Exactly How To Know If Your SEO is Working → No Surprises
Written By: Joey Randazzo
Joey Randazzo is the owner and Founder of Portland SEO Growth Partners based in Portland, OR. He’s worked with hundreds of businesses to build growth-centric SEO campaigns, many of which struggled to run proper A/B tests.
People think that SEO is magic.
I’ve got something to tell you.
It’s not.
Once you 1) know how it works and 2) know if it’s working, you’ll see that it’s actually quite straightforward.
This guide walks you through:
- Exactly how to know if your SEO is working
- Free tools that you can use to track your own SEO progress
- How to sniff out the BS from agencies that, themselves, don’t know if your SEO is working or not
Contents
- It Should Be Ridiculously Obvious if Your SEO is Working
- An Important Caveat – SEO Doesn’t Work Overnight:
- There’s a Difference Between Your SEO Working and Your SEO Working Well
- 1st Step On How To Know If SEO is Working
- 2nd Step On How To Know If SEO is Working
- 3rd Step On How To Know If SEO is Working
It Should Be Ridiculously Obvious if Your SEO is Working
An article ranking on Google says the most absurd thing. Take a look below.
They say that “knowing if your SEO is working for your website is a little complex”.
That statement ⬆️ is absolutely untrue. Here’s why:
SEO Should Help Reach Business Goals, Not Marketing Goals
The goal of SEO is NOT:
- To rank at the top
- To drive a lot of traffic
- To increase your brand awareness
The goal of SEO is:
- To increase your revenue through folks finding you organically on Google
So here’s the deal:
If you’ve been working with an SEO agency for a few months, or even years, and you’re not seeing noticeable revenue from folks finding you on Google, then your SEO isn’t working.
An Important Caveat - SEO Doesn’t Work Overnight:
We mentioned above that SEO isn’t magic.
But there is an important thing to note here…
You won’t rank at the top of Google overnight. If you expect that, then it’s basically like expecting to win the lottery.
Google itself says that you should expect SEO to take about 4 months to a year.
If you just started investing in SEO last week and want to know if it’s working, then you’re probably going to learn that it’s not working (yet).
There’s a Difference Between Your SEO Working and Your SEO Working Well
You might get consistent leads from people saying “yeah, I found you through a Google search.”
But that doesn’t mean that your SEO is working well.
Here’s what I mean by this:
Let’s say you’re an HVAC company in Las Vegas. As we know, Las Vegas is f-ing hot. As you may or may not know, Las Vegas is a decent-sized city with a few million people living there.
- If you’re an HVAC company and get 1 lead per week from people finding you on Google, then you can technically say your SEO is “working”
- However, if you’re the top-performing HVAC company in Las Vegas, you should be getting around 3-5+ leads from Google PER DAY.
1st Step On How To Know If SEO is Working
Your robust data analytics tells you that you’re getting conversions from folks finding you on Google.
There’s a way to connect your GA4 with Google Tag Manager and even potentially integrating those tools with your CRM (think Hubspot or Monday) to have For many businesses, having robust analytics tracking just isn’t possible.
This is the type of comprehensive data tracking that we do (and that your marketing agency should be doing…)
There’s good news if you’re not data tech nerds like us!
You simply ask people how they found your business. Whether they…
- Submit a form
- Call you
- Walk into your business
You have a structured, process-driven way of asking folks.
Here’s an example of how we’ve implemented this with a travel agency we work with:
In their form, we ask the question “how did you hear about us?”
And when people fill it out, most of them say “Google Search”.
Again, this is THE MOST IMPORTANT WAY to know if your SEO is working:
If leads & customers are telling you that they found you on Google, then your SEO is probably working…
2nd Step On How To Know If SEO is Working
Track your organic traffic from search engines, like Google.
There’s 2 ways to go about doing this:
- Google Search Console
- Google Analytics 4
Google Search Console tracks impressions & clicks to your website from folks finding you on Google.
Over time, you want traffic for relevant queries to go up. We’ve done senior living SEO strategies for a company for a while now – see their Google Search Console below. They went from 30,000 clicks to 60,000 clicks.
With Google Analytics, you’re able to capture organic traffic from other search engines, like Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, and more.
This is particularly important for a senior living facility because… well… their audience is old. And older people are more likely to use Bing.
If we look at GA4 data below, we see that they actually went from 40,000 organic visitors per month to 70,000 organic visitors per month, with over 18,000 total visitors coming from Bing.
3rd Step On How To Know If SEO is Working
Track keyword rankings.
If you want to drive revenue from people finding you on Google, then you obviously need to rank at the top of Google. It seems obvious, we know.
While it’s obvious, try to answer this question without exiting this screen.
- Do you rank in the top 5 organic positions of Google for your most important keyword?
- Do you even know what your most important keyword is?
Here’s an example of one of our clients going from 1) not ranking on Google at all to 2) ranking 1st on Google for a variety of local, high-intent keywords.
There are many tools (some more expensive than others) that you can use to see if your SEO is working through keyword rankings, such as:
- AgencyAnalytics
- SEMrush
- Ahrefs
- Moz
- WordTracker
- AccuRanker
- WooRank
- SE Ranking
- SpyFu
- The Search Monitor
- And more
Ultimately, we’re tool-agnostic. As long as you’re tracking the important keywords, it really doesn’t matter what tool you’re using.
Oh, by the way, you don’t technically need a tool.
You have a phone, I’m sure. You also probably have a laptop.
Simply go to Google and search for the keywords that you think your target audience is searching for:
- If you’re an auto body shop in Las Vegas, it might be “best auto repair in Las Vegas”
- If you’re a SaaS company selling HR software, then it might be “best HR software”
- If you’re a tree care service in Portland, OR, then it might be “stump grinding in Portland”
If you don’t see yourself ranking, then your audience doesn’t either.
Local Rankings are a Little Different!
Any keyword that includes a [City] or [near me] variation will likely generate a Google Local Pack feature. You’ve seen it before and you’ll see it again.
This feature is what I call beachfront real estate on the internet.
If you’re a local business and not ranking here for your most important keywords, then your SEO likely isn’t working as well as it should be.
Joey Randazzo
Owner & CEO of Portland SEO Growth