SEO REPAIR: IS THE SEO WORK REAL?
SEO Company Not Delivering Results? Here Is How to Tell in 30 Minutes
You pay every month, a report arrives every month, and the phone rings no more than it did before. This page shows you how to check the work yourself and when the problem is the site, not the company.
Galleria 713-703-3030 | Kingwood 281-852-8253
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Most business owners who call us about this are not angry yet. They are unsure. The invoice comes, a PDF comes, and nothing in the business feels different. The search engine is not sending more potential customers, and the revenue line has not moved. This is one of the most common website problems we diagnose. Some of our best long-term clients first came to us for SEO repair and rankings recovery after an SEO agency that was billing but not building.
You do not need to be technical to find out whether SEO work is real. You need Google Search Console, your own website and about 30 minutes. If you would rather have us look, start with a free website analysis. We will tell you what has been done to the site, what has not, and whether the agency, the site or the budget is the problem.
CONFIRM THE PROBLEM
How do I know if my SEO company is doing anything?
Start with the question that settles most of this. Does your SEO company have Google Search Console set up on your website, and can you log in to it yourself?
Beth teaches that you cannot do SEO right without Search Console. It is not Google Analytics. Analytics shows what visitors did after they arrived. Search Console shows what people typed into the search engine, how often your site appeared, where it appeared and whether anyone clicked. Her advice to students is blunt: if your SEO agency has not set it up, you need a new SEO agency.
Once you are in, open the Performance report, set it to the last 3 months and sort the queries by impressions. Look at the position column next to the terms that describe what you sell. Position 1 to 10 is page 1. Position 44 is page 4. A position in the 50s or 60s means you are invisible on that term. Thousands of impressions with zero clicks means Google is showing you, but nobody sees you because you are not on page 1.
Are you appearing but getting few clicks? There are 2 reasons for it. Either you sit on page 2 or lower, where almost no user looks, or you are on page 1 with a title that gives a potential customer no reason to click. The first is a strategy problem. The second is a 20-minute fix.
Then compare the 3 months before you hired the agency to the latest 3 months. Clicks, not impressions, are the metric that matters, because clicks are organic traffic and organic traffic is where leads come from. Flat clicks and no movement on your money terms mean the work is either not happening or not working.
READ THE REPORT
What should a monthly SEO report actually show?
The most common report we are handed is a chart of impressions going up and to the right. Impressions count every time a search engine displayed your site anywhere, including page 7. They rise when an agency adds pages about anything at all. They do not pay your rent.
Here is what your report should put in front of you every month. These are the metrics that tie an SEO campaign to a business goal.
- Clicks from Google, month over month. One line you can read in 5 seconds. This is your organic traffic.
- Position on the terms buyers use. Not 200 keywords. The 10 to 20 terms that describe what you sell and where, with the page that ranks for each. That is keyword performance you can act on.
- Phone calls and form fills. If the report never mentions leads, nobody is measuring them. For most service businesses, calls and forms are the only conversions there are to count, and they are the only line that connects SEO to revenue.
- What changed on the site. Pages written, title tags changed, links added, technical issues fixed. Work you can click on.
- Backlinks earned, with the source. A short list of where new links came from and how. If the agency will not name the source, ask whether they were bought.
- Local SEO numbers. If you serve a city, your Google Business Profile calls and map pack position belong next to the search clicks.
- What comes next and why. A strategy tied to the terms you are not winning yet and the growth you asked for.
Watch out for ranking lists full of terms nobody searches. Beth teaches that a term with zero searches is not worth your time. It is the tree falling in the woods. You rank number 1, but nobody types it, so nobody finds you. A report full of those wins is built to look good, not to make the phone ring.
Are people visiting but not contacting you? If you have real traffic and still no calls, rankings may not be the problem at all. The issue is usually on the page: no phone number above the fold, a long form, or a service page that never says what you do or where. That is a conversion and user experience problem, and an agency that only reports rankings will never see it. Read our page on website traffic but no leads before you blame the SEO.
CHECK THE SITE
What does real SEO work look like on my website?
SEO agencies that bill without doing structural work leave a fingerprint. The site looks the same as the day it launched. Beth can usually tell within seconds of opening a page, and you can learn the same checks. Open your home page and your top service page and look at 6 things.
- Title tags. Hover over the browser tab. It should name what you do and, where true, where you do it. We regularly find titles that say only the business name, a slogan or Home. If that is still true after a year of paid SEO, nobody has touched the page.
