If an SEO engagement has run for months without producing anything you can point at, the useful question is not whether the agency is bad. It is which of a small number of specific failures is occurring, because they have different remedies and only one of them means changing provider.
First, check whether it is too early
Before concluding anything, be honest about timing. Competitive terms take months, and judging an engagement at week eight is not a fair test.
- Technical fixes should show within weeks.
- Content on achievable terms takes two to six months.
- Contested commercial terms take six months and often longer.
- See how long SEO takes for what to expect when.
If it has been under three months and nothing technical was broken, the honest answer may be that it is simply too soon.
The failures that actually occur
1. Nothing has been implemented
By far the most common. The agency produced recommendations; your development team had other priorities; the work sits in a queue. The agency is not failing to advise, and you are not failing to pay. Nobody is building anything.
- Ask what changed on the website last month. If the answer is nothing, this is your problem.
- This is not usually solved by changing agency, since the new one will hit the same queue.
- It is solved by resourcing implementation. See implementation support.
2. Work is happening but it is the wrong work
Activity every month, reports every month, and none of it aimed at anything commercial. This usually means no agreed priorities, so effort goes wherever is easiest.
- Ask which commercial outcome last month’s work was meant to move.
- Ask to see the prioritised plan. If there is not one, that is the finding.
- This is a scoping failure and can often be fixed within the existing arrangement.
3. Reporting is the deliverable
A monthly PDF of rankings and impressions with no site changes behind it. The report has become the product.
- Check whether reports describe changes made or metrics observed.
- Rising impressions with no work behind them is not progress being reported, it is noise.
4. The targets were never winnable
Sometimes the work is competent and the targets were unrealistic from the start. Chasing head terms dominated by national brands produces nothing however well executed.
5. The diagnosis was wrong
Months spent on content when the problem was indexation, or on technical work when the problem was that two pages compete. Effort on the wrong cause does not accumulate toward the right one.
Questions that identify which one you have
- What changed on the website in the last month?
- Which commercial outcome was that meant to affect?
- What is the priority list, and who agreed it?
- What was the baseline before you started, and where are we against it?
- What have you tried that did not work?
- What is blocking the things that have not happened?
That last question matters most. A good agency will usually name your development capacity or approval process, and frequently they will be right.
What to do about it
- Nothing implemented: fix implementation. Changing agency does not help.
- Wrong work: agree priorities explicitly. Often fixable in a conversation.
- Reporting as product: require change-based reporting, and treat refusal as the answer.
- Unwinnable targets: retarget. This is a strategy problem, not an execution one.
- Wrong diagnosis: get an independent read before spending more. See SEO strategy review.
Frequently asked questions
How long before I should expect results?
Some movement within three months if something was technically broken. Meaningful commercial movement on competitive terms takes six months or more. If nine months have passed with genuine implementation and nothing has moved, something is wrong.
Should I change agency?
Only if the failure is theirs. If the constraint is your implementation capacity or unrealistic targets, a new agency inherits the same situation and you lose the ramp-up time.
They say it takes time. Are they stalling?
Sometimes true, sometimes stalling. The distinguishing test is whether leading indicators have moved: impressions, average position, indexed pages. If those are flat too, time is not the explanation.
Can I get an independent opinion?
Yes, and it is usually cheaper than another quarter of an engagement that is not working. A review assesses the plan and the evidence without a commercial interest in the answer.
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If your SEO engagement is not producing results and you cannot tell why, book an SEO consultation for an independent read before you renew or replace.