How to Tell If Your SEO Is Working (Without Needing a Report)

Most SEO reports are designed to confuse you. Traffic is up. Bounce rate is down. Average position has shifted by 0.6. Great, but are the right people actually finding your business?

Are they picking up the phone? Are they interacting with the contact page? Are they buying?

If you don't know the answer to those questions, your SEO probably isn't working for you...

...or at least, it's not being done with your goals in mind. The good news is you don't need to rely on reports to know what's happening. You can tell with a bit of common sense and a few simple checks. Start With Enquiries, For now forget graphs, forget impressions, forget rankings. Start with the one thing that matters - are you getting a higher quantity of better quality enquiries than you did before you employed your current SEO agency or strategy?

If you were getting five calls a week before, and now you're getting ten but they're all time wasters, or they're asking for services you don't offer that's not progress. That's noise. SEO should focus on your target. To show an example: We offered a particular service that sat within commercial interiors and commercial fit outs. We weren't joiners or builders or designers. Our niche in this sector was so specific that before we employed an SEO agency we naturally gained good positions on search results and the enquiries we received knew exactly what we did before they enquired. That's pre qualified enquiries to a certain degree. We were ranking by just talking about what we did. We just didn't know that was all we had to do. We thought SEO needed to be done by someone who'd done a course in internet voodoo.

Once the SEO agencies got hold of our website they promised keyword research and they promised targetted SEO. We asked for more of what we were getting. What they actually delivered was generic traffic, none of it was focussed, none of it was pre qualified. We were getting enquiries just through volume, but they had actually reduced our visibility for the clients we wanted and we were spending so much time wading through enquiries that we couldn't service that we started to lose sales. People were getting in touch for services we had never offered and didnt want to offer. I remember speaking with our "SEO manager" and saying the enquiries we were getting were akin to someone walking into an itallian restaurant asking for thai food. No matter how much we might want to sell to them we couldn't. They promised to fix this but all that happened was that we received fewer enquiries overall. The damage was done and we didnt realise how serious it was at this point.

Effective SEO brings in real leads. Not more browsers. Better buyers. Potential customers who already know what you do and are genuinely interested in what you offer. It shouldn't bring in enquiries from people who need to ask if you can provide a service you don't offer.

Ask Yourself These Questions

You don't need tools or tech to run this check. Just answer yourself honestly:

- Are the people contacting you a good fit for what you offer?

- Are they mentioning specific services or products you've written about?

- Are they finding you through Google, Bing, AI search or just social media and referrals?

- Has the quality AND quantity of your enquiries improved over the last three months?

If the answer is no to most of these, then something isn't right - even if the reports say otherwise.

Look at both the pages and the terms that are getting traffic.

If your website is receiving hundreds of visits from a broad serch term like commercial interiors, but your company offers a specific service within that sector such as commercial and industrial electrical installation then your spending time and money on ranking for too broad a term. People will visit, a small percentage will want what you're offering but the vast majority will click and leave immediately or if the page they're landing on is a contact form, you may be receiving enquires for a service you don't offer.

If your blog post about "office lighting ideas" is bringing in hundreds of visits but your service page for commercial electrical installations gets none, that tells you something. It tells you that you aren't conveying to your potential client what you actually do and that traffic is wasted. It's most likely you're providing information to someone who is spending money somewhere else or they're contacting you and wasting your time and theirs.

It's important to offer informational blog posts. Google and other search tools want to provide results for their users. You can still write those blog posts discussing other areas of a broader industry, but you should always make sure that it doesnt come at the expense of generating enquiries for your business. The example above for "office lighting ideas" could be a valid choice of topic for a commercial electrical contractor if you use internal linking and a clear call to action within, by doing so you might pick up the small number of potential clients who read it.

Crucially though and all too often overlooked is the fact that informational blog posts about the wider market you're in should run alongside your laser focussed blog posts which show experience in the field you service. Potential clients want to know about your installation for a restaurant chain, with details of the brief and how you provided the service. they want to see images taken on site throughout the project and they want to hear from the project manager/client that they were satisfied with the result. If you're in a service industry and your SEO agency isnt providing this type of content then you're missing out on real, qualified enquiries.

Your SEO agency works in a similar way to your business. They want to provide content quickly with the least amount of man hours possible. In this day and age it's easy for an SEO agency to write generic, flat blog posts and website content with AI. You see new content and you maybe even see an increase in numbers visiting but it isn't going to bring the results you want and need. AI is astounding in many ways, but it can and will hurt your rankings and visibility if it's not used correctly. I'm going to produce a short video about how to effectively utilise AI for your content and importantly what not to use it for.

Use Google Search Console (it's free)

to see which pages are showing up in search and which ones people are clicking on. Are they the right pages? The ones you actually want people to land on? If not, the traffic is being wasted.

Search console is also a good tool for understanding which keywords to push.

Below is a screenshot from google search console. It shows the activity of a specific keyword on a website selling planters. The keyword is "Faux Lead Planters". Its focussed and targetted and those using is are likely to be looking to buy a Faux Lead Planter. the may be at the top of the funnel or looking to buy immediately. The point is it's specific. The visits from this keyword are worth more than the same number from a more generic term such as "Planters". The keyword "Planters" has around 160 x the search volume of "Faux Lead Planters" but is 10 x harder to rank for and what is the intent behind a search for "Planters"? How many of those searches want Faux Lead Planters?

