--- title: "Audit your SEO agency's work and decide whether to keep, fix, or replace it" description: "Read agency reports for vanity metrics, ask five direct questions, check claims in free Google tools, and leave cleanly if the work fails." canonical: "https://scalewithsearch.com/articles/how-to-audit-seo-agency" date: "2026-03-20" modified: "2026-09-25" --- ## Site navigation - [Scale With Search](https://scalewithsearch.com/) - Real estate - Real estate - [Real estate](https://scalewithsearch.com/for/real-estate) - Work - Start here - [Send your brief](https://scalewithsearch.com/work#send-your-brief) - [Prepare your six-question brief](https://scalewithsearch.com/work#prepare-your-six-question-brief) - Build - [Site build, content library with SEO, signal desk](https://scalewithsearch.com/work) - For your business - Trades and home services - [Auto body and collision shops](https://scalewithsearch.com/for/auto-body-and-collision-shops) - [Foundation and home repair contractors](https://scalewithsearch.com/for/foundation-and-home-repair) - 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Your agency sends a 47-page monthly report. It has domain authority scores, keyword ranking tables, backlink counts, and charts with lines that go up. You approve the invoice. You do not know whether the work was good. Many marketing leaders and owners pay a monthly retainer for SEO work they cannot evaluate. You do not need to become an SEO expert to fix that. You need your own access to the data, a way to read the report, a few direct questions, and a short monthly check. This article gives you all four, plus a clean exit plan if the answer is to leave. ## Set the baseline before you judge An audit needs something to compare against. Collect three things first. 1. The goals the agency agreed to at the start of the engagement. Find the proposal or the statement of work. Write down each KPI and its target date. 2. Your own access to the data. You must have owner access to Google Search Console and admin access to Google Analytics 4. The agency can have its own user accounts, but the properties must belong to your company. 3. The data from the month before the engagement started. Export clicks, impressions, and top pages from Search Console, and organic sessions and conversions from Google Analytics 4. This is your baseline. If the agency owns the Search Console property, the Analytics property, or the domain, correct that first. It is a risk whether or not the agency does good work. The [SEO vendor red flags guide](/articles/seo-vendor-red-flags-executives) lists other ownership problems to check. ## Read the report for red flags ### Vanity metrics that hide weak results Four metrics look like progress but can hide no progress at all. Keyword counts without context. "We now rank for 2,000 keywords" says nothing about where. If most of those positions are 50 to 100, they bring no visitors. Ask for the count in positions 1 to 10, and for the clicks those keywords bring. Domain authority scores. Domain Authority is a Moz metric, and Domain Rating is an Ahrefs metric. Both are third-party estimates. Google has said it does not use them. A rising score does not mean more traffic or revenue. Backlink volume without quality. Fifty new links from directories and link farms can be worse than none. Ask which sites linked, and why a person on that site would read your page. Impressions without clicks. More impressions with flat clicks can mean the site now appears for queries that are irrelevant, or appears low on the page. It can also mean that AI answers and other search features above your result take the clicks. ### Rankings up, business flat Rankings can rise while traffic and revenue stay flat. Three causes explain most cases. Keyword cannibalization means two of your pages compete for one query, and neither ranks well. SERP feature displacement means a map, a video block, or an AI answer sits above your result. Irrelevant targeting means the agency ranked pages for queries that your buyers never search. Each cause needs a different fix, so ask the agency which one applies. ### Activity without reasons An activity report tells you what happened: "Published 8 articles, built 12 links, fixed 40 errors." A strategic report tells you why each action matters and what result it should produce. If the report never connects work to an outcome you care about, the agency is reporting effort, not results. The [stakeholder reporting guide](/articles/seo-reporting-for-stakeholders) shows what a results report contains. ## Ask five questions on the monthly call Ask these questions every month. The answers matter less than the way the agency answers. 1. "What did not work this month, and what are you changing?" An honest agency has an answer every month. No SEO program works perfectly. An agency that never reports a failure is not looking, or not telling. 