How to tell if your web person is actually doing anything

This one’s personal, because it’s the exact frustration that led to this whole business existing. You hire someone to “do your SEO” or “manage your website.” Money leaves your account every month. And you have genuinely no idea whether anything is happening. You’re too polite, or too busy, or too unsure of the jargon to ask. So you keep paying, and hope.

You’re allowed to ask. And there are specific questions that separate the people doing real work from the people counting on you not to check.

Questions a good one answers easily

• “What did you actually do last month, in plain English?” A real answer is specific: pages added, content written, problems fixed. A bad answer is vague reassurance — “optimizing,” “working on your rankings,” “building authority.”
• “Can you show me where I ranked three months ago versus now?” They should be tracking this. If they can’t show you movement, or won’t, ask why they’re measuring success.
• “If I stopped paying tomorrow, what would I keep?” Revealing question. Work that builds something lasting (pages, content, a better site) leaves you with an asset. Work that’s pure monthly “management” can evaporate the day you stop.
• “Who owns my website and my accounts?” The answer should be you. If your own domain, site, or Google accounts are locked inside someone else’s system, that’s a warning sign on its own.

The reports red flag

Watch for the monthly report that’s full of impressive-looking numbers that don’t connect to anything real — “impressions,” “keyword positions” for terms nobody searches, traffic that never turns into a phone call. A report should answer one question: is this bringing you more of the right customers? If it dodges that, it’s decoration.

What good actually looks like

Plain updates you can understand. Work that leaves you owning more than you did before. Honesty about what’s working and what isn’t. Someone who explains rather than mystifies. That’s the whole bar — and it’s astonishing how many fail it. If yours clears it, keep them. If reading this made you uneasy, that unease is information.