Short answer: ask for a list of what was actually completed this month, not a rankings chart. Real work leaves visible traces — new pages, profile changes, citations fixed, content published. If nobody can show you those, you are probably paying for reporting rather than work.
This is an uncomfortable question to ask and a fair one. SEO is easy to charge for and hard for a contractor to verify, which is exactly why some agencies get away with doing very little.
The single best question to ask
“What specifically did you complete this month, and where can I see it?”
Real work produces artifacts you can look at with your own eyes: a new service page at a URL, a location page, changes on your Google Business Profile, directory listings corrected, an article published. A good agency answers this immediately and specifically. A bad one talks about momentum, algorithms and building authority.
Things you can verify yourself in ten minutes
- New pages. Ask for the URLs. Open them. Are they genuine, useful pages, or thin filler with a town name swapped in?
- Your Google Business Profile. Open it. Are services listed individually? Are categories set properly? Are there recent photos and posts?
- Your business details. Search your business name and check whether the name, address and phone match across the sites you appear on.
- Search Console. If you have access, look at whether pages are being indexed and whether impressions are rising.
None of this requires SEO expertise. It only requires that someone shows you the work.
Reporting red flags
Rankings-only reports. Positions can be cherry-picked and personalised. A report showing you rank #1 for eleven terms nobody searches is technically true and commercially worthless.
Traffic without leads. Impressions and clicks are not results. What matters is calls and form fills. If the reporting cannot connect to those, it cannot tell you whether the money is working.
No call tracking. Most contractor leads arrive by phone. Without call tracking, the channel producing your best work is invisible in the numbers — and an agency can claim credit for anything.
Reports that never change. If month three looks like month one with different dates, ask what changed.
The first ninety days should look different from month six
Early work is setup and cleanup: profile completion, citation fixes, technical issues, initial content. That period often shows little ranking movement, and that is normal.
What is not normal is being unable to say what was done. Ask at the outset what will be complete by day 30, 60 and 90, and hold the answer. It is the simplest accountability tool you have.
Ownership questions worth asking now
- Is the Google Ads account in my name, and do I have admin access?
- Is my website hosted somewhere I control, and do I have the logins?
- Do I have owner access to my own Google Business Profile, not just manager?
- If I leave, what do I keep?
If the honest answer to that last one is “nothing,” that is a problem regardless of how the rankings look. Agencies that hold your accounts are not necessarily dishonest, but you should know it before it matters rather than after.
What good looks like
A specific list of completed work each month. Reporting that includes calls and leads, not only traffic. Straight answers when something did not work. Willingness to tell you when spending more would not help — which, honestly, is the clearest signal of all.
Related reading
- SEO Agency Cost for Contractors: 2026 Pricing
- How Long Does Contractor SEO Take to Work?
- How to Rank on Google Without Paying for SEO
Not sure whether you’re getting value from your current agency? Send us what you’re paying and what you’re being shown each month. We’ll tell you honestly whether it looks reasonable — including if it does.