First, be fair: what is a reasonable timeline?
Before you judge anyone, know what “normal” looks like. In the first three months of good SEO, you should see work, not results: an audit you could read, technical fixes shipped, pages rewritten or created, tracking set up. By month four to six, impressions on the searches that bring customers should be rising in Search Console, and a few of those keywords should be moving from nowhere into the top 20. By month six to twelve, enquiries from organic search should be measurably up. Local businesses tend to move faster; competitive national markets slower.
If you are at month two and frustrated, the check below still tells you something, but the honest answer might be “wait”. If you are at month eight and cannot point to a single result, read on.
The 15-minute check
Minutes 1 to 5: Search Console
- Open Google Search Console. If you do not have access to your own Search Console, that is finding number one. Ask for it today.
- Go to Performance, set the date range to the last six months, and tick “Compare” against the previous six months.
- Look at impressions and clicks for the whole site. Up, flat or down?
- Now filter Queries to the two or three terms that actually bring you customers (“emergency plumber Leeds”, “payroll software for restaurants”). What happened to their position and clicks?
What you are looking for: growth on the queries that matter, not growth in general. Impressions doubling because a blog post about “what is a root canal” took off is not the same as more patients.
Minutes 6 to 10: your own website
- Open your top five pages, the ones that should be bringing customers. Compare them to how they looked when the agency started. What has visibly changed? Titles, headings, copy, structure, speed, internal links?
- Look at the pages the agency added. Are they genuinely useful, or thin pages that exist to hold keywords? Would you be happy for a customer to land on them?
- Check the site on your phone. Does it load fast? Do the forms work?
Minutes 11 to 15: their last three reports
- Do the reports mention enquiries, calls or revenue? Or only “keywords in the top 100”, “backlinks built” and “pages optimised”?
- Is the list of work done different each month, or the same template with the dates changed?
- Does anything in the report link to something you can see on your site?
The three verdicts
Working
Visible changes on your money pages. Impressions and positions moving on the queries that matter, even if leads have not caught up yet. Reports that talk about business outcomes and admit what did not work. Keep them, and ask for a written 90-day plan with three specific outcomes.
Coasting
The most common verdict. Some early work, then a monthly routine: a blog post, a few directory links, a report full of activity. Your site looks the same as it did six months ago. Impressions may be up on informational queries and flat on commercial ones. They are not hurting you; they are billing you. Give them one month with a specific list, then decide.
Hurting
Pages of near-identical text for every town in the region. Links from sites you would be embarrassed by. Hidden text, keyword-stuffed footers, “AI content” published without a human reading it. These break Google’s spam policies and can earn a manual action that takes months to recover from. Stop the work today. Get a list of every link they built and every page they created.
A worked example
Composite example: details changed, numbers typical of what I see rather than one named client.
Say you run a dental clinic in Manchester and have paid an agency £1,200 a month for eight months. You run the check.
- Search Console: impressions up 40%, but almost all of it on blog posts about tooth whitening at home. Clicks on “dentist Manchester” and “emergency dentist Manchester”: flat. Position for both: 18 to 20, unchanged since month two.
- Your site: eight new blog posts. The service pages have not changed since launch. Google Business Profile: last post four months ago.
- Reports: “keywords in top 100: up 300”, “backlinks: 46 built”. No mention of new patients.
Verdict: coasting. They did the easy, visible work (blog posts) and skipped the hard work (service pages, local profile, links that matter). The conversation to have: “For the next 60 days I want the two emergency pages rewritten, the Business Profile active weekly, and a plan to move those two queries into the top 10. If that is not what you do, tell me now.”
What this means for you
- Local service business: your money is in the map pack and two or three service pages. If the agency has not touched your Google Business Profile in three months, that alone is your answer.
- E-commerce: judge on category pages and revenue from organic, not blog traffic. Ask for organic revenue by month from your analytics; if they cannot produce it, they are not looking at it.
- B2B or SaaS: a longer timeline is fair, but you should still see comparison and use-case pages shipped by month three and demo requests attributed to organic by month nine.
If you decide to leave: the exit checklist
- Confirm in writing that you own the domain, hosting, website files, content, Google Business Profile, Search Console, Analytics and any ad accounts. Get admin access to each before you give notice.
- Ask for the full list of links they built and pages they created, plus any disavow file they submitted.
- Export their reports and your analytics so the next person has history.
- Check the contract for notice period and termination fees. Give notice by email so there is a record.
- Do not go public with complaints. Brief the next person calmly with the facts; they will find the rest.
If you decide to stay: what to ask for
A one-page plan for the next 90 days with three outcomes you can measure, the specific pages that will change, and a monthly 30-minute call with the person doing the work. If they push back on any of those three, you have learned something.
Want a second opinion on the check before you decide either way? Send me the site and the last report. I will tell you which verdict I would give, and why.