative tied to specific actions taken | Auto-generated PDF exports with no commentary |
- Search Console Performance report, last 6 months, compared to the 6 months before the agency started
- List of published/updated pages from the retainer period
- Backlink domain list, not just a count
- The original scope of work or proposal, to check deliverables against what’s been reported
- Your own admin-level login credentials for GSC, GA4, and the CMS, confirmed working
Watch for Excuses That Don’t Hold Up
Some explanations for flat performance are legitimate. Others are stalling tactics dressed up as strategy.
| Explanation Given | Worth Accepting? |
|---|---|
| “Google made a core algorithm update and rankings are volatile industry-wide” | Check independently, Google announces major updates publicly. If one happened, this can be legitimate. |
| “SEO just takes time, trust the process” | True in general, but should always come with specific evidence of what’s been done, not used as a reason to avoid showing any. |
| “We’re waiting on your dev team to implement fixes” | Verify with your own dev team. If confirmed, the delay isn’t the agency’s fault, but the fixes should still be documented and dated. |
| “We pivoted strategy based on new data” | Reasonable if they can show the data and the specific pivot. Vague if they can’t. |
Timing Your Judgment Correctly
One of the most common mistakes in auditing an agency is judging too early or judging on the wrong metric. SEO takes an average of three to six months to start showing results, and 82% of experts surveyed by Morningscore’s survey of 75 SEO practitioners put that figure at around six months for a measurable traffic increase, with full results visible over 12 to 24 months. Firing an agency at month two because rankings haven’t moved is usually premature. Continuing to pay an agency at month nine with zero activity evidence and zero traffic movement is usually a mistake in the other direction.
The right approach is checking activity evidence early (is work actually happening) and checking outcome evidence later (is that work producing traffic and ranking movement). Both matter, but they answer different questions and belong on different timelines.
Free Tools That Let You Check Technical Work Yourself
You don’t need to buy an SEO tool subscription to verify basic technical claims. Google’s own PageSpeed Insights checks whether a site actually got faster after an agency claims to have optimized it. The Mobile-Friendly Test confirms mobile usability fixes. Search Console’s Coverage (or Pages) report shows whether indexing errors an agency claims to have fixed have actually dropped off the list, with dates attached. None of these require paid access, and all of them are checkable in under ten minutes.
If an agency claims a page speed improvement, ask for the specific before and after score, not a general statement that “site speed was optimized.” If the number they give doesn’t match what you see in PageSpeed Insights today, that’s a direct, checkable discrepancy worth raising immediately, not something to let slide until the next quarterly call.
What If the Evidence Looks Bad?
Don’t jump straight to termination. Bring the specific gaps to your account manager as concrete questions: “Search Console shows flat impressions since March, what’s the explanation?” or “the scope promised 6 posts a month, I count 3 published in Q2, what happened to the other 3?” A legitimate agency will have an answer, even if it’s not the answer you wanted (a slow client approval process, a technical blocker waiting on your dev team, a deliberate strategy pivot). An agency that can’t answer specifically, or gets defensive instead of showing you data, is telling you something too.
If you want a neutral read before deciding, getting a second opinion on your SEO account from an outside party can settle the question faster than another internal back-and-forth. And if you do conclude a change is needed, it’s worth reading up on how to switch SEO agencies cleanly before starting that conversation, since account access and data continuity are easy to lose in a messy handoff.
Understanding what a competent agency’s regular reporting should actually contain also helps future engagements start on firmer ground. We’ve written separately about what an SEO agency should report on each month, which is worth comparing against whatever you’re currently receiving.
If this audit process leaves you unsure whether the issue is the agency or unrealistic expectations set at the start, our SEO retainer plans page lays out what a properly scoped, reportable engagement looks like, which is a useful benchmark either way.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know if my SEO agency has access to the right accounts?
You should have owner-level access to Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and your CMS, with the agency added as a user, not the other way around. If you can’t log into these accounts independently, that’s a structural problem regardless of how the work is going.
What if I don’t have historical Search Console data from before the agency started?
Search Console only retains 16 months of data, so if the engagement started more than 16 months ago, exact baseline comparison isn’t possible. In that case, compare the last 6 months to the 6 months before that, using whatever data is still available.
Is it fair to judge an SEO agency after 3 months?
You can judge activity and process after 3 months (is the promised work actually happening), but judging outcomes like traffic and rankings that early is premature. Most credible timelines put meaningful results at 4 to 12 months.
My agency’s reports look busy but traffic isn’t moving. What does that mean?
It usually means either the work being reported isn’t the work that actually moves rankings (activity without strategy), or there’s a technical blocker preventing the site from benefiting from the work done. Ask directly which one it is and request evidence either way.
Should I hire a second SEO agency to check on my current one?
A full second retainer isn’t usually necessary. A scoped, one-time second opinion or audit is enough to validate or challenge what your current agency is telling you, without the cost or complexity of running two engagements at once.
