What Does a Typical SEO Agency Process Look Like?
The commonest complaint about this trade is not that the work failed. It is that nobody could tell what was done. A plain description of the sequence is the cheapest available remedy for that. It is also what you should be comparing any proposal against.
You Should Be Able To See The Work
Ask businesses who have been disappointed by an agency and the complaint is rarely that a specific thing failed. It is that months passed, invoices were paid and nobody could say what had actually happened.
Why that is the core problem. It makes everything else unresolvable.
If you cannot see the work, you cannot tell whether a poor result means the work was wrong, the market was harder than expected or very little was done. All three look identical from where you sit.
Why it persists. Most of the work is invisible by nature.
Research, technical fixes and planning leave no obvious trace. Unlike a delivered advertisement or a printed brochure, there is frequently nothing to hold up at the end of a month.
What fixes it. A stated process.
An agency that describes the sequence in advance has given you something to check against. That costs them nothing and it removes the single largest source of distrust in the relationship.
What this page gives you. A general shape.
Described neutrally rather than as our method, so you can hold anybody to it, including us.
The Sequence, Described Generally
Seven stages. Most competent arrangements move through something resembling this, whatever they call the parts.
Understanding the business. What you sell and to whom.
Which services matter, which customers are worth having, where you operate and what you want more of. Nothing sensible can be decided before this.
Auditing what exists. The starting position.
What the site currently is, what works, what is broken and what is already earning. Without this there is no baseline to measure against later.
Researching what people search. The demand side.
What your customers actually type, in their own words, plus which of those are worth pursuing commercially.
Planning what to build. Where the judgement sits.
Deciding what to do and in what order, given everything above. This is the stage most visibly skipped.
Doing the work. The visible part.
Writing, fixing, publishing and the rest of it, over months rather than weeks.
Measuring it. Against the baseline.
What changed, compared with the starting position rather than with nothing.
Adjusting. The stage that closes the loop.
Changing the plan in response to what was learned, which is what separates working from executing.
Why The Order Matters
Agencies that start producing before understanding produce the wrong things. Competently, on time and aimed at the wrong target, which is the most expensive kind of wasted month.
What skipping looks like. Content in week one.
Pages appearing quickly feels like value and frequently means nobody established what the business wanted before writing them. Speed at the start is a warning rather than a virtue.
Why proposals skip it. The early stages sell badly.
Research and planning are hard to make attractive in a document. Deliverables are easy. So proposals jump to what will be produced, which means the part deciding whether those are the right things has been left out.
What that costs you. Not just the wasted months.
Work aimed at the wrong objective has to be redone or abandoned. Either way the compounding starts later than it should have. That delay persists for the whole engagement.
The test to apply to a proposal. Look for the first three stages.
A proposal beginning with deliverables has skipped understanding, auditing and research. How to evaluate an SEO agency proposal covers reading one properly.
The First Month Looks Like Nothing
The early work is research and planning. It produces very little a client can see. That is a consequence of the sequence rather than of neglect. Knowing it in advance prevents a great deal of unnecessary alarm.
What is actually happening. Four things.
Getting access to accounts, examining the site properly, researching what people search and deciding what should be done. All four are essential and none produces anything you can look at.
Why the shape is inevitable. The order requires it.
Everything in block three says the thinking has to come first. That necessarily means the first period is thinking, so an agency producing visible output in week one has skipped it.
The important qualification. Quiet is not silent.
Low visible output is not the same as no communication. You should have had a proper conversation, received a plan and been told what was found. An agency invisible in month one is a different problem entirely.
Where this is covered properly. Its own page.
What to expect in the first three months goes through it month by month, including what should worry you.
What Should Happen Every Month After
Once the early stages are done, every month should contain four things. Any month missing one of them is a month to ask about.
Work done. Something was actually produced or changed.
Pages written, fixes applied, listings updated. If nothing happened, the month has no defence regardless of how it is presented.
A record of it. In terms you can follow.
What was done, where, then why. This is the item agencies most often omit and the one clients most need, since it is the only direct evidence of the work.
A measurement. What happened as a result.
Against a stated comparison rather than in isolation, which is covered in how an SEO agency reports on results.
A plan. What happens next and why.
The item that distinguishes a report from a summary. If next month's plan is identical to last month's, nothing was learned from either.
How to use these four. As a monthly question.
You do not need to understand the work to notice one of the four missing. That is the point of having a short list rather than expertise.
Where Clients Should Be Involved
A good process has places in it that require you. Four things cannot be researched, inferred or bought. An agency not asking for them is guessing.
Knowledge of your customers. Why they actually buy.
What they worry about, what they ask before committing and what makes them choose you rather than the next firm. You have heard those conversations and nobody outside the business has.
Your margins. Which work is profitable.
Not which is largest. An agency told which services actually make money aims at those. One not told aims at whatever looks easiest to achieve.
What you want more of. And what you do not.
Most businesses have work they would rather not take. Saying so is more useful than any keyword list. It is also the thing clients most consistently forget to mention.
What you cannot serve. Capacity and geography.
Where you will genuinely travel, what you can handle and what you are already full of. Enquiries you cannot fulfil are a cost rather than a result.
Why an agency should be asking. The signal it gives.
A firm that quotes without asking any of these is selling a package. One that asks all four is trying to aim at something specific.
What A Process Should Not Look Like
Three patterns that indicate no real process is running, however organised the arrangement appears from outside.
An identical package regardless of the business. The commonest.
A fixed number of the same deliverables every month, supplied to every client. That is a subscription rather than a service. The giveaway is that the quantities were decided before anybody looked at your site.
Work that never changes based on results. The subtler one.
If month nine looks like month two, nothing has been learned in between. A process without the adjusting stage is executing a plan rather than working on a problem. It will continue regardless of whether anything is achieved.
A report arriving without a conversation. The one people tolerate.
A document appearing by email with no discussion attached. Reporting is meant to produce a decision about what happens next. A report nobody talks about has been filed rather than used.
What these three share. Nothing responds to anything.
In each case the arrangement would run identically whether your site improved, declined or vanished. That is the actual definition of no process.
Ask To See It Before You Sign
Any agency should be able to describe its process in a first conversation. Vagueness here is the earliest signal available to you and it costs nothing to test.
What to ask. Two questions.
What happens in the first month, then what a typical month looks like six months in. Together those cover the sequence and whether anything changes over time.
What a good answer sounds like. Specific and ordered.
Stages named, in an order that makes sense, with the early ones being research rather than production. Somebody with a process answers this immediately because they do it every time.
What a poor answer sounds like. Deliverables.
A list of what you will receive rather than a description of how it gets decided. That is a menu. It tells you the quantities were set before anybody examined your situation.
The follow-up worth asking. How it changes.
Ask what would make them change the plan. A firm that can answer has an adjusting stage. One that cannot is describing a schedule.
Why this is the cheapest check you can run. One conversation.
It requires no expertise, takes a few minutes and separates firms faster than a proposal does. The full series is on the hiring an SEO agency guide.
Ask what would
make us change
the plan.
A firm that can answer that has an adjusting stage. One that cannot is describing a schedule. We will walk you through what happens in month one and what a month looks like six months in before you commit to anything.
What we commit to in writing:
Our prices are published rather than quoted on request, so you can compare us against anybody else before speaking to us.
Every guide.
One practice.
What an agency is, whether to buy at all, which model suits you, how to vet one, what things cost, what should be in a contract and how to work with them afterwards.
