Why your SEO agency isn't getting results (and how to tell if it's fixable)

They're targeting the wrong keywords

The most common SEO failure mode isn't technical. It's strategic. An agency that targets high-volume, high-competition keywords ("marketing agency London," "SEO services," "digital marketing") for a small or new site is setting you up to rank for nothing for a very long time.

These terms are contested by sites with years of domain authority, thousands of backlinks and entire content teams behind them. A site that launched twelve months ago has no realistic path to page one for those terms in the near future. That doesn't mean those keywords aren't worth pursuing eventually. It means they shouldn't be your starting point.

A well-constructed SEO strategy starts with keywords you can actually win (lower competition, specific search intent, longer tail) and builds authority towards bigger terms over time. If you're six months in and ranking for nothing, check what keywords you were actually targeting. Then ask whether your site had any realistic chance of competing for them on launch day. The answer will tell you a lot about what kind of strategy you've been paying for.

They're not building content

SEO is not a set-and-forget technical exercise. Rankings come from content that matches search intent better than competing pages. If your agency's monthly deliverable is a PDF report and a handful of technical tweaks but no new content, you're not doing SEO. You're doing a slow audit.

Google's algorithm rewards sites that consistently publish content that is relevant, well-structured and useful to the people searching for it. That requires a publishing cadence, not a one-time fix. A proper SEO programme for a site that wants to grow organic traffic publishes at minimum two to four properly-researched, properly-written articles per month: articles built around specific keyword targets, structured for readability and optimised for how people actually search.

One article every six weeks is not a content programme. It is the appearance of one. If your agency isn't producing content as a core deliverable, your organic performance will remain flat regardless of how clean the technical foundations are.

Their link building strategy is a liability

Some SEO agencies still rely on link building tactics that were effective in 2014 and have been actively penalised since: directory submissions, guest posts on obvious private blog networks, paid links on low-authority sites. These can produce short-term ranking movement, enough to show in a monthly report, followed by a manual penalty or algorithmic dampening that wipes the gains and then some.

If your agency has been "building links" and your rankings have actually declined over the past year, ask them to show you exactly where those links are coming from. Request a full backlink export from Ahrefs or Semrush. Look at the referring domains: their authority, their relevance to your sector, whether they look like real publications or manufactured link farms. The quality of a site's backlink profile is a long-term asset or a long-term liability. Make sure you know which one yours is.

The technical issues were never fixed

Many SEO agencies lead with a technical audit. It's impressive, it's billable and it creates the impression of rigour. The problem is that audits identify issues. They don't resolve them. Fixing crawl errors, duplicate content, page speed problems and missing structured data requires development work. If the agency doesn't coordinate that work or your site doesn't have a developer attached, the issues remain open indefinitely.

Three months later, content is being added to a site that Google is still struggling to crawl properly. The agency's report shows new articles published. The rankings don't reflect it because the foundations were never actually addressed. Technical SEO foundations have to be implemented, not just documented. Ask your agency to show you which specific issues from the original audit have been resolved, and when. If they can't give you a clear answer, the audit was a deliverable, not a starting point.

You don't have access to Search Console

Google Search Console is the definitive source of truth for organic performance. It shows which queries your pages appear for, what position they rank at, how many impressions and clicks those positions generate and what technical issues Google has flagged directly. It is not an optional extra. It is the actual data.

If your agency sends you a branded report built in a third-party dashboard but hasn't given you direct access to Search Console, you cannot see the real numbers. You're seeing a version of the data that has been selected and formatted by the people whose performance it reflects. That is not a transparent reporting relationship.

Ask for access today. The process takes two minutes. They add your Google account as a verified user in Search Console properties. If they're slow to provide it or reluctant in any way, that response tells you something worth taking seriously.

When to cut and when to stay

Not every slow start is a reason to switch. SEO takes time and some of that time is simply the reality of how search engines build trust in newer domains. The question isn't whether results are instant. They won't be. The question is whether the right work is being done.

Stay if: technical issues have been fixed, not just audited. Content is being published consistently, at least two articles per month. Keyword targets are realistic for your domain authority. You have direct Search Console access and it shows incremental improvement in impressions over the past three months, even if clicks haven't followed yet. Impressions growing means Google is starting to surface your content. Clicks follow position, and position improves with time and consistency.

Switch if: no content has been produced in the past sixty days. You've never seen the Search Console search terms report. Technical issues from the original audit remain unresolved six months in. Rankings have either flatlined or declined after sustained spend, with no clear explanation and no change of approach proposed. If you raise these concerns and the response is defensive rather than diagnostic, that's the clearest signal of all.

A good SEO agency tells you what's working and what isn't, including when the problem is the strategy they recommended. If yours doesn't, you've already answered your own question.