Table of Contents
TL;DR: Key takeaways
- Audit quarterly. Check business results, report transparency, technical health, link quality, and content, because those areas show whether your SEO (search engine optimisation) agency earns its retainer.
- Measure in rand. Judge your SEO agency on qualified leads and sales, not rankings alone.
- Own your data. Keep Google Search Console, analytics, and Google Business Profile under your control, and grant agencies read-only access first.
Do you know what your monthly SEO retainer actually buys? Many South African business owners, from Johannesburg to Cape Town to Durban, sign a contract, receive a glossy PDF each month, and hope for the best. Meanwhile, the rands keep leaving the account.
What does it mean to audit your SEO agency?
Auditing your SEO agency means testing, with your own data, whether its work delivers measurable business results at a fair price. A website audit examines your site; this audit examines the people working on it.
How do you know if your SEO agency is delivering results?
Google’s advice on hiring an SEO suggests you ask how the agency measures success and what experience it has in your country or city. Google also reminds you that you remain responsible for what any hired company does to your site. Consequently, an audit protects your brand as well as your budget.
Check whether organic search now brings more qualified enquiries, calls, WhatsApp messages, and sales than before the agency started. Rankings and traffic matter only when they lead to revenue. Therefore, pull the numbers yourself from Google Search Console, Google’s free tool showing how your site performs in search, and from your analytics account.