Is My SEO Agency Working? How to Tell (2026)

A business owner posted on r/SEO in September asking whether it was safe to cancel a freelancer they'd paid for three years. They couldn't see what was being done each month, apart from a couple of Google profile posts, and whenever they brought up stopping, the freelancer got upset. The thread had over 200 comments, and the top replies gave the same advice: ask to see the work, and make sure you own your accounts.

That question, "is my SEO agency actually doing anything?", comes up again and again on Reddit and in calls I have with owners. This guide covers what you should be able to see each month, how to check the work yourself in a few minutes, how to tell slow progress from no progress, and how to leave cleanly if it comes to that. If you're still choosing an agency rather than checking one, the UK SEO pricing guide is the better place to start.

How do you know if your SEO agency is working?

Your SEO agency is working if you can see three things: a dated list of what was done, movement in Google Search Console on searches that don't include your brand name, and a clear reason for whatever happens next. If any of those is missing after a couple of months, it's fair to ask why.

Rankings on their own aren't enough. A report can show a handful of terms going up while the searches that actually bring in customers stay flat, so the useful question is always whether the pages that bring enquiries are being found more often than they were.

Google's own guidance for hiring an SEO is a good reference here. Its Do you need an SEO? page, last updated in June 2026, suggests asking "Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site?" and warns to "be careful if a company is secretive or won't clearly explain what they intend to do."

What you should see every month

A good monthly update doesn't need to be long. It should answer five things in plain words:

1. One number you care about. Usually enquiries, or clicks to the pages that bring enquiries, compared with the same period before the work started.
2. What moved, and why. Not just that something went up or down, but what they think caused it.
3. What was done. A dated list of changes, pages and fixes, specific enough that you could check them on your site.
4. What's next. The plan for the coming month, and why it's the priority.
5. A note when something drops. If an important search falls, you should hear about it from them, with an explanation, before you notice it yourself.

The first one matters most. For a Scottish estate agency I work with, the number they watch is non-brand clicks to their valuation and conveyancing pages each month. It was 3 when I took it on and it's 6 now. That's a small number, but it's the right one, because those are the clicks that turn into instructions.

If your report is mostly a table of rankings, it may be leaving out the number that matters. Rankings are useful context, but they're not the same as customers.

The second one is longer, but you can check every line of it, and it tells you what's happening to the pages that make you money. The numbers above are made up for the example.

Check it yourself in Search Console

You don't need to be technical to do a basic check. Google Search Console is free, it shows how your site appears in Google, and it's the same data most agencies use. If you don't have access yet, ask your agency to add you as an owner of the property. Google's permissions guide explains the different access levels.

Here are four checks that take about ten minutes:

1. Clicks and impressions over time. In the Performance report, set the date range to compare the last three months with the three months before. Both lines should be moving in the right direction, or there should be a clear reason why not.
2. Searches without your brand name. Add a query filter that excludes your business name. People who already know you will find you anyway, so the non-brand searches are where SEO work shows up.
3. The pages that bring enquiries. Switch to the Pages tab and find your main service pages. Are they getting more impressions and clicks than before?
4. Indexing. In the Page indexing report, check how many of your pages are indexed. If the number is falling, or important pages are listed as not indexed, that's worth raising.

If all four look flat after several months of work, it doesn't prove nothing has been done, but it's a fair point to bring to your next call.

Know where your enquiries come from

Search Console tells you whether people are finding your site. It doesn't tell you whether they became customers, and that's the part you're paying for.

One owner on r/smallbusiness described paying $1,750 a month for eight months and getting 15 to 20 leads a month, but still couldn't tell whether it was worth keeping. The reply with the most practical advice was a question: "Are you tracking what channel your form submissions come from?"

There are a few simple ways to know:

• Ask every new enquiry how they found you, and write it down. It's low tech, but it works, and it catches people who searched for you by name after hearing about you somewhere else.
• Check your analytics for form submissions or calls by source. If your agency set up Google Analytics, ask them to show you which enquiries came from organic search.
• Use a separate phone number or form for the website, if calls are how most customers reach you.

If your agency can't tell you roughly how many enquiries came from search last month, it's worth asking them to set that up before anything else. It's hard to judge any SEO work without it.

Is it slow, or is nothing happening?

SEO can take a while, which makes it hard to tell the difference between work that hasn't paid off yet and work that isn't being done. The way to tell them apart is to look for early signs, which tend to show up before the enquiries do.

The first column can show up within a month or two of real work starting, even if enquiries take longer. If you're several months in and you can't see anything in that column, it's reasonable to ask for an explanation.

What you might see by month 1, 3 and 6

Every site is different, so treat this as a rough guide rather than a promise:

If you're at month 6 and you're still at what month 1 looks like, that's the point to have a frank conversation.

