What Does an SEO Agency Actually Do Each Month
A common frustration among business owners paying for SEO: they receive a monthly invoice, occasionally a report with some numbers on it, and have very little idea what actually happened during the month. If you are in this situation, or are evaluating whether to hire an SEO agency, this page covers what a legitimate SEO agency should be doing and delivering every month.
Month One: Audit and Foundation
The first month of an SEO engagement is almost entirely setup and discovery work. Anyone promising significant ranking results in the first thirty days has not spent the time to understand your business properly.
Website audit: A thorough technical review of the website to identify issues preventing Google from crawling and indexing it correctly. This includes page speed problems, mobile usability, title tag and meta description quality, canonical errors, broken links, and indexation issues.
Keyword research: Identifying the specific searches your potential customers use, how competitive each search is, and which terms represent realistic ranking opportunities given the current state of the website.
Competitor analysis: Reviewing the top-ranking competitors for your primary searches to understand what they have done to achieve those positions. This shapes the strategy for what needs to happen to overtake them.
Google Business Profile review: For local businesses, assessing the current state of the profile and identifying what needs to be completed or corrected.
Baseline ranking report: Recording where the website currently ranks for all target searches so there is a clear starting point to measure progress against.
At the end of month one you should receive a written summary of everything found and a clear plan for what will be done over the following months.
Ongoing Monthly Work
From month two onwards, a well-run SEO campaign involves work across several areas every month.
Content Production
Content is the single largest component of most ongoing SEO work. This means new pages written to target specific searches, improvements to existing pages that are underperforming, and in some cases blog articles targeting informational searches made by potential customers.
Each piece of content should be researched against actual search data, written for a specific keyword target, structured with appropriate headings and internal links, and published on the website. The volume depends on the package, but there should be a clear and specific answer to what was written, what keyword it targets, and where it was published.
Technical SEO Maintenance
As websites are updated, new technical issues can emerge. Pages get accidentally set to noindex. Images get added without compression. New plugins slow the site down. Template changes affect how title tags render. An active SEO engagement monitors for these issues and resolves them before they compound.
Google Business Profile Management
For local SEO clients, monthly work on the Google Business Profile includes adding new photos, publishing posts about services or updates, responding to reviews, monitoring for incorrect information added by third parties, and checking that hours and service listings are current.
Link Building
Building links from relevant external websites is an ongoing activity. Each month should involve some form of outreach or content-led link acquisition. You should be able to see a list of any links acquired in the monthly report, including the source website and the page on your site that was linked to.
Local Citations
In the early months of an engagement, citation work involves auditing and correcting business information across directories. Ongoing citation work is less intensive but should include monitoring for new inconsistencies and building listings on relevant platforms as they are identified.
What Monthly Reporting Should Show
If you are paying for SEO and receiving a report each month, here is what that report should show.
Keyword rankings: Your position in Google for each of the target searches identified at the start of the engagement. These should be tracked over time so you can see the direction of movement, not just a snapshot.
Organic traffic: The number of people arriving at your website from organic search each month, from Google Search Console. This should be compared to the previous month and to the same month last year where data exists.
Work completed: A specific list of what was done during the month. Pages published (with URLs), links acquired (with sources), profile updates made, technical issues resolved. Not a vague summary but an itemised account.
Work planned for next month: What is happening next and why.
A report that shows a single “SEO health score” or a traffic graph with no explanation of what drove any changes is not adequate reporting. It tells you almost nothing about whether the work being done is the right work.
What an SEO Agency Should Not Do
Promise specific ranking positions: No agency can guarantee you will rank first for any search. Google’s algorithm is not something any agency controls. A promise of specific rankings is either a misrepresentation or a sign that low-quality tactics are being used.
Produce content in bulk without quality: Thin, generic, or templated pages published in high volume do not rank well and can harm the site’s overall standing with Google.
Build links from unrelated or low-quality sources: Links from irrelevant directories, private blog networks, or sites with no genuine readership add no value and can trigger ranking penalties.
Disappear between reports: An agency that only communicates when it sends the monthly invoice is not managing your campaign actively. There should be a clear point of contact and a clear process for communication.
How to Hold an SEO Agency Accountable
Ask for an itemised list of work at the end of every month. Not a summary, an itemised list. If the answer is vague, ask again with more specificity. “What content was published, what URL is it at, what keyword was it written for, what links were built and where did they come from” are all reasonable questions.
Track your own rankings independently using a free tool like Google Search Console so you are not entirely dependent on the agency’s reporting for your visibility data.
Set clear expectations at the start about what success looks like at three, six, and twelve months. If the agency will not commit to specific and realistic milestones, that is a warning sign.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is Included in SEO Services Each Month?
Varies by provider and package. At minimum you should receive content creation, Google Business Profile management (for local clients), technical monitoring, link building activity, and a monthly ranking and work report. Ask for an explicit list of deliverables before signing anything.
What KPIs Should I Track for My SEO Agency?
Keyword rankings for target searches, organic traffic from Google Search Console, and organic lead or enquiry volume. These three together give you a clear picture of whether the campaign is producing results. Vanity metrics like domain authority scores or social shares are less useful indicators of actual progress.
How Do I Know If My SEO Agency Is Actually Doing the Work?
Ask for the list of content published each month with URLs. Ask for the list of links acquired with sources. Ask for the Google Search Console data directly. If the agency cannot or will not produce these things, you have no evidence that the work is being done.
What Should an SEO Agency’s Monthly Report Look Like?
A good monthly report shows current rankings for all target searches compared to the previous month, organic traffic trend, a specific list of work completed, any issues found and resolved, and work planned for the following month. It should be specific enough that you understand exactly what happened, not just that “SEO work was done.”