How to Tell If Your SEO Company Is Working: 6 Checks
How to tell if your SEO company is working: six checks in your own Search Console, in order, with numbers from our new site's first five days.
By Tyler Phan9 min readLast reviewed
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On October 1, 2026, a business owner asked r/SEO for advice. They had paid an SEO agency, which also ran their Google Ads, for three months, and "in 3 months we did not have any improvements". They were getting fewer leads than before, in what they called the worst period since they opened the business five years earlier. The agency said SEO needs time. The owner wanted to know whether to "wait or cancel the contract".
The post had 7 points and 31 comments in the archive we read. A reply at 2 points, from u/kemalios, is close to the test we'd use to tell if an SEO company is working: "Three months of SEO won't show up in leads. It shows up as impressions and average position in Search Console for the pages they touched. If those are flat too, nothing shipped."
We'd run that test as six checks in a fixed order, and you can run all of them yourself without waiting for the agency's report. Below they come with the numbers from our own new site, elmrank.com, so you can see what week one looks like in a crowded niche.
The six checks, in order
- 1A dated list of changesEvery page published or edited, with a link
- 2IndexedURL Inspection says URL is on Google
- 3ImpressionsPerformance report, filtered to those pages
- 4Average positionThe same queries, month against month
- 5ClicksFollow position, so they come later
- 6LeadsAgainst the same months last year
| Check | Where to look | What we'd expect by month 3 |
|---|---|---|
| 1. List of changes | The agency's report; open each link | A list every month |
| 2. Indexed | URL Inspection; Page indexing report | Most listed pages on Google |
| 3. Impressions | Performance, filtered by page | New pages showing up |
| 4. Average position | Performance, Queries tab, same filter | Moving up on the main queries, or holding while impressions grow |
| 5. Clicks | Same view | Small is normal at low positions |
| 6. Leads | Your CRM or GA4, same months last year | Often flat this early |
We give an SEO company three months to pass checks 1 to 4. Clicks get six, which is also the period our own refund term uses. Leads depend on things no SEO company controls, such as season, prices and ads, so we read them last.
Each check, with our own numbers
Our numbers come from Search Console for elmrank.com, pulled on October 21, 2026. The site and its first 25 posts went live on October 14, and Search Console had final data up to October 18, so this is the first five days. It's our own site, not a client's.
1. A dated list of what changed
Without a list of URLs you can't run the other five checks on the right pages, so this one comes first. Google's page on hiring an SEO suggests asking: "Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?" In the r/SEO thread, u/Visible_Speed8843 (1 point) advised the owner to ask for something more specific: "Ask the agency for a three-month change log tied to specific pages. It should show what shipped, when Google recrawled it, and what changed in impressions or position for the intended queries."
Open every link on the list. A new page should load on your site, and an edited page should show the change described. If three monthly reports don't add up to a list you can click through, we'd stop there, because nothing else on this page can be checked. Our post on what a monthly SEO report should include covers the rest of the report.
2. Those pages are indexed
Paste each URL into the inspection search bar at the top of Search Console. "URL is on Google" means the page is indexed; Google adds that this "doesn't guarantee that your page is appearing in Search results." For more than a few pages, the Page indexing report groups the pages that aren't indexed by reason, with example URLs. Google says that list is "limited to 1,000 items, and isn't guaranteed to show all URLs in a given status," so check the pages on your list one by one if it's short.
We submitted our sitemap on October 14, the day our first 25 posts went live. On October 19, five days later, 23 of those 25 were "Submitted and indexed" and two were "Crawled - currently not indexed." By then the sitemap had 56 URLs, and 52 of them were indexed. The two that Google didn't know yet had gone live that same day, the earlier one about two hours before we checked. A page your SEO company published a month ago that Google still doesn't know is the first thing we'd ask about. Our posts on how long Google takes to index a page and on crawled, currently not indexed cover the slower cases.
3. Impressions on those pages
In Search Console, open Performance, click "+ New" at the top of the report, choose Page, pick "URLs containing" and enter a URL, or a folder such as /blog/ to cover all posts. Then use the date filter's Compare option to put this month next to the month before the work started. An impression means Google showed the page for some search, even if nobody clicked.
In the first five days, 37 of our pages got impressions, 1,576 for the site in total, and from the second day on, 23 to 28 pages showed up in search every day. For a new page, zero impressions a month after publishing tells you more than zero clicks does, because it means Google isn't showing the page for any search yet.
4. Average position on the same queries
Search Console defines average position as "The average position of the topmost result from your site." With the page filter on, the Queries tab shows the position for each search the pages appeared in.
Our average over the five days was 71.6. Of the 275 queries Search Console listed, 222 averaged a position between 51 and 100, and 6 made the top 10, each with one or two impressions. Four of those six were names of SEO companies that our posts mention. We expected a low start. When we looked at Bing's top results for our main topics on October 20, they were mostly pages from agencies and SEO tool companies.
