A good SEO company works on four things: your site's technical health, the content people search for, your local presence, and your reputation on other sites. Each month you should be able to see what was changed and what it moved.
- Technical SEO: pages load, return the right status, have unique titles and descriptions, and can be read by Google and by AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews.
- Content: pages that answer the questions your buyers type, written answer-first so search engines can quote them.
- Local search: a complete Google Business Profile, consistent business details across directories, and reviews.
- Authority: mentions and links from relevant, trusted sites, earned rather than bought.
Ask what they will deliver each month, how they report, which data source they use, who owns the accounts and content, and how they will know if a change worked. Clear, specific answers are the best sign you are talking to the right team.
- What exactly will you do in the first three months?
- Will you report from Google Search Console, in an account I own?
- How do you measure a change: what was the number before, and after?
- How will organic visitors be tracked to enquiries or sales?
- Who owns the website, the Google accounts and the content if we stop working together?
- How do you earn links, and can I see examples?
- How do you optimise for AI search, not only Google's links?
Be wary of guaranteed rankings, reports that only show positions, agencies that keep your accounts in their name, and link packages sold by the hundred. Each of these either can't be delivered or puts your site at risk.
- Guaranteed number one positions. Google controls rankings; nobody can promise them.
- Reports without Search Console data. Screenshots of hand-picked keywords hide what really changed.
- Accounts in the agency's name. If you leave, you lose your history.
- Cheap bulk links. Paid link networks break Google's spam policies and can get a site demoted.
- No link to sales. Traffic that never becomes an enquiry is not a result.
Technical fixes can show within weeks; content and authority usually take several months. Measure every change against a starting number from Search Console (clicks, impressions, click rate and position), and track organic enquiries in your CRM.
Expect new pages to appear low in the results before they climb. A rising number of impressions on the searches you care about is the first sign of progress, followed by better positions and then clicks and enquiries.
Yes. AI assistants build their answers from pages they can read and trust, so the same foundations apply: a fast, crawlable site, clear answers to real questions, structured data, and a business that is listed and reviewed on the sites those assistants cite.
Make sure your site doesn't block AI crawlers, that each key page answers its question in the first paragraph, and that your business details are identical everywhere they appear. Our SEO and AI search service covers both.
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Pick the agency that tells you exactly what it will deliver each month, reports from Google Search Console in an account you own, measures results in enquiries and sales, and leaves the website, accounts and content in your name.
No. Google decides rankings and changes them constantly. An agency that guarantees a position is either guessing or using tactics that put your site at risk.
Technical fixes can show within weeks. Content and authority work usually takes several months. Judge progress by impressions first, then positions, then clicks and enquiries.
Search Console clicks, impressions, click rate and average position compared with the month before, what was changed and why, how each change performed against its starting number, and the enquiries or sales organic search produced.
Want a second opinion on your SEO?
We run SEO and AI search for businesses from our Johannesburg base, measured in enquiries and sales.
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