How do you measure whether SEO work is working?
Short answer
Write the starting numbers down before any work begins, and record what each change is supposed to achieve before it goes live. Give every change several weeks to settle, because Google's figures arrive late and rankings move slowly. Then judge it by enquiries and by clicks for the searches that matter to your business, not by total visitor numbers.
Write the starting numbers down first
Before anything changes, record where the site stands: how often it appears in Google, how often people click, how fast its pages really load, and how many enquiries it brings in. Put a date on it.
Without that, the start date can be chosen afterwards — and a start date chosen once you already know the result can make almost any piece of work look good.
Predict each change before it goes live
Every change should come with one sentence written beforehand: what it is expected to do, and why. Shorter page titles should get more clicks, because the ending is currently cut off.
A prediction written after the result is known is not a prediction. It is a caption.
Give it weeks, not days
Google’s figures arrive about three days late, and a change takes weeks to settle into the results. Anything judged over a few days is judging random movement.
Decide the timescale in advance, and do not keep changing the page while the clock runs — otherwise there is nothing left to read.
Judge it by what the business needs
Total visitor numbers are the easiest thing to show and the least useful. What matters is whether more of the right people are finding you for the searches that bring in work, and whether more of them get in touch.
If a website genuinely needed changing, the difference should show up there — in enquiries — not in a decimal point on a report.
Last reviewed 11 September 2026