"We'll handle your SEO" can mean a monthly report and very little else, or it can mean a genuine effort to get your business found by people ready to buy. The word is the same; the work isn't. Here's what should be in scope.
The technical foundation
Before anything else, the site has to be crawlable and fast:
- Pages return the right status codes; no broken links or redirect chains.
- A sitemap exists and is submitted; robots rules aren't accidentally blocking anything important.
- Core Web Vitals pass, or there's a plan to get them there.
- Every page has a unique, sensible title and meta description.
- The site works on mobile, because that's what Google indexes.
This is a one‑time cleanup plus ongoing vigilance. If your provider has never mentioned it, that's a flag.
Understanding what people search for
Real SEO starts with the words your customers actually type — which are usually not the words you'd use internally. That means:
- Researching the phrases with genuine intent to hire or buy, not just high volume.
- Mapping them to pages: which existing page targets each phrase, and where the gaps are.
- Being honest about competitiveness. Ranking for a broad term might take a year; a specific local phrase might take a month.
Making the pages deserve to rank
Then the actual work of earning position:
- Improving the pages that target valuable terms — depth, clarity, structure, answering the question better than what currently ranks.
- Creating pages for the gaps.
- Local signals if you serve an area: consistent name/address/phone, a maintained Google Business Profile, local pages that aren't just templated.
- Earning the odd relevant link, not buying a hundred junk ones.
Measuring the right thing
Rankings are a means, not the goal. The report should tie back to:
- Organic traffic to pages that matter (not the blog for its own sake).
- Enquiries, calls, and form submissions attributable to search.
- Movement on the specific terms you agreed to target.
"Impressions are up" with no change in enquiries is activity, not a result.
The warning signs
- Guaranteed rankings. Nobody can guarantee Google's output.
- No access to your own analytics or Search Console.
- Monthly deliverables that are all reports and no changes to the site.
- Link building as the entire strategy.
- Vagueness about which terms you're actually targeting.
If your current SEO feels like it's happening to you rather than for you, it's worth a second opinion.