One of the most common things I hear from business owners who’ve tried SEO before is some version of: “I don’t really understand what’s happening or what I’m paying for.”
They usually know they need SEO. They understand the high-level goal of getting more people to their website. What they struggle with is connecting the dots between SEO work and real business outcomes like leads, sales, and revenue.
That confusion is understandable. I’m very upfront with my clients that I don’t guarantee an increase in sales. SEO just doesn’t work that way. What I can do is increase visibility, put more qualified eyeballs on your website, and improve the chances that the right people find you at the right time. Whether those people convert depends on a lot of other factors: the quality of your product or service, pricing and positioning against competitors, testimonials and reviews, brand trust, and how clearly your site communicates value. SEO often contributes to sales growth, but it does so indirectly and over time. That makes it harder to track cleanly.
Where things break down
This is where things tend to fall apart. Business owners get monthly reports that say something like “traffic is up X%,” but they don’t know what that actually accomplished. They don’t know if the change came from SEO work, a Google algorithm shift, improved brand awareness, social media activity, or something else entirely.
That lack of clarity makes people understandably skittish. They’re not looking for magic. They’re looking for someone who understands how business owners think and can clearly explain what the work is doing and why it matters.
SEO uncertainty feels worse than other marketing channels because it’s more abstract. With paid advertising, the relationship is obvious. You pay, you get clicks. There’s a clear one-to-one exchange, and most business owners are comfortable with that. SEO doesn’t offer that same immediate feedback loop. Progress is slower, more subtle, and easier to question, even when it’s moving in the right direction.
SEO is not a formula
One of the biggest misconceptions feeding that frustration is the idea that SEO is a science with a repeatable formula. It’s not. SEO is much closer to an art. There’s data, research, and analysis involved, but there’s no universal blueprint that works for every business. What worked for one company won’t automatically work for another.
Blogging is a good example. You’ll see advice claiming that publishing once a week guarantees SEO growth or that posts over a certain word count perform better. That’s correlation, not causation. Without experience and critical thinking, data can be misleading.
I sometimes explain this with a car metaphor. If two cars won’t start and a mechanic finds that one has a bad transmission, replacing it might fix the problem completely. But it would be foolish for the owner of the second car to assume they also need a new transmission when the issue might just be a failing alternator. SEO works the same way. Superficially similar problems can have very different underlying causes, and applying the same fix across the board is rarely effective.
”Is my SEO working?” is actually the wrong question
The question sounds reasonable, but it’s misleading. SEO is always working, whether you’re actively investing in it or not. Even if you haven’t touched your website in a year, your SEO is still changing. Rankings are influenced by far more than just the work you do on your own site: Google algorithm updates, competitor strategies, brand awareness, social media activity, and shifts in how people search.
So the honest answer to “Is my SEO working?” is almost always yes. The more useful question is how it’s working and in which direction. Left alone, SEO rarely stays neutral. Sometimes a site improves because the brand grows or competitors stumble. But more often, it slowly declines as others invest and standards rise. SEO isn’t something you turn on and off. It’s something that’s constantly in motion.
I often explain this to clients by comparing SEO to building a business. No company opens its doors with instant recognition, a massive customer base, and a full staff. Most start small. One customer. Then five. Then ten. Over time, they hire, refine their offering, and invest in marketing so more people know they exist. Growth happens in phases, not all at once. SEO works the same way.
The foundation comes first
Before SEO ever feels successful, it usually looks like something much less exciting: a clean, easy-to-use website that performs well and clearly communicates what it offers. Technical performance, usability, and overall user experience form the backbone. Not because Google is checking boxes for speed or layout, but because those things directly affect how people interact with your site. If users struggle, leave quickly, or feel confused, no amount of optimized content will compensate for that.
A physical business analogy helps here. You can have a great product, strong expertise, and excellent customer service. But if your storefront is falling apart, the door sticks, the bathrooms are always a mess, or the checkout system doesn’t work, growth will be an uphill battle. Websites are no different.
This is also why early SEO reports can feel discouraging. In the first few months, it’s common to see very little movement or even temporary declines. Google doesn’t crawl and reassess every page instantly. Changes take time to be processed, tested, and reflected in search results. Sometimes a newly optimized page drops before it improves. Without context, those early dips can create doubt, even when things are moving in the right direction.
Early signs your SEO is working
The first thing I look for when evaluating SEO progress is impressions, even if they’re small. Impressions mean Google has indexed your page, understands the topic it’s associated with, and is actively testing it in search results. That’s a big deal. It means you’ve gotten a foot in the door.
Impressions are often overlooked as a success indicator. Later in an SEO campaign, impressions alone don’t tell you much. But early on, new impressions absolutely matter. When a page that previously had no visibility starts appearing in search results, that’s a win. Clicks come later. You can’t skip that step.
