How to Tell Whether Your SEO Is Actually Working

The reporting trap

Plenty of SEO reports are technically true and practically useless. Impressions up, keywords ranking, traffic climbing — and the phone no busier than last year.

That happens when the work targeted searches that no buying customer makes. So the first thing to fix is not the SEO. It is what you agree to measure.

Automate Omaha is based in Bellevue, Nebraska and works with businesses throughout the Omaha metro, so most of what follows comes from looking at real local listings, sites and lead trails rather than national averages.

The three questions that matter

• Are more of the right people finding you? Not total traffic — traffic on searches that describe what you sell, in the area you serve.
• Are more of them contacting you? Calls, forms and direction requests attributable to search.
• Is that turning into work? Booked jobs and revenue traced back to the channel.

What to check yourself, once a month

1. 1In Google Search Console, compare the last 90 days with the previous 90. Look at clicks and average position for searches that describe your services, not your brand name.
2. 2Check which pages earn those clicks. Service pages should be climbing, not just the home page.
3. 3In your analytics, compare form submissions and phone-link taps from organic search over the same two periods.
4. 4In your Google Business Profile, look at calls, direction requests and website clicks, and at how many searches found you by category rather than by name.
5. 5Count actual booked jobs you can trace to search, even if it means simply asking every caller how they found you.

What to trust and what to discount

How long before you judge it

Give the work 90 days before drawing conclusions, and a year before deciding whether the investment was right. Search moves slowly and seasonally, and month-to-month comparisons for a local business are mostly noise.

The exception is a drop. A sharp fall in clicks or a page disappearing from Search Console is worth investigating the week you notice it.

When to get help

Get help if you cannot see which channel produced a lead, if your analytics has never been checked against reality, or if the reports you receive never mention calls, forms or jobs. Measurement that only reports traffic cannot tell you whether to keep spending.