Guide
Measuring a trades SEO engagement properly
Updated
Most contractors cannot tell whether their marketing worked, because nobody measured the before. Three numbers make the engagement assessable.
Take a baseline first
Calls per week, jobs booked per week, and where they came from, for at least a month before the agency starts. Without it you will be arguing about anecdotes in six months.
This is also the single strongest thing you can do to keep an agency honest, and it costs you nothing but attention.
Track calls to source
Call tracking is ordinary and inexpensive. Without it, attribution is guesswork and the report is a story.
Make sure the tracking numbers and the recordings belong to you rather than to the agency, for the same reason as everything else.
Cost per booked job, not per lead
Leads are cheap to generate and expensive to serve. The number that matters is what it cost to win a job you actually wanted, at a margin you actually make.
Break it down by job type. Agencies optimise what you measure, and measuring leads gets you leads for the work you like least.
Review on a sensible horizon
Search work takes months to compound, so judging it at eight weeks is unfair and judging it at eighteen months is negligent.
Agree the review point and the measure at the start, in writing, and hold both sides to it.