Another area where expectations get misaligned early is keyword focus. Many business owners come in with a list of broad, highly competitive terms they want to rank for. I take a different approach. Broad terms can be aspirational, but early success almost always comes from more specific, detailed queries where visibility is realistic and intent is stronger. A smaller audience that’s actively looking for exactly what you offer is far more valuable than chasing rankings you’re not positioned to win yet.
Early on, I also tell clients not to obsess over clicks. Clicks are the payoff, but they’re not the first milestone. If you judge SEO too early based on clicks alone, you’ll miss the progress that actually matters at that stage.
What progress looks like once things start moving
Once a page starts showing up in search results, it’s typically pretty far back. Think page 4 or 5. But those early impressions are valuable. Based on the search terms driving them, I can immediately learn two things: what people are actively searching for, and what terms Google has directly connected to that content. That tells me whether Google understands what the page is about and who it’s for.
If the search terms gaining impressions are way off base from what we were aiming for, the content needs reworking. If the terms are on target, that’s a win. It’s also an opportunity to double down. I take note of the specific wording and questions gaining impressions and optimize for those terms to improve rankings.
In general, clicks won’t happen much at all until a page is averaging at least a top 15 to 20 position in search results. Even then, consistent clicks typically come after a couple of months of strong page 1 placement. If I have a client who is laser focused on lead generation, I sometimes have to gently remind them that SEO is not a massive lead generator in the short term. But long term? They can stake their whole business on it.
AI search is changing what success means
Before I start tweaking things to improve click-through rates, the first thing I check now is whether those search terms trigger AI-generated answers at the top of Google results. These are searches where Google answers the question directly without the user ever needing to click on anything. In those cases, even owning the top result on page 1 won’t improve clicks if the answer is already sitting right there.
With the growth of AI in Google search results, we can’t measure success the same way we did even three years ago. People are still searching. They’re still taking note of whose content gets cited in those AI-generated answers. So it needs to be you if possible, because if it’s not, it’ll be a competitor. In those instances, the win is the AI visibility, not the click.
I have an EdTech client in a very specific niche where many of the search terms they want to rank for don’t generate clicks because they’re answered directly by AI overviews. So we set out with a specific goal: AI overview visibility. After a few months, they were showing up in about 27 of the search terms we targeted. Their brand became much more recognizable, and when they started appearing in non-informational searches where someone is actually ready to buy, their clicks saw a noticeable rise. People remembered seeing them in earlier AI results. It gave them credibility and built trust before anyone ever clicked. That’s the indirect impact of SEO in 2026 and beyond. Visibility builds recognition. Recognition builds trust. Trust drives action.
Warning signs that something isn’t right
A sign that SEO isn’t working properly is actually a big, sudden spike. SEO isn’t meant to work that way, and when it does, it’s usually due to a shady practice like buying backlinks to fake authority. As soon as Google realizes what happened, they often strip away not just the rankings that were gained, but rankings and visibility the site had before the manipulation. You end up worse off than where you started.
If Google can’t read your pages, they can’t rank them. When I work with clients who have little to no rankings, indexing is one of the first things I check. Incorrect technical settings, a missing sitemap, broken links, or other errors can all prevent Google from properly reading the site. No matter how much content they publish, it won’t matter if Google isn’t even reading the page.
The biggest warning sign of all: if someone guarantees SEO results, walk away. It’s not possible. Google is a third-party business that can change their entire algorithm tomorrow, and there’s nothing any of us can do about it. Anyone who confidently guarantees SEO results is not in tune with what good, healthy, realistic SEO looks like.
Questions to ask your SEO person
Before you hire someone, ask what their approach to SEO is and listen carefully. If the conversation immediately jumps to backlinks or cramming search terms into content, that’s a dated approach. You want someone who talks about your website as a whole: the content, the technical health, the user experience, and how all of it works together.
Ask what tools they use. Good SEO professionals use tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Google Search Console. If they’re hesitant to share, that’s a red flag. Good SEOs don’t mind telling you what tools they use, because they know the value is in how they use them, not in the tools themselves.
Once you’re working with someone, ask regularly which pages are underperforming, which are consistently outperforming, whether all your pages are indexed, and which pages have the lowest click-through rate. If they can’t answer those questions clearly, they don’t have the experience they’re claiming.
A good SEO report is built around specific goals, not a flood of data. Most SEO reports are cookie-cutter: clicks, impressions, total rankings, a list of positions. The problem is there’s not much focus on individual pages. SEO is done on the page level, not the site level. A good report should show you which pages are performing, which are not, and where the effort is going next. If a report has no focus on individual page performance, it’s just noise.
After six months of working with someone, you should be able to ask what changes have come from the work and get a clear, specific answer. Not a vague “we’re doing good,” but concrete examples. If they can’t point to specifics, that’s a problem.
If you’ve read this and you’re realizing your current SEO setup isn’t measuring up, start by asking these questions. Have the conversation. But if the answers don’t add up, reach out to me. I do audits and ongoing SEO, and I’m comfortable picking up the pieces from past SEO messes. I do it all the time. I’m a real person you can talk to directly, ask questions to, and hold accountable. No agency layers, no runaround.