- Navigation. Your menu should say what you sell. Home, Services, About, Contact tells Google nothing. If you are an HVAC company and HVAC repair does not appear in your menu, your headings or your title, the site has not been optimized one iota, to borrow Beth’s phrase.
- Heading tags. The H1 and H2 on a service page should hold the service and the city, not decorative phrases. When the only mention of your main service sits in small print at the bottom, nobody has done the work.
- Related links. Real SEO ties related pages together with plain-text links so Google and the AI engines know which pages support each other.
- New or rewritten content. Check the dates on posts and the text on service pages. If nothing has changed in 6 months, the fee is buying reports, not work.
- Technical issues. Load your service page on a mobile phone. Slow speed, oversized images, a layout that hides the phone number and pages that return errors are technical SEO problems. A real agency fixes them in the first 90 days, because every search engine measures them and every user feels them.
Our free SEO audit tool checks titles, headings, descriptions and broken links across the whole site in minutes, so you see the pattern instead of guessing from 2 pages.
Check it yourself
Check your SEO company in 30 minutes
THE PATTERNS
What are the warning signs of an SEO company that is not delivering?
After almost 3 decades of taking over accounts from other SEO agencies, we see the same patterns repeat. None prove the agency is dishonest. All are signs you should look closer.
- The pitch is authority and backlinks. Beth has lost accounts over this. A client once told her the agency was not building their authority, and what they meant was go buy backlinks. She would not push a new business into bought links, because when that site gets banned she does not want to be responsible. Her warning: you walk into another shop, say my SEO company is not building links, and that shop happily sells you link packages. Nobody mentions what happens when Google catches up.
- Offshore work sold as local. A local name on the contract, with the work done by whoever costs the least overseas. When students ask about hiring SEO or design from freelance marketplaces, Beth’s answer is 100% no. You have no contract with the person who actually touched your site.
- A 12-month contract you cannot leave. Beth’s position is that people should stay with you because they want to, not because a contract makes them. Long lock-in is a sign the agency expects you to want out.
- No Search Console, no access, no logins. You should hold the keys to your domain, hosting, website, Search Console, Analytics and Google Business Profile. If you cannot name where all of those live, fix that first.
- Guarantees. Nobody can promise a number 1 ranking. Google is not in business to make you number 1. It has a program for that, and it is called paid ads.
- No strategy you can read. Ask what the SEO strategy is for the next 90 days. If the answer is more blog posts and more backlinks, with no mention of your service pages, your customers or your business goals, the campaign is running on autopilot.
If the agency that built your site is also doing your SEO, read web designer does not know SEO. In our experience very few designers know SEO, even when they say they do. Design is the creative side and SEO is math.
THE HONEST CAVEAT
When is the problem the website or the budget, not the SEO company?
Sometimes the agency is doing honest work and the results still do not come. Before you fire anyone, rule out these 4 things.
The site itself. SEO cannot overcome a site that is slow on mobile, built on a platform that limits what can be changed, or structured so every service shares one page. Visitors leave, the search engine notices, and no SEO strategy fixes a user experience problem. Beth puts it plainly: without a good, solid website you are never going to get there, no matter who you hire. If the site was recently rebuilt and the drop lines up with launch, your SEO company may be fighting a broken flip. If you already switched companies once and the numbers fell afterward, read rankings dropped after switching SEO companies before you switch again. See new website not ranking for that case.
The budget. A fee that covers a few hours of work a month buys a few hours of work. Beth teaches that in a competitive market SEO is a coefficient of execution. The business that does more of the right work, for longer, wins. If your budget only allows a report and a tweak, you get a report and a tweak. That is not a scam. It is math.
The time. Beth tells students to expect roughly 6 months before new SEO work starts to flow, and longer on a brand new domain. At 60 days you are judging too early. At 18 months with flat clicks, you are not.
Your own phones. This one surprises people. Beth has had clients insist the marketing was not working, and the phone records showed people calling and nobody answering. She has told owners the problem was an abrasive receptionist, not the website. Before you blame the SEO, mystery shop your own business. Call at lunch. Fill out your own form and time the reply.