2. "How does this deliverable connect to our revenue goals?" Pick one line item from the invoice and ask. A good answer names the page, the query, the expected traffic, and the conversion path. 3. "What would you do differently if this were your business?" This question exposes the gap between what the agency sells and what an owner would do with the same money. 4. "Which pages did you change this month, and what changed on each one?" You can check every answer in the page history or in your CMS. 5. "What result, by what date, would show that this strategy is wrong?" A strategy with no failure condition cannot be judged. ## Check the claims yourself You can verify most agency claims with free tools and 30 minutes each month. ### Use free Google tools | Claim in the report | Where to check it | |---|---| | "Pages are faster" | Run the named pages in PageSpeed Insights. Compare the field data with last month. | | "We fixed indexing" | Open `Indexing`, then `Pages` in Google Search Console. Compare the count of indexed pages with your baseline. | | "Rankings improved" | Open `Performance` in Google Search Console. Filter to the named queries and compare clicks and average position with your baseline. | | "We built quality links" | Open the `Links` report in Google Search Console, or use Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, which is free for verified site owners. | An incognito search is a weak check for rankings. Google still changes results by location and device. Search Console data is the better source, because it reflects what real searchers saw. ### Ask for evidence with dates Ask the agency to keep four kinds of evidence and to send it on request: - Crawl reports from before and after each technical fix. - Archived speed tests with the date and the tested URL. - Search Console screenshots or exports with the date range visible. - The backlink audit that led to each disavow file or outreach list. A competent agency keeps these records already. If it cannot produce them, you cannot verify the work. ### Run a 30-minute monthly check 1. Export last month's clicks and conversions from Search Console and Google Analytics 4. 2. Compare them with the same month last year, to remove seasonal effects. 3. Pick three claims from the agency report and check each one in the table above. 4. Read the page history for two pages the agency says it changed. 5. Write one line: better, flat, or worse, with the evidence. Keep these lines in one file. After six months, the file tells you more than any single report. Here is an example of the check in use. The report says "ranking keywords up 40 percent." Search Console shows flat clicks. The new queries are all at positions 40 to 90, and most are variants of one term. The claim is true, and it describes no business result. That is the point to raise on the next call. ## Decide whether to keep, fix, or fire ### Tell slow results from bad work SEO results take months. Slow results are not the same as bad work, and the difference is visible. | Slow results | Bad work | |---|---| | Leading indicators move: pages indexed, positions rise from page 3 to page 2 | The same numbers appear month after month | | The agency names what did not work and what it will change | Every problem has an outside cause: Google, the market, your team | | Work connects to the agreed goals | Work drifts to whatever is easy to report | | Evidence is available on request | Evidence is late, partial, or missing | If you see forward motion and honest reports, give the agency time. If you see circles and deflection, prepare to leave. If the agency executes well but lacks strategy, you can also keep it and add an in-house SEO lead who sets direction. The [guide to managing multiple SEO vendors](/articles/managing-multiple-seo-vendors) covers that setup. ### Take your deliverables before you announce the exit Collect everything before you tell the agency. List it and confirm that you hold a copy of each item: - All content the agency wrote, in editable form. - Technical documentation: audits, redirect maps, schema templates, and the list of changes made. - The full history of reports. - Access to every tool account paid for on your behalf, or an export of its data. - The contacts and relationships behind any link building or PR work. Then remove agency users from Search Console, Google Analytics 4, your CMS, and your hosting accounts on the exit date. Change any shared passwords. ### Avoid a gap when you switch A gap between agencies costs more than an overlap. Hire the replacement before you end the current contract. Write down the current priorities and open tasks so the new agency does not start from zero. Keep your monthly check running during the transition, so you see any drop at once. For the next contract, write the ownership rules in the agreement. Your company owns the domain, the Search Console property, the Analytics property, the content files, and the strategy documents. Add a clause that requires a knowledge transfer at the end of the engagement. 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