You have been paying your SEO agency for six months. Maybe twelve. You get a monthly report with charts and numbers. They use words like "authority" and "domain rating" and "keyword cannibalisation." They assure you that SEO takes time.
And yet, you have a nagging question: is anything actually happening?
You are not alone. It is one of the most common concerns ecommerce brand owners raise when they come to us. They have been paying for SEO, sometimes for years, and they cannot tell whether the work is competent, comprehensive, or — in too many cases — real.
This guide gives you a practical framework for answering that question yourself. Not by taking your agency's word for it, but by checking the evidence. Every legitimate SEO activity leaves a trail, and if you know where to look, you can verify whether the work is happening and whether it is any good.
The SEO accountability problem
SEO has an accountability problem that no other marketing channel shares. When you run paid ads, you can see the spend, the impressions, the clicks, and the revenue in real time. When you send an email campaign, you can see opens, clicks, and conversions within hours. But SEO? The results take months to materialise, the work happens behind the scenes, and the technical complexity makes it difficult for non-specialists to evaluate.
This opacity creates a trust gap that some agencies exploit — consciously or unconsciously. They lock clients into 12-month contracts, send automated reports, and rely on the client's inability to verify the work. The worst offenders do almost nothing and blame the slow results on "algorithm updates" or "competitive markets."
The good news is that you do not need to be an SEO expert to hold your agency accountable. You just need to know where to look and what questions to ask. As we outline in our companion guide on what your SEO agency should be doing every month, the deliverables are specific and verifiable.
Step 1: Check your own data
The first step is the simplest: look at your own data. You do not need any special tools for this — just Google Search Console and Google Analytics, both of which are free.
Google Search Console
Log into Google Search Console (if you do not have access, that is your first red flag — you should always have admin access to your own GSC). Go to Search Results and look at three metrics over the past 6–12 months.
Total clicks from organic search. This should be trending upward if your SEO agency is effective. Look at month-over-month trends and year-over-year comparisons (seasonality affects most ecommerce brands). A flat or declining trend after 6+ months of SEO work demands an explanation.
Total impressions. Impressions indicate how often your pages appear in search results. Even if clicks are not growing yet, impressions should be increasing as your pages rank for more keywords and move higher in results. If impressions are flat, your pages are not gaining visibility.
Average position. This shows the average ranking position across all your keywords. Treat this with caution — it can be misleading because new keywords you start ranking for (often at lower positions) can pull the average down even as your core keywords improve. Look at position trends for specific pages rather than the site-wide average.
Google Analytics
In Google Analytics, check the organic search channel specifically. Look at sessions, users, and — most importantly — revenue from organic search. For ecommerce brands, organic revenue is the ultimate measure of SEO effectiveness. Rankings and traffic are means to an end; the end is revenue.
Compare organic revenue as a percentage of total revenue. If SEO is working, this percentage should be growing over time. For a healthy ecommerce brand, organic search should drive 30–50% of total revenue. If you are below 20%, there is significant room for SEO improvement.
Step 2: Verify technical changes
Technical SEO work leaves visible evidence on your site. If your agency claims to be doing technical SEO, you can verify it.
Check for on-page changes
Ask your agency which pages they have optimised in the past three months. Then visit those pages and check the following.
Title tags. Right-click on the page, select "View Page Source," and look for the <title> tag. Has it been changed to include target keywords? Is it well-written and under 60 characters? Compare it to what it was before (you can check historical versions using the Wayback Machine).
Meta descriptions. In the page source, look for the <meta name="description"> tag. Has it been updated? Is it compelling and keyword-rich? Does it match what appears in Google's search results for that page?
Heading structure. Look at the headings on the page. Is there a clear H1 that includes the target keyword? Are H2s and H3s used logically to structure the content? A properly optimised page has a clear heading hierarchy.
Internal links. Are there relevant internal links within the content, pointing to other important pages on your site? Good SEO involves strategic internal linking. If the content has no internal links, it has not been properly optimised.
Schema markup. View the page source and search for "application/ld+json." If your agency has implemented structured data, you will find JSON-LD blocks with Product schema, BreadcrumbList, FAQ, or other relevant types. Test it using Google's Rich Results Test tool to verify it is valid.