The screenshot shows this site isn't ranking top 3 for this keyword. If they were they'd be getting around 20% CTR (click through rate) and in position 1 maybe closer to 30% CTR. It's a good example of a specific keyword they can focus on to gain more high converting traffic. Rank top 3 for 30 similar keywords and business is good.

To focus on this keyword for an ecommerce store you would have a dedicated page to faux lead planters with that term in the URL. The product page text would use this term naturally to talk about the product range, and you would use variations of this keyword (Faux Lead Trough Planter for example). Alt tags for product images would use this term naturally. Blog posts talking about the benefits of Faux Lead Planters vs Lead planters that utilise internal links to and from the product page. We recently achieved a 10 x increase in traffic to this e-commerce store using the simple strategy above.

You can go further with search console and even look at dates, pages, and devices that people used to visit. Below shows the split of traffic per device. This information helps you to understand how to best optomise your content. It doesnt matter if its an e-commerce store or a website generating leads for a B2B company. Knowing how your Potential customers find you is valuable information.

Visits shown by device for the keyword Faux Lead Planter

Look at the Search Terms.

Search Console also shows you what people are actually typing when they find your site. It's usually hidden in most agency reports, but it's where all the insight is.

You might think you're ranking for "joinery services Manchester", but if most of your clicks are from "cheap flat pack furniture", you're attracting the wrong audience entirely. Thats an extreme example but it happens. I recently provided an SEO audit for an architectural practice. They provided services to the hospitality industry. They had delivered some incredible projects. Their website was getting around 900 organic visits per month and they were not using paid ads. They couldnt understand why they were not getting more enquiries. They needed more potential clients to enquire as they had come to the end of a period where they worked for two clients almost constantly.

900 visits a month is good for a business with 4 employees who only need 10 solid enquiries a month. When I looked at their site I was surprised to see they were ranking exclusively for the clients properties they had worked for. Every keyword on their site was the name of a restaurant or hotel. Almost every visitor was looking to book a table or a room, they weren't looking for an architect.

They had one or two paragraphs about their expertise and services and all other content related to their clients properties. The Alt tags on their images had terms like "Willow Trentham". It should have been "Restaurant Interior Design Willow Trentham". The second longer keyword has much less search volume but the intent is focused.

We looked at their comopetition. They were getting, in many cases, around 150-200 organic visits per month but it was highly targeted traffic. Looking at the keywords of their competitors they all ranked for terms like "Restaurant Interior Design Manchester" or "Coffee Shop Interior Design". These keywords were low volume (see the screenshots below) but they're targeted. If you need 10 enquiries per month to run a profitable and successful business then you don't need more traffic, you need more focus.

They decided a new website would be the shortest route to new enquiries. This isn't necessary in 99% on situations, but the website was so dated and focussed on the wrong intent that all agreed this needed to be done. A month after website re launch and they were getting enquiries from the clients they needed, not enough but there's room to grow in the right direction now.

Are You Ranking for the Right Things?

Ranking for something is not the same as ranking for something useful.

Being top of Google for "shopfitting ideas blog" means nothing if you're a contractor looking for

commercial clients. The real test is whether you're showing up when someone types in the thing you actually want to sell, in the location you actually work in. Thats the easiest test you can do yourself. Our client, an outstanding solar panel installer in lancashire that covered the whole of the UK came to us to audit their site. They had an SEO agency in place but they were losing website traffic monthly. Their enquiries were dropping and they were relying heavily on paid search to keep the work coming in.

The audit was shocking. One of their top performing keywords was "Solar System Facts". Google that yourself and see if you can find a reputable solar panel installation company. The site and blog was full of poorly written content, mainly produced by the free version of ChatGPT. They were almost invisible organically. After the audit we were appointed to manage their SEO, a service we also offer beyond strategy. We took over in November of 2024. We've re written the content within the website and blog and they now rank for incredibly high value and high intent keywords such as "Solar Panel Installers Near Me". I say it all the time, SEO isn't Magic, It's just strategy. We didn't reinvent the wheel to get them to rank. I'm not a genius. We just researched the keywords that people were using to find reliable, trustworthy solar panel installers and used that as the basis of our content plan. Their organic traffic is actually 10% lower than in November, but their contact form enquiries and calls are up 30%. As are their sales. This is what SEO is. Optimisation not generalisation.

Are You Getting Found Locally?

If you're a service business, check your presence on Google Maps and in local results.

Are you listed? Are you showing up in nearby towns? Have your reviews increased? Do people mention finding you through search? These are real indicators that your local SEO is paying off. Local SEO differs from general SEO. Social proof, trust, and reviews are absolutely key to your number of enquiries and conversion of enquiries. We can provide detailed insights into your local visibility and trust, but Google and Bing searches are the easiest way to check for yourself if you can be found by local customers.

Tip: if you use an AI platform, Chatgpt for example. Ask ChatGPT to provide 5 reputable companies in your field in your area. If you're not one of them you need to optomise. If you are but the information is incorrect, you need to optomise. GEO (Generative Engine Optomisation) is happening now. It will only gain momentum. If you're not showing up when AI searches for their user you need to make some changes quickly.

SEO isn't a mystery.

If it's working, you'll seel it.

More leads. Better quality leads. The right kind of people finding you without being pushed.

If you have to ask for a report just to know whether it's working, it probably isn't.

SEO ORGANIC

How to Tell If Your SEO Is Working (Without Needing a Report)