From Service Pages to Reports: Checking Monthly Agency Work

A good SEO agency does six kinds of work in a month: it tracks what your customers search for, fixes the pages on your site that should answer those searches, keeps your Google Business Profile and directory listings accurate, helps you collect reviews, places links to your site on other websites, and reports every piece of it. The mix shifts from month to month. What shouldn't shift is that you can see and check each item.

Below is what each part looks like in practice, what you should get in writing, and the patterns that should make a Washington business owner slow down.

Research and tracking

The first month is heavy on research. The agency should find the phrases real customers type, such as "roof repair everett" or "bookkeeper olympia", group them by the page that should answer each one, and agree with you on a fixed list of targets. After that, research turns into upkeep: which phrases moved, which page Google shows for each search, and whether a new service or town has earned a target of its own.

Geography matters here more than most templates allow. A homeowner in Spokane and one in Tacoma rarely search for the same business, and the Cascades put a mountain pass between them. Good research sorts phrases by where your customers are, not by the state as a whole.

What you should see in writing: the target keywords, the page assigned to each, and where each one ranked when the work began. A plan with a set number of keywords (5, 10, 40) is easier to hold to account than a promise to "target relevant terms."

On-page fixes

On-page work means changing your own site so each target page answers its search. That covers page titles and headings in the customer's words, service text that says what you do, where and for whom, internal links so Google and visitors can find the page, and fixes for slow or broken pages. The early months carry most of it. Later months add pages when research turns up a gap, for example a service you sell that has no page of its own.

What you should see in writing: the URL of each page changed and what changed on it. "Optimized meta tags" tells you nothing. "Rewrote the title of /gutter-cleaning to 'Gutter Cleaning in Bellingham and Whatcom County'" tells you exactly what to check.

Google Business Profile

For a business that serves a local area, the Business Profile is often where the first call comes from. The monthly work is mostly upkeep: correct categories and services, regular and holiday hours, new photos, posts when something changes, and replies to reviews. A service-area business, such as a plumber who drives to customers, can hide its street address and list the areas it serves instead.

One thing no agency should do is add keywords to your business name. If your sign says "Smith Electric," the profile says "Smith Electric," not "Smith Electric Best Electrician Tacoma." Keywords in the name break Google's guidelines and can get the profile suspended. If a proposal suggests it, that tells you how the rest of the work will be done.

Citations

Citations are listings of your business name, address or service area, and contact details on directories and data sites. The monthly job has two halves: adding listings where you're missing, and cleaning up the ones that are wrong, like an old suite number, a former phone number, or a duplicate left by a previous owner. Accuracy counts for more than volume. Ten listings that agree with each other are worth more than fifty that don't.

What you should see in writing: the sites touched that month and what was added or corrected on each.

Review handling

Reviews come from your customers, not from the agency, but an agency can make asking easier: a short review link, a message you can send after each job, a spot in your job-completion routine, and prompt replies to whatever comes in. The rules are short. Ask every customer, not only the ones you expect to be happy, because asking only happy customers (review gating) breaks Google's policies. Don't offer discounts or gifts for reviews. Never buy, write or trade fake ones.

Guest posts, Web 2.0s and amplification links

This is the part most reports hide behind jargon, so here are the plain definitions we use:

• A guest post is an article placed on another website through real outreach, with a link to your site.
• A Web 2.0 is a page published on a high-authority publishing platform, pointing to your site.
• Amplification links are second-tier links that point at those guest posts and Web 2.0 pages, never at your site, to strengthen them and get them indexed.

Each one should exist at a URL you can open. Every month, pick three links from the report at random. Open them, read the article, check that the site publishes real content for real readers, and confirm the link goes to the page the report names. Ten minutes of this tells you more than any chart.

What you should see in writing: every link's live URL, the page on your site it points to, and the anchor text (the clickable words).

The report

The report ties the month together. At minimum it should list:

1. Every live link URL with its target page and anchor text.
2. Pages changed on your site and what changed.
3. Business Profile and citation updates.
4. Where your target keywords rank now compared with the start.
5. What's planned for next month.

Rank charts are useful context, but a report made only of charts can't be checked against the work you're paying for.

The guide An Olympia Heat Pump Firm: Planning a Year of Search Work can help you judge progress against the stage of your campaign.

What to be wary of

A few patterns deserve a hard look before you sign or renew:

• Ranking guarantees. No one controls Google's results. Results take months and depend on how hard your competitors are working.
• Secret methods. An agency that can't explain its work in plain terms is usually doing something you wouldn't approve.
• Long lock-ins. A 12-month minimum protects the agency. Month to month means each month has to earn the next one.
• Reports without URLs. A link you can't open is a link you can't verify.
• Agency-owned assets. Your domain, website and Business Profile should be in your name, with the agency added as a manager, so nothing is held hostage if you leave.

How we handle it

With our Washington SEO service, each plan sets its number of keywords, guest posts, Web 2.0s and amplification links before the first month starts, and every plan includes Business Profile optimization, citation building and cleanup, and review-generation work. Plans run month to month and you can cancel anytime. The monthly report lists every live link URL, its target page and its anchor text. Our team has done SEO since 2009, and we'd still rather you check the work than take it on trust.

The guide Google Business Profile for Service-Area Businesses in Washington can help you check the profile edits included in the monthly work.

Where to start

If you'd like a second opinion on what your current agency does each month, or a baseline before you hire one, ask for a free SEO assessment. We'll look at your site, your Business Profile and your listings, then tell you what we'd fix first.