How do I tell whether an SEO vendor is doing real work?

Look at ownership, scope, and outcomes. Good vendors are comfortable showing all 3.

Ownership

• You own the analytics property, the Search Console property, and the Google Business Profile, with the vendor added as a user. If a vendor holds the only login, you cannot leave without losing your history.
• Content and the website stay yours.

Scope

• A written scope lists what happens each month: audits, pages, fixes, links, reporting. Vague deliverables like "SEO optimization" tell you nothing.
• A change log shows what was changed, on which page, and why.

Outcomes

• Reports lead with what moved for the business: calls, form fills, orders, and visibility for the searches you care about. Pages published, links built, and "keywords tracked" are activity.
• The vendor can explain a drop in plain terms and what they are doing about it.

Red flags

1. A guarantee of rankings or a position on page one. Nobody controls search results.
2. Cheap link packages, directories submitted in bulk, or links from sites that exist only to sell links.
3. Reluctance to explain the work or to give you access.
4. Reports that only show impressions or "domain score".
5. Long lock-in contracts with no exit.
6. Pressure to sign before you have seen anything specific about your site.

A useful test: ask for the 5 most important changes made to your site in the last 90 days and the evidence for each. A real answer arrives quickly and names pages.

If you cannot get 1 clear answer to what changed and what happened as a result, you are probably paying for activity.

Questions to ask on a first call.

Ask which 3 pages they would change first on your site and why. Ask what they would measure at 30, 60, and 90 days. Ask for a sample report and a sample change log with client details removed.

A vendor who cannot answer without a long pitch has not done the thinking.

Set up access before anything else.

If a vendor will not add you as an owner on your own Search Console and analytics properties, assume you will not be able to leave with your history. Create the properties yourself and add the vendor as a user.