According to a Backlinko survey, 70 percent of businesses wouldn’t recommend their SEO company to someone else, but many stick with their provider for two or more years anyway. This inconsistency seems to be in part due to misunderstandings about what SEO services do and what companies should expect from their providers.

If you’re wondering about your own SEO provider, consider the checklist below to help figure out if your partner is helping you lay the right home improvement optimization foundation to get found online.

• Your pages show up in search engine results. The end goal of most SEO services is to boost your presence online. With so many people turning to Google and other search engines first, the best way to do that is to show up on page one of the results. If your SEO company isn’t helping you climb in the rankings, what are they even doing?
• Your site performance is increasing. SEO goes well beyond keywords, and site performance is a factor in how Google ranks your pages. A good SEO company helps you increase speed, ensure responsive design, and create user-friendly navigation and linking.
• You see reports on SEO performance. If your SEO provider can’t show you numbers to back up their claims, you can’t know if the service is worth your time and money. Plus, metrics are the only way anyone knows what’s working, so they can do more of that for continuous improvement in getting your company seen online.
• You’re getting found more online. Increased traffic on your pages is a good indication that SEO efforts are working, but so is increased engagement on your social and Google My Business profiles. If you aren’t doing anything to foster that awareness, your SEO company might be starting to hit the mark even if organic traffic on your site isn’t quite where you want it yet.

A common mistake home improvement companies make is handing over the SEO reins to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company. But good optimization comes from a partnership with a marketing or SEO company that knows what it’s doing and is willing to work with you to make business goals a reality. If you aren’t getting that from your current provider, it might be time to switch.