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article · IS MY SEO COMPANY DOING ANYTHING

See What YourVendor Shipped.

You should not have to take anyone's word for what happened on your site last month. Here is how to find out, with records you can open yourself.

trusted by: UFC, Caesars Entertainment, Churchill Downs, Neighborly, Supercuts, City of Las Vegas, SDMI, Switch, Silverton, Panda Express, TAO, Ellie Mental Health, Dollar Loan Center, Dot Vegas Domains, HFC, Lithion Battery

UFC
Caesars Entertainment
Churchill Downs
Neighborly
Supercuts
City of Las Vegas
SDMI
Switch
Silverton
Panda Express
TAO
Ellie Mental Health
Dollar Loan Center
Dot Vegas Domains
HFC
Lithion Battery

Trusted by UFC, Caesars Entertainment, City of Las Vegas, Supercuts

Justin's expertise, responsiveness, and genuine investment in our success have been evident throughout this process. We are truly grateful.
Dr. Linda Silvestri & Dr. Angela Silvestri-Elmore, Co-authors, Saunders Pyramid to Success · 14 years · 300+ Las Vegas businesses · 5-star rated
drop: business owner checking whether the seo work invoiced last…

01 · how to tell if seo is working

How to tell if SEO is working.

Ask for three things: every change made to your site last month, the date each one went live, and the page it touched. If all three arrive, the work is happening. If a dashboard of traffic lines arrives with nothing naming what changed, you have a report instead of a record.

That is the whole test, and it does not require you to learn search. A change either shipped on a page on a date or it did not.

Traffic moves for a hundred reasons nobody controls. A page rewritten on the eleventh is a fact.

02 · what does an seo agency do

What an SEO agency actually does.

Everything real in search work sits in one of five buckets. Ask what happened in each one.

01

Changes to the site itself

Titles, headings, body copy, internal links. Ask which URLs changed and on what date. Anyone doing the work can name the pages without going to look.

02

Technical fixes

Crawling, indexing, page speed on a phone, broken links, duplicate pages. These are pass or fail conditions, checkable line by line.

03

New pages written

Not planned, not briefed. Written, published and live at a URL you can open. A content calendar is a plan. A published page is work.

04

Google Business Profile

Posts, photos, categories, service areas, questions answered, review responses. Every one of those leaves a visible trace on the profile itself.

05

Answer engines

Whether the AI answers people now read can find and cite your pages. Ask to be shown the actual answer for a query that matters to you, not a score out of a hundred.

03 · seo red flags

Six SEO red flags.

None of these prove bad faith on their own. Together they describe an arrangement where nobody can check anything, and an owner who cannot check is paying for trust rather than for work.

The monthly report contains charts and nothing that names a change.
Every month's report looks like the last one with different numbers in the same boxes.
You cannot name the person doing the work, only the person who emails you.
You were told a position was guaranteed, or that a ranking is owed to you.
Nothing on your site has visibly changed in a full quarter.
A request for the shipped list turns into a call instead of a list.

04 · can seo companies guarantee rankings

Whether rankings can be guaranteed.

No. Nobody controls where Google puts you, and Google's own guidance on hiring for search says to be careful with anyone who promises a position.

What can be promised is the record. Every change dated, on the page it touched, somewhere you can open without asking.

05 · what to do if your seo is not working

What to do if SEO stalls.

01

Ask for the list

One email: every change made in the last ninety days, the date, and the URL. Give a deadline. What comes back, or what does not, is the answer.

02

Get a second read on the site

An independent crawl tells you what state the site is actually in, which is a different question from what anyone reported. This is where most owners find out the technical basics were never closed.

03

Confirm you own everything

The domain, the hosting, the analytics, the Search Console property, the Google Business Profile and the ad accounts. Check ownership before you decide anything about the relationship.

06 · common questions about seo companies

SEO company questions.

How long does SEO take?
Movement on a term you care about is usually a matter of months, depending on how competitive the term is and what state the site started in. The work itself is visible immediately: pages either changed this month or they did not.
How much does SEO typically cost?
It ranges widely, which is part of why the market is hard to read. What I charge is $1,000 a month for the whole SEO line, three months, then month to month, no setup fee, printed on the pricing page rather than quoted on a call. Two services together are $1,799 and three are $2,499.
Can I do my own SEO audit?
Partly, and it is worth doing. A free crawler shows you broken links, missing titles and slow pages. What it will not tell you is which twenty pages out of two hundred are worth the work.
Should I fire my SEO company?
Not on a feeling. Ask for the dated list of changes first. If it arrives and the work is real, your problem is expectations, which is fixable. If it never arrives, you have your answer.
Is SEO worth it for a small business?
It is worth it when the people who buy from you search before they buy, and not when they do not. That is a question about your buyers, and a free audit answers it faster than a year of paying to find out.

What comes back in the audit.

I crawl your whole site, score it 0 to 100, and send a ranked list of what is costing you customers. About a day. No call needed.