The SEO Checkup

A checkup for business owners who pay for SEO

Your rankings went up.
Your phone didn't.

Work out what your SEO company actually did last month, in about half an hour, using three documents already sitting in your inbox. No SEO knowledge, no tools, no logins.

Get the kit — $47

Instant download · refund on request · yours to keep

3
Documents you already have
30
Minutes, start to finish
10
Worksheets and a guide
0
Logins or tools needed
This checks your paperwork. It is not an audit of your website, and it is not a verdict on your provider.

If this is you, read this bit

The report says it worked.
The phone says otherwise.

"Continued optimisation of key pages."
"Improved online authority."
"Worked on technical SEO this month."

Every one of those describes real work. Not one of them can be checked, by you or by anybody else, including the person who wrote it.

That is not because your provider is hiding something. It is because that is how this industry has always written, copied from last month's report, which was copied from the one before that.

But it has a cost, and you are paying it. There are roughly seven reasons rankings rise while the phone stays flat:

  1. The rankings are for terms that people who need you right now don't type
  2. They're measured from somewhere you don't actually serve
  3. The traffic landed on blog pages rather than the pages that sell
  4. A chunk of it is people searching your business name, who already knew about you
  5. The page ranks fine and doesn't convert, which is a page problem rather than a search one
  6. Enquiries did go up and nobody is counting them properly
  7. It's the season, and last year looked much the same

Six of those seven are invisible from a standard monthly report. Which is why nobody gives you a straight answer about a flat month, and why the first thing to fix is not your rankings. It is whether anyone can see what is being done at all.

What's inside the kit

One guide. Nine worksheets. One afternoon.

The guide · 16 pages, 8 parts

What Is My SEO Company Actually Doing?

The whole method in plain English, in the order you'd actually do it. Starts with the one distinction that makes everything else work, which is the difference between a promise anybody can check and a promise nobody can, including the person who made it.

Worksheet 1

Your deliverables

Every promise in your contract, pulled into one checkable list, marked for whether an outsider could tell it was done.

Worksheet 2

The match sheet

Your promises against three months of reports, side by side, with six states to mark each one.

Worksheet 3

Pages: evidence log

Includes the ninety-second archive check that settles more arguments than anything else in the kit.

Worksheet 4

Links: check sheet

How to verify every link you were told about. One row each, four checks, no tools.

Worksheet 5

Report decoder

Ten phrases reports lean on, what each one leaves out, and the single thing to ask for instead.

Worksheet 6

What counts as proof

For each kind of work: what is evidence, and what only looks like it.

Worksheet 7

Reading the numbers

Seven questions to ask of any figure in an SEO report, and why each one changes the answer.

Worksheet 8

Your own end

The four things on your side of it, including the ten minute check on who owns your accounts.

Worksheet 9

What to ask for

Turns every gap into a request, with somewhere to log what came back and when.

Offered at checkout, not included

The Conversation Pack, $27.

The kit tells you what to ask for. The Pack is the asking, already written. Eight documents you fill in the brackets on and send as they stand, because writing the email is the part where most people stop.

The rule behind all eight: ask for a thing, never for an explanation. "Could you send the addresses for August's links" gets you addresses. "Can you explain what you have been doing" gets you a paragraph, and you already have plenty of paragraphs.

The monthly meeting agenda

Sent ahead of your next call, so the hour is spent finding things out rather than being told them.

The 25 questions

Pick five. Never twenty-five.

Four emails, ready to send

Asking for proof of work. Asking for the link addresses. Getting yourself onto accounts you should already own. Asking for a 30-day plan with named deliverables.

Renewal and exit

The questions to ask four to six weeks before a contract renews, and a list of what you are entitled to take with you. That second one matters most if you stay.

You will be offered it when you check out. Nothing is pre-ticked, the kit works perfectly well without it, and most people should read part seven before deciding they need it.

Being straight with you

What it does.
And what it doesn't.

Tells you what you bought

Every commitment in your agreement, pulled out and laid next to what the reports say happened.

Checks what can be checked

Pages, links, listings and profile activity, opened and verified by you, in a browser, in about fifteen minutes.

Translates the numbers

What a traffic figure is actually measuring, and which of them connect to customers.

Gives you the words

Specific, answerable requests. None of them accuses anybody of anything.

Not an audit of your website

It never looks at your site's technical health. That is different work at a different price.

Not a verdict on your provider

No comparison of paperwork can establish whether somebody is good at their job. Anything claiming otherwise is selling you something.

Not a case for firing anyone

One of the four outcomes it reaches is that your provider is doing fine and you should leave them alone.

Not for you if you've decided

If you want material to justify leaving, this will disappoint you. It is built to tell work done badly apart from work reported badly.

Before you buy anything

I do SEO for a living. So I've written the kind of report this kit teaches you to pick apart, and I have an obvious interest in you deciding your provider isn't up to much. Here's the honest position: I've looked at more than a hundred of these over fifteen years, and more often than not the provider was doing the work and describing it badly. That's a different failing and a far more common one, and this kit exists to tell those two things apart.
The reason this is on the sales page and not in the footer

The whole thing

Everything you need to check the paperwork.

One payment, yours to keep $47

Instant download

  • The 16 page guide, eight parts, plain English
  • All nine worksheets, printable or fill on screen
  • The report decoder and the proof standard
  • The ten minute account ownership check
  • Every request written out, ready to send
  • Yours to run again in six months, and the one after that
Get the kit — $47

If it doesn't help you, reply to the receipt and I'll refund it. No form, no questions.

Questions answered

The things people actually ask.

Will this tell me whether my SEO company is any good?

No, and I would not trust anything that claimed it could from three documents. It tells you what you were promised, what was reported, and which parts of it can be confirmed from outside. That is a narrower question and it is the one you can actually settle this afternoon.

Is this an audit of my website?

No. It never looks at your site's technical health, your keywords or your competitors. It compares your contract, your invoice and your report. Audit is the wrong word for it and I try not to use it.

I can't find my contract. Is it still worth it?

Yes, and the fact that you can't find it is worth knowing on its own. Part one works without it, and there's a version of the exercise built around just the reports. Less conclusive, but it still tells you plenty.

Do I need any tools or logins?

A web browser. That's the whole list. Everything checkable in this kit is checkable from outside your accounts, which is deliberate, because the moment a method needs your analytics password it stops being something you can do on a Sunday.

How long does it really take?

About half an hour with one report, closer to an hour if you do all three months properly. You don't have to do it in one sitting, and part four, the checking, is worth the most per minute.

What if I'd rather someone did it for me?

Then don't buy this. I run an independent review for $297 where you send the documents and I go through all of it myself, open every page and link, and send back a factual record you can forward to your provider plus a private assessment. Details here.

What if it turns out my provider is doing fine?

Then you've had the most common outcome. Over fifteen years I've looked at more than a hundred of these and more often than not the provider was doing the work and describing it badly. Knowing that is worth $47 on its own, and it's a better week than the alternative.

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You're allowed to know
what you're paying for.

Not in a confrontational way. Not by learning SEO. Just by being able to open your report and tell, in plain language, what happened last month and whether it was what you agreed to buy. That is a low bar, and most reporting doesn't clear it.

Get the kit — $47

Instant download · refund on request

Get the kit — $47