What should you fix first? In this order: access, structure, then growth. Get your own logins to the domain, hosting, Search Console, Analytics and Google Business Profile. Then fix the structure, because titles, headings, navigation and internal links are what every search engine reads first, and no backlink strategy or content campaign can rescue a page that never says what it sells. Only then spend on new pages and links. Agencies that skip the second step and sell the third produce reports that look fine while the leads stay flat.
If you are not sure what a fair scope looks like for your budget, our SEO pricing plans spell out what is included at each level so you can compare line by line.
BEFORE YOU RENEW
What should I ask my SEO company before I renew?
Send these questions in writing a month before renewal. Honest agencies answer them easily.
- Which 10 search terms are we targeting, where did each rank when we started, and where does it rank today?
- Which pages did you write, rewrite or restructure in the last 90 days? Send the URLs.
- Which title tags, headings and internal links did you change, and why?
- How many clicks from Google did we get last month compared to the same month last year?
- How many calls and form fills came from organic search, and how are you tracking them?
- Where do our links come from, and did you pay for any of them?
- Who actually does the work on our account, and where are they located?
- Do we own our domain, hosting, website files, Search Console and Google Business Profile, and can you send the logins today?
When should you stay, and when should you leave? Stay if the agency answers these in writing, the site shows the structural changes, clicks are rising on buyer terms and leads are being counted, even if the growth is slower than you hoped. Leave if any of the 8 answers is missing, if the strategy is backlinks and more backlinks, if you cannot get your own logins, or if clicks and leads are flat after 12 months of honest budget. Do not leave over one bad month. Leave over a pattern.
Beth’s larger point is that you have to learn enough to spot when something is wrong, the way she learned her bookkeeping software before handing the books to an accountant. Throw up your hands and say I do not understand any of this, and some people hear a blank check. Learn the 6 checks on this page and you will never be that customer again. Our free monthly Internet Marketing Clinic teaches exactly this.
WHY VERTICAL WEB
Who should I trust after an SEO company let me down?
Here is the honest case for us, with nothing inflated.
- We teach it. Beth Guide has taught SEO since 2003 for the SBA, the University of Houston SBDC, Lone Star College and HCC. Every check on this page comes from a public class.
- One in-house team since 1998. Strategy, content, structure, links, design and hosting are done by people in our Houston offices. Nobody on your account is a reseller for someone overseas.
- The original 1998 client is still here. We have never needed a contract to keep a client. Businesses stay because the work shows up in the metrics that matter: search clicks, leads and customers.
- We tell you what not to buy. If your current agency is doing honest work and the problem is your site or your budget, we will say so. If what you need is a structure fix and 6 months of patience, we will not sell you link packages.
Start with a free website analysis. We will show you what has been done to your site, what has not, and what we would do first.
Questions
SEO company not delivering results: common questions
Beth tells students to expect roughly 6 months before new SEO work starts to flow, and longer on a brand new domain or a recently rebuilt site. Judging at 60 days is too early. Judging at 18 months with flat clicks is not.
It is not bad, but it is not the goal. Impressions count every time Google displayed your site anywhere, including page 7. Look at clicks and at your position on the terms that describe what you sell. Thousands of impressions with zero clicks means you are being shown but not seen.
Yes, and so should you. Search Console is the only place that shows what people typed into Google, where you appeared and whether they clicked. A company that has not set it up is working blind. A company that will not share access is keeping you blind.
Yes. Bought links can lift a site for a while and get it banned later, and the company that sold them will not be the one living with the penalty. If a company says you need more authority and the plan is link packages, ask what happens when Google catches up.
You can learn enough to do a lot of it, and you should learn enough to judge anyone you hire. Beth has had business owners come to her free classes for years and run their own SEO with what they learned. Even if you hire it out, knowing the basics keeps you from being the customer who writes a blank check.
It happens more often than people expect. A slow site, a locked-down platform, or a site where every service shares one page can stall honest SEO work. A free website analysis separates the two. If the agency is doing real work and the site is holding it back, we will tell you that instead of selling you a switch.
Usually not. If the organic traffic is real and the phone is quiet, the problem is on the page or in your business: no phone number above the fold, a long form, or calls that go unanswered. Fix the conversion path before you change SEO agencies. Rankings bring visitors. The page turns visitors into customers.
Keep reading
Other ways a site gets broken, and how we repair each one
Not sure which one is your problem?
Request the free website analysis and we will tell you what is actually wrong, in plain English, before anyone touches your site.
Galleria 713-703-3030 | Kingwood 281-852-8253 | info@verticalweb.com