Google's John Mueller laid out some ways to determine whether your SEO team is actually doing the job they promised: While it's important to trust your SEO team, John says you can also do the following to ensure they're doing their job properly:
This question was posed at the end of the SEO Office Hours at 9:54, and John responded by saying he could respond with the following:
- Schedule regular meetings to review your SEO team's efforts
- Check your progress by checking your SEO reports
- Discuss future work
He adds that this will require more time on both the SEO team's part and of course on your part, but it's often worth it.
Question: If you have an agency that manages your organic SEO every month, how can you tell if someone is actively optimizing? I suspect the agency hasn't done any off-site optimization in years.
Answer: Great question. When we worked with an SEO agency on some of the content for Search Central, we met regularly to discuss the work they had done, review reports on the site's progress, and discuss future work. These meetings took some time for both the agency and us, but were very informative. Having a brief understanding of the type of work the agency does can help ensure that the work is being done as expected. Additionally, there's an element of trust involved. Our page on hiring an SEO has some information about this, and our SEO Starter Guide goes into more detail. Also, I was wondering if anyone in the SEO industry could share how they help their clients understand how they're spending their time?
Here's the embedded video:
John then posted on LinkedIn asking for further feedback on the subject, where he said, “If a small business owner came to you and asked how they could know if SEO was helping them, what would you tell them?”
He continued:
I think it's very hard to answer in general terms. And, this is tricky, but I don't know firsthand what a small business SEO does or should do. What would you advise your friend to look out for as an objective sign that their SEO is doing something useful? What do you think are the signs that your friend is not useful? (Assuming you have no vested interest in whether the SEO keeps their SEO. What should you objectively look for?)
Thank you, I know I should have asked here first but things can move fast.
Forum discussion on X.