Questions to ask your agency each month

These are for an agency you already work with. The answers tell you a lot, so I've included what a good, weak and evasive answer tends to sound like.

"What did you change on the site this month?" A good answer is a list of specific pages and fixes with dates. A weak answer is general ("we optimised your content"). An evasive answer avoids the question or changes the subject to rankings.

"Which searches are you working on, and why those?" A good answer links the searches to the services you want more of. A weak answer is a long keyword list with no explanation. An evasive answer is that it's all "proprietary".

"What's changed in Search Console since last month?" A good answer refers to the same data you can see yourself. A weak answer only mentions rankings from their own tool. An evasive answer is that Search Console "isn't accurate".

"Something dropped. What happened?" A good answer says what they think caused it and what they're doing about it. A weak answer is "it's a Google update" and nothing more. An evasive answer is silence until you chase.

"What would you do differently next month?" A good answer has a specific change of plan. An evasive answer is "keep going as we are" every month, whatever the numbers say.

When flat numbers aren't the agency's fault

Flat or falling numbers don't always mean the work is bad. A few things can hold results back regardless of who's doing the SEO:

• Seasonality. A roofer's searches drop in summer and a tax adviser's spike in January. Compare with the same month last year, not just last month.
• Google updates. Core updates can move rankings for weeks. A good agency will tell you when one happened and whether your site was affected, with more detail than "it's a Google update".
• Competition. If a big competitor started investing in their site, holding your position can be a decent result.
• Changes on your side. A new website, a change of address or a new booking system can all knock rankings back for a while.

The difference is whether your agency explains it before you ask, and has a plan for it. That's usually a better sign than any single month's numbers.

When it's probably time to leave

Some situations are worth a frank conversation, and a few are worth ending the contract over:

• You can't see what was done, even after asking for a list.
• Every drop gets the same explanation, usually a Google update, with nothing about what they'll change.
• Questions take a week to answer, or need chasing.
• The content reads like nobody checked it, with errors, repetition or claims about your business that aren't true.
• Your site breaks and they don't notice, like a page that stops loading or a form that stops working.
• They won't give you access to your own Search Console, Analytics or Google Business Profile.

Google's guidance has a line that's worth keeping in mind: "Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire." If links are being bought or content is being mass-produced on your behalf, it's your site that carries the risk.

How to leave without losing anything

If you decide to move on, the main thing is to make sure everything that belongs to you stays with you. Before you give notice, check you have owner access to each of these:

• Google Search Console and Google Analytics, with your own email as an owner.
• Google Business Profile, with you as the primary owner.
• Your domain and hosting, registered in your name or your company's.
• Your website's admin login, with your own account, not a shared one.
• The content and reports, including a copy of the work log.

Once you're sure you have everything, remove the agency's access from each account and change any passwords you'd shared. That was the top advice in the Reddit thread above too, and it's sensible whatever the reason for leaving.

An example: what we found when I took one on

When I took on a UK executive search firm in February 2026, the audit found a fair amount that the business couldn't have seen from its reports: 446 of its 646 backlinks were broken, 78 older blog articles had been crawled by Google but not indexed, there were around 320 templated location pages, and its London Google profile had a single review.

None of that is unusual, and none of it is visible unless someone looks. The work since has been to fix it and to report it in a way the client can follow: a live dashboard built on their Search Console data, page-level positions for 54 tracked searches, a monthly check of what the AI answers say about them, a dated work log, and a short note every Friday with what shipped and what's next.

Their UK Google clicks averaged 44 a day before the work started and 72 a day over the 28 days to 25 September 2026, up 63% (Search Console, pulled 1 October 2026). Their site was also relaunched in July by their own developer, so not all of that rise is down to the SEO work, and the report says so.

You can see this and other examples on our case studies page.

What about AI search?

If your agency started before AI answers were common, it's worth asking whether they check what ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews say about your business. Some searches now end with an AI answer, and from what we've seen the businesses named tend to be the ones with clear service pages, reviews and directory listings. We wrote up what that work involves separately.

You can check where you stand with our free AI visibility checker, which asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode the questions your customers ask and shows who gets named. If your agency hasn't mentioned AI search at all, that's a fair thing to bring up.

How Nest Content reports

Since this whole guide is about what to expect, it seems fair to say what we do. Clients get a live dashboard, updated at least weekly, with their Search Console data, the AI answers we track and the work shipped, plus a short email every Friday and a monthly update. Replies to questions usually come the same day.

That isn't the only good way to report, and plenty of agencies do it well in their own format. What matters is that you can see the work, check the numbers yourself, and get a straight answer when you ask.

If you'd like a second opinion, send me your last agency report at robin@nestcontent.com and I'll tell you what I'd ask them. If it's easier to talk it through, book a 20-minute call.

Want to see where you stand first? Run the free check.