Is Your SEO Actually Working? Here’s What to Actually Measure

When people registered for my last webinar, one thing that came up again and again, in different words, was some version of “how do I even know if this is working.” I split that question into two separate pieces, because vetting whether your SEO agency is doing legitimate work and measuring whether your SEO is actually producing results are two different things. This one is about the results. If you want to know how to evaluate the company or specialist you’re paying, that’s covered separately. This is about what to look at on your own, regardless of who’s doing the work.

Rankings alone don’t tell you much

A ranking report is the easiest thing for anyone to hand you, and it’s also the least useful measure on its own. Ranking first for a keyword nobody searches, or for your own brand name (which you’d likely rank for anyway), doesn’t mean anything moved for your business. Before you look at anything else, ask what you’re ranking for and whether an actual customer would ever type that phrase into a search bar.

Are you getting real leads and inquiries out of it

This is the measure that actually matters, and it’s also the one most reports skip. Are more phone calls, form submissions, or emails coming in that you can trace back to organic search, meaning people who found you without an ad, a referral, or already knowing your name? If your rankings have technically improved but your phone isn’t ringing any more than it was a year ago, something in the chain between “ranking” and “customer” is broken, and that’s worth more of your attention than the ranking number itself.

Is your traffic actually engaged, or just passing through

Google Analytics will tell you this quickly. Are people landing on your site and leaving within a few seconds, or are they actually reading, clicking into other pages, and spending real time there? A page can get plenty of visits and still be failing you if everyone who lands on it leaves immediately, because that tells search engines (and AI tools) that the page didn’t actually answer what someone was looking for. Rising traffic with a rising bounce rate isn’t progress. It’s a page that’s attracting the wrong visitors, or answering the wrong question.

Are you showing up when AI tools answer for you

This is the measure almost nobody was checking two years ago, and it’s quickly become one of the most important ones. When someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google’s AI Overview a question your business could answer, are you the one getting mentioned, or is a competitor? This isn’t visible in a traditional ranking report at all, and a lot of SEO providers still aren’t tracking it, which means a lot of business owners have no idea whether they’re invisible in this specific, fast-growing part of search.

Put it together: a simple gut check

When we meet with our own clients for their monthly strategy session, they know whether things are moving in the right direction or not. We give them the insights first, then show them the data behind those insights. If we’re dropping somewhere, we say so, and we pivot the plan to address it. That’s the standard to hold your own SEO relationship to.

Your monthly meeting with your strategist should feel like a working meeting, not a status update read off a slide.

They should be able to explain, in plain English, what’s actually happening online, and what they tell you should match what you’re actually seeing in your business.

If you want the short version, ask yourself three things honestly.

1. Has anything about your actual business results, calls, inquiries, or sales, changed since you started this work?
2. When you look at your website traffic, is it people who stick around and act, or people who bounce immediately?
3. And if you asked an AI tool a question your ideal customer might ask, would your business show up in the answer?

If you can’t confidently answer all three, you don’t actually know whether your SEO is working. You’re hoping it is.

Where to get a real answer

You don’t have to guess at any of this or take anyone’s word for it, including mine. Our free AI Visibility Audit gives you an honest, outside look at where you stand right now, including whether AI tools are picking your business up at all, so you have a real baseline instead of a feeling. You can request one here.