Whether you are present where buyers actually decide — not merely where search volume is largest.
Is there a documented map of your buyer's decision stages and the queries each stage produces?
Does at least one piece of content actively serve the queries at every stage?
Does your SEO target primarily buyer-intent queries rather than the highest-volume ones?
Can your agency state, for any page, which stage it serves and what conversion it should produce?
Have any pages been retired in the last year for failing to produce value?
Answer honestly. "Don't know" is a valid — and revealing — answer.
Whether your business is recognised as a credible authority — by algorithms and by buyers.
Can your business be described in one accurate, distinctive sentence?
Is there a defined topic area where you publish with genuine depth?
Do you have citable artifacts — a book, white paper, or named methodology?
Are you cited, referenced, or linked to by other recognised voices in your category?
Would a sophisticated buyer name you, unprompted, as an authority in your category?
Whether buyer-intent visitors are converted — the layer where most of the revenue actually lives.
Can you state the specific conversion each page is designed to produce?
Do your high-intent pages carry all seven Conversion Skeleton elements?
Is the offer on each page calibrated to that visitor's stage of intent?
Has specific work been done to reduce perceived risk at the moment of action?
Has any conversion element been tested — rather than assumed?
Whether the work can be defended in dollars. The layer that turns the discipline into a profession.
Are analytics and CRM configured so conversions trace through to closed revenue?
For a closed deal, can you identify the organic activity that contributed to it?
Does reporting distinguish attributable, likely-but-uncertain, and would-have-arrived-anyway revenue?
Could you produce, today, a statement of attributable revenue for last quarter?
Do ranking and traffic reports arrive with a revenue translation attached?
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