By role
You are paying for it. You should be able to tell whether it is working.
Search is one of the few areas of business spending where the person approving it usually cannot evaluate what they are being told. That is uncomfortable, and it is solvable without becoming an expert.
The typical position is this. You are spending somewhere between a few hundred and several thousand pounds a month. You receive a monthly report containing charts. The charts generally move upwards. You have no way of knowing whether the movement is caused by the work, whether the work is competent, or whether the same money elsewhere would do more.
You are not in a position to audit the technical claims, and asking for clarification tends to produce more technical claims. So the arrangement continues on trust, which is fine when the trust is well-placed and expensive when it is not.
An independent assessment gives you a factual picture of the website itself — not an opinion about your supplier, but the evidence you need to have a better conversation with them.
Questions
What owners actually ask
These are the four questions that come up in nearly every first conversation, and what an assessment can honestly say about each.
Is the money being spent well?
An assessment establishes the state of the website independently of whoever is working on it. If the fundamentals are sound, that is evidence the work is being done. If the same problems have been present for two years, that is a different conversation, and one you can now have with specifics rather than instinct.
Why is nothing happening?
Usually one of four reasons: something technical is preventing pages from being found, the site targets searches nobody makes, competitors are substantially further ahead than assumed, or not enough time has passed. These have very different responses and are distinguishable from the evidence.
Is my agency any good?
We will not tell you that, because we would be a poor judge with an obvious interest. What an assessment gives you is a factual picture you can put in front of them. A capable agency will engage with the findings; that response is more informative than any opinion we could offer.
What should we do first?
The report answers this explicitly rather than leaving you to infer it from a list. One most urgent issue, one highest-value opportunity, and a ninety-day sequence with the reasoning behind the order.
You do not need to understand how search works. You need enough information to ask better questions of the people who claim they do.
Format
Written for someone with fifteen minutes
Most website reports are written for practitioners and handed to owners, which is why so many go unread. The structure here assumes the opposite: that you will read the summary properly, skim the findings, and return to the detail only where you need to.
Every finding leads with what it means commercially. The technical explanation follows for whoever will implement it. If you read only the first two paragraphs of each finding you will have the substance of the report.
And the roadmap answers the question owners actually have, which is not what is wrong but what to do about it and in what order.
What you get
- A plain summary. Overall state of the website in language you can repeat to somebody else.
- One urgent thing. The single issue costing you most, stated without hedging.
- One opportunity. The best available return, with what it would involve.
- An effort estimate. Whether this is a fortnight of work or a six-month programme.
- A sequence. Ninety days, ordered, with the reasoning for the order.
- Honest limitations. What the assessment could not establish and why.
Frequently asked questions
I do not understand any of this. Will the report make sense to me?
Will you try to sell me a monthly retainer?
How long before I see results?
Can I share this with my agency?
What if the report says everything is fine?
Start with something free
The snapshot gives you an independent view of the website in about a minute. If it shows nothing worth pursuing, you have lost a minute.