Check site speed
If your agency claims to have improved site speed, verify it. Run your homepage, a collection page, and a product page through Google PageSpeed Insights. Note the scores and compare them to your agency's claims. If they said they improved mobile performance, the mobile score should be higher than it was when they started.
Step 3: Audit their link building
Link building is the area most commonly exaggerated or fabricated by underperforming SEO agencies. It is also the easiest to verify if you know how.
Request a complete link report
Ask your agency for a list of every link they have built for you, including the URL where the link appears (not just the domain), the anchor text used, the date the link was placed, and the target page on your site.
A good agency will have this information readily available. If they are evasive, cannot provide specific URLs, or give you vague answers like "we built links to various industry sites," that is a serious red flag.
Verify each link manually
Visit a random sample of the URLs they provide. Check that the link actually exists on the page, that it points to your site, that the page it is on is a real, relevant website (not a spam blog or PBN site), and that the content surrounding the link is genuine and relevant to your business.
Check for signs of low-quality link building: the page is on a site with no real content, the article is clearly written for the sole purpose of placing a link, the site is a known link farm (full of sponsored posts with no real audience), or the link is buried in a comment or footer rather than within genuine editorial content.
Cross-reference with your backlink profile
Check Google Search Console under Links > External Links. This shows the domains linking to your site as reported by Google. Cross-reference this with your agency's link report. If they claim to have built 30 links but you only see 5 new referring domains in GSC, there is a discrepancy that needs explaining.
Step 4: Evaluate content quality
If your agency is creating content for you, evaluating its quality is straightforward.
Is the content actually on your site?
This sounds obvious, but we have encountered situations where agencies reported content as "published" when it was still in draft. Check that the content they claim to have created actually exists on your live site and is indexed by Google (search for the exact title in Google with your domain — site:yourdomain.com "article title").
Is the content any good?
Read the content critically. Does it provide genuine value to your target audience? Is it well-written and free of errors? Does it target a specific keyword with clear search intent? Is it comprehensive enough to compete with the top-ranking content for that keyword? Does it include internal links to your products and category pages? Is it formatted well, with headings, images, and structure?
Compare your content to the pages currently ranking on page one for the target keyword. If your content is thinner, less detailed, and less helpful, it will not rank regardless of how many links are built to it.
Is the content driving traffic?
In Google Search Console, filter to the specific page URL and check impressions, clicks, and average position. Content created more than three months ago should be showing some search visibility. If it has zero impressions, the content is either not indexed, not targeting a real keyword, or is too low quality to rank.
Step 5: Assess their reporting
The monthly report is where everything comes together. A good report tells you what was done, what impact it had, and what comes next. A bad report obscures more than it reveals.
Signs of good reporting
- Specificity: "We optimised the title tag on /collections/womens-boots from 'Women's Boots' to 'Women's Leather Boots UK | Free Delivery | Brand Name'" is specific. "We optimised several pages" is not.
- Context: "Organic traffic declined 8% month-over-month, but this is consistent with seasonal patterns — the same month last year also showed a decline" is contextual. A graph with a downward line and no explanation is not.
- Actionability: "We recommend expanding the buying guides section to target 12 additional long-tail keywords with a combined monthly search volume of 4,800" is actionable. "We will continue optimising the site" is not.
- Honesty: A good agency tells you when things are not working and what they plan to do about it. An agency that only reports good news is not being honest.
Signs of bad reporting
- Automated dashboards with no human analysis
- Vanity metrics (domain authority changes, keyword count increases) without business metrics (traffic, revenue)
- No work log showing what was actually done
- Reports that arrive late or not at all
- Reports that look identical month after month, just with updated numbers
As we detail in our guide on what SEO agencies should do monthly, reporting is not optional or supplementary — it is a core deliverable. If the reporting is poor, the work probably is too.
The definitive list of red flags
After 20 years in ecommerce and SEO, here are the warning signs that your agency is not delivering.
- They guarantee rankings. No one can guarantee a specific ranking position. Google's algorithm considers hundreds of factors, and no agency controls them all. Guarantees are a sign of either dishonesty or incompetence.
- They will not share access to tools and data. If your agency will not give you access to your own Google Search Console, Google Analytics, or the SEO tools they use on your behalf, they are hiding something.
