Guide · Hiring
Is your agency
actually doing anything?
SEO is easy to invoice for and hard to inspect, which is a bad combination. None of the checks below require technical knowledge, and together they answer the question in about half an hour.
Published 2026-09-24 · Formory Group
Check one: has anything on the site changed?
Ask for a list of pages added or rewritten in the last three months, with dates. Real work leaves visible traces — new service pages, rewritten titles, new content. If nothing on the site has changed, nothing has been done to it.
“Technical optimisation” that never produces a visible change is the most common description of an empty month.
Check two: read your own page titles.
Search Google for site:yourdomain.com and read the headlines. If several pages share a title, or none names the city you work in, the most basic work has not been done. In our survey of 34,180 GTA business sites, 11,566 had titles that never mention their city.
This one check catches more neglected retainers than any other, because it is the first thing a competent agency fixes and it is visible to anyone.
Check three: ask what they changed and why.
A specific answer names pages, terms and a reason. A vague answer talks about authority, algorithms and ongoing optimisation. The difference is not jargon — it is whether there is anything to describe.
Ask what they would do next if the budget doubled, and what they would drop if it halved. Both answers reveal whether there is a plan or a recurring invoice.
Check four: look at the report's metrics.
Three numbers appear in reports because they always go up: impressions, keywords ranking somewhere in the top hundred, and domain authority — which is a third-party tool's estimate that Google does not use at all.
The numbers that matter are enquiries received, calls received, and positions for the handful of terms that actually produce work. If the report does not contain those, ask why.
Check five and six: links and access.
Ask where new links came from. Genuine local links — suppliers, associations, sponsorships, local press — are slow and namable. A list of directory submissions is filler, and bought links are a liability that outlasts the contract.
Finally, confirm you have owner access to your own Search Console, analytics and Google Business Profile. An agency that holds those exclusively has made leaving expensive, which is a business decision on their part rather than a technical necessity.
Questions
Asked often.
How long before SEO shows results?
The map pack can move within weeks. Competitive organic terms take three to six months of consistent work. What should be visible within a month is the work itself, even when the results are not.
Is a monthly retainer normal?
Yes, because the work is ongoing. What is not normal is a retainer with no description of what it buys, or a twelve-month minimum.
What if the answers are unsatisfactory?
Ask for the access and the page list in writing, then decide. Any agency worth keeping produces both within a day.
Now check your own
You have read the numbers.
Where does your site stand?
Type your address and we will open your site the way a visitor would, then tell you plainly what is wrong with it — including when the answer is nothing. Ten seconds, no email, nothing stored.
Want the same for
your business?
Tell us what you do and where you work. We will look at what you have now and say plainly whether it is worth rebuilding — including when it is not.