Watch the same queries month against month instead of the site-wide average. On our first day, 4 impressions averaged position 30.2; the next day, with 27 pages showing, the average was 70.5. As far as we can tell, nothing had got worse. New pages had started appearing at low positions, and they pulled the average down. A report that shows only the site-wide average can make good work look bad, and weak work look fine.
Over three months, positions on our own content sites moved less than clicks did. They averaged positions of 9.2, 7.6 and 6.5 in their first three 30-day windows with impressions; 8.3, 7.9 and 6.9; and 7.4, 7.6 and 7.6. Two moved up by month three. The third stayed at about 7.5 while its impressions grew from 60,161 to 423,545 a window and its clicks from 2,458 to 10,835. So by month three we'd want the main queries moving up or impressions growing, and preferably both.
5. Clicks
Clicks follow position. Our three clicks in five days came on three posts whose average positions over those days were 60.3 to 65.1.
Three content sites we run started at average positions of 7.4 to 9.2 and got 508, 2,458 and 3,920 clicks in their first 30 days with impressions in Search Console. Their pages answer narrow questions about manhwa, card games and game news. Our own site competes with agencies on searches about SEO, so its clicks will take longer. Ask your SEO company what position its new pages start at in your niche, because a click forecast should follow from that number, not from a case study in another niche. Our how long SEO takes post has the day-by-day timeline for those three sites.
6. Leads, against the same months last year
Compare leads with the same months a year earlier, so a slow season doesn't look like failed SEO, and count leads from organic search separately.
That second part mattered in this thread, because the same agency ran the owner's Google Ads. A drop in total leads could come from the ads alone. u/Visible_Speed8843's reply goes on: "Review the ads separately by comparing spend with qualified leads, then inspect the search terms behind them." GA4 can split leads by channel if your forms send a key event, and that split is the only lead number we'd use to judge SEO.
Wait or leave at month three
"3 months isn't enough time," u/BigLeagueBlogs replied, at 7 points. For clicks and leads we agree. For checks 1 to 4 it's plenty, since most of our own pages were indexed and getting impressions within five days of going live. Here's how we'd decide at month three:
- If there's no list of changes, leave. You can't check work you can't see.
- If there's a list but the pages aren't indexed or get no impressions, ask why in writing, and leave if the answer is vague. Our guide to firing your SEO agency covers the handover, and switching agencies without losing traffic covers the move.
- If the pages are indexed and getting impressions, with positions moving up or holding while impressions grow, but few clicks, give it to month six and ask for the position of the main queries each month.
u/mike8111's rule, at 2 points, is close to ours: "If they can show you what they've been doing and why it will work, then I'd give them another couple of months. If not, then you have your answer."
Whichever way you decide, keep Search Console in your own name. Google's help says "You can grant permissions to other users only if you are a property owner." So stay the owner and add your SEO company as a user. Our list of SEO agency red flags has more on account ownership.
How our monthly report covers the six
Our terms say what the monthly report contains: what we published, what we fixed, and your Search Console clicks and impressions. That covers checks 1, 3 and 5. Checks 2 and 4 you can run yourself in your Search Console, which stays yours and is shared with us. Our sample report, filled in with one of our own sites, shows the format, positions included.
We don't promise rankings. Our terms promise a refund if your Google clicks haven't grown after 6 paid months in a row, compared with your first month, with conditions listed there. The plan is $500 for the first month and $300 a month after, with up to 30 articles a month, and our SEO content service page lists what each month includes. If you'd like a second opinion on your current SEO company's work first, send us your site and we'll reply within 12 hours with the first three things we'd fix.
How we know this
Written by Tyler Phan. Every source below was read on the date shown; the page was last reviewed on Oct 23, 2026.
- r/SEO, I would like to ask an advice. We have a SEO Agency since 3 months ago (post by u/Full_Gift8875; comments by u/kemalios, u/Visible_Speed8843, u/BigLeagueBlogs, u/mike8111), accessed Oct 21, 2026
- Google Search Central, Do you need an SEO?, accessed Oct 21, 2026
- Search Console Help, Performance report (Search results): Overview and basic setup, accessed Oct 21, 2026
- Search Console Help, How are you performing on Google?, accessed Oct 21, 2026
- Search Console Help, URL Inspection tool, accessed Oct 21, 2026
- Search Console Help, Page indexing report, accessed Oct 21, 2026
- Search Console Help, Performance report (Search results): Advanced filtering and comparison, accessed Oct 21, 2026
- Search Console Help, Managing owners, users, and permissions, accessed Oct 21, 2026
- Elmrank, Search Console data for elmrank.com, October 14 to 18, 2026 (Search Analytics API, final data, pulled Oct 21), our URL Inspection audit of Oct 19, and Search Console data for the three sites we run (snapshot Oct 13), accessed Oct 21, 2026
- Elmrank, Terms of Service, accessed Oct 21, 2026
Send us your site.
We reply within 12 hours with what we'd fix first. Then we run it for you, technical SEO and content: $500 for the first month, then $300 a month for up to 30 articles. You don't need any technical knowledge, and you can cancel any time.
