How to check whether your SEO agency is doing anything
You do not need to understand search to audit the people you are paying for it. Four checks, ten minutes, no tools to buy.
The most common complaint from Australian business owners about search agencies is not that the work was bad. It is that they had no way of knowing whether there was any work at all.
Monthly reports make this worse, because impressions and reach are not work. They are weather. Here is how to check the thing itself.
Check one: view the source
Open your own site, press Control and U together, then Control and F, and search for the word type with an at sign in front of it.
That is structured data. It is what tells Google and AI assistants what your business is, what you sell and where you work. If there are zero results, nobody has added it.
Now do the same on the agency's own website. If they sell search and their own site has none, you have learned something that no sales call will tell you.
Check two: ask what changed
Send one email. What specifically changed on my website last month?
A real answer names things: pages rewritten, titles changed, schema added, images compressed, a redirect fixed. A non answer talks about impressions, reach, momentum and building authority.
Keep the replies. Three months of non answers is the whole audit.
Check three: search for yourself the honest way
Open a private browsing window so your own history does not flatter the result, and search the thing a customer would actually type. Not your business name. Your business name is not a test, because you already rank for it.
Type the service and the suburb. Then look at whether you are in the map results, in the ordinary results, or nowhere. Those are three different problems with three different fixes, and knowing which one you have is most of the diagnosis.
Check four: check who owns it
Look up your domain in a public whois lookup and see whose name is on it. Then log in to your hosting account, if you can.
If you cannot answer who owns the domain and who holds the hosting login, stop worrying about rankings. That is the more urgent problem, and it is the one that turns a bad relationship into an expensive one.
Quick answers
How can I tell if my SEO agency is actually working?
Ask what specifically changed on the site last month. Real work names pages, titles, structured data, redirects and page speed fixes. Reports about impressions and reach describe conditions, not work.
What is the fastest check I can do myself?
Open your site, press Control U to view the source, then Control F and search for the at sign followed by type. That finds structured data. Zero results means nobody has added any.
Should I search my own business name to test my ranking?
No. You already rank for your own name, so it tells you nothing. Search the service and the suburb a customer would type, in a private window so your history does not distort it.
What if my agency owns my domain?
Deal with that before anything else. Documented cases exist of agencies refusing to transfer domains, charging for the release, or claiming the site files as their own property. Ownership is the thing that makes every other conversation negotiable.
Is it normal for an agency to lock me into a long contract?
Common, but not necessary. The complaints that end with lawyers involved are overwhelmingly eighteen and twenty four month terms with automatic renewal and ninety day cancellation notice.
Want this checked on your own site?
The scan is free and it runs on the same crawler I use for client work. It gives you the list, not a sales call.