- They cannot explain what they did this month. Ask them to walk you through last month's work in a 15-minute call. If they cannot do it without referring to a report, the work may not have happened.
- Their links come from suspicious sites. If the links in their report are from sites with names like "best-seo-directory-2026.com" or pages with 50 outbound links and no real content, they are building spam links that could harm your site.
- Nothing on your site has changed. If you can look at your site today and it is identical to how it was six months ago — same title tags, same content, same page structure — your agency is not doing on-page SEO.
- They blame everything on algorithm updates. Algorithm updates do affect rankings, but a competent agency adapts to them rather than using them as an excuse for poor performance.
- They focus on metrics you do not understand. Legitimate SEO metrics (traffic, rankings, revenue) are straightforward. If your agency leans heavily on obscure proprietary metrics or technical jargon to explain performance, they may be deflecting.
- They locked you into a 12-month contract with no out clause. Confidence in their own work means offering flexible terms. Long, rigid contracts suggest they expect you to want to leave before the term is up.
- You have to chase them for updates. A good agency communicates proactively. If you are always the one initiating contact, they are not managing the relationship properly.
- They never recommend changes to other channels. SEO does not exist in isolation. A good SEO agency should occasionally make recommendations about your site design, email marketing, content strategy, or user experience because these all impact SEO performance.
What a good SEO agency actually looks like
To be fair, let us also describe what a well-functioning SEO relationship looks like, so you have a benchmark.
A good SEO agency provides regular, proactive communication — not just monthly reports but ongoing updates about significant findings, opportunities, or issues. They explain their strategy in plain language and can articulate why they are doing specific things and what outcome they expect.
Their reports are detailed and honest. When things go well, they explain why. When things do not go well, they explain why and what they plan to do differently. They show their work — specific pages optimised, specific links built, specific content created — and welcome scrutiny.
They understand your business. They know your best-selling products, your seasonal patterns, your competitive landscape, and your commercial goals. They do not treat SEO as an isolated technical exercise — they treat it as a revenue channel that needs to integrate with your broader business strategy.
And critically, they produce results. Within 6–12 months, you should see measurable growth in organic traffic and organic revenue. Not every month will be up — seasonality, algorithm updates, and competitive shifts create natural variation — but the trend should be unmistakably positive.
The best SEO agencies do not need to sell themselves. The data does it for them. If your agency spends more time explaining why results are slow than showing you actual results, something is wrong.
Andrew Simpson, Founder
When to fire your SEO agency
Making the decision to leave an SEO agency is difficult because SEO is a long-term game and you worry about losing the progress you have made. Here is when the decision becomes clear.
Fire immediately if: you discover they are using black-hat tactics (buying links from PBNs, cloaking, keyword stuffing) that could result in a Google penalty. The risk to your business is existential.
Give notice if: after 6 months, there is no measurable progress in traffic or rankings, and the agency cannot provide a credible explanation and revised strategy. Or if the red flags listed above are consistently present despite your raising them.
Have a conversation first if: you see some progress but feel the communication or reporting is inadequate. Good agencies respond to constructive feedback. If they do not, then give notice.
Before you leave
Before you fire your SEO agency, make sure you own everything. Confirm you have admin access to Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and any other tools. Request a complete export of all work done, including link reports, content, and keyword research. Document the current state of your SEO — rankings, traffic, backlinks — so your next agency has a clear baseline.
And before you hire the next one, read our guide on how to choose the right agency. The same due diligence that applies to Shopify agencies applies to SEO agencies: look for transparency, verifiable results, and a clear process.
For brands considering an integrated approach where SEO is part of a broader ecommerce strategy — alongside Shopify development and organic growth — working with a single agency that handles both development and SEO eliminates the common problem of siloed teams working at cross-purposes.
You do not need to be an SEO expert to hold your agency accountable. You need access to your own data, a willingness to ask direct questions, and the knowledge of what to look for. This guide gives you that knowledge. Use it.
If you are not happy with what you find, talk to us. We will audit your current SEO, tell you honestly what state it is in, and explain what we would do differently. No obligation, no hard sell — just a straight conversation about where you stand and what it would take to move forward.
