I'm spending about $5,000 a month on SEO. My SEO team creates blogs, Google My Business Posts, and enhance searches for me. However I do not have a real breakdown on what I am getting. For those that a company that does SEO or has digital marketing business, please shed some light.

I'm happy with the performance but to deep dive into what we are getting. Thanks in advance.

So I have some basic experience with this. Things that I’d be asking for would be a backlink report, ranking of keywords, breakdown of top impressions and a cost benefit analysis.

In your case I think I’d be paying close attention to zip code based location tracking, targeted social media, specific conversion rates and organic search visit info.

I’m very surprised that for $5k a month you are getting some sort of dashboard or analytics on activity

I'm not a guru, but I'm pretty comfortable creating content that should score well in search results for keywords and phrases.

The most important thing is to measure your return on investment. It bothers me to the core when small businesses pay these "experts" and are not told what their RIO is. If you spend $5k per month, I would think that you should be able to demonstrate that it is generating $50k (or whatever) of revenue. If the answer is "who knows," that's a problem, but some small businesses feel or are told "they have to do it."

In the 90s, you'd put an ad in the Yellow Pages, and they would offer you a unique phone number exclusively used in that ad and provide a report of how many times that number was called. It was not perfect, but when the numbers started dropping like a rock around 2001, you made your ad smaller and smaller. (Hello Internet.)

They should provide you with a detailed report—as can be provided by tools like SEMRush or AHrefs—on your site traffic performance compared to your direct competitors.

How do you compare in the search results related to specific keywords and phrases to your competitors?

For the ads that you are running, what ads are working? Do they do A/B testing? Who are they targeting?

For example, they should be able to specifically target males between the ages of 25 and 35, with an income of more than $100k, living in specific zip codes who have recently searched for "engagement rings."

Then, show them your ads as they browse the web. They should then be able to tell you how many clicked on the ad to visit your website. If they click, they are a "high-value possible customer" who should be targeted in other ways as well.

This is the minimum I would expect for the monthly amount you are paying.

Another thing to consider is that it is easier to measure results with an online store. I'm not saying you need or want one, but when it comes to tracking, it's easier for those sites to determine what is working, as they can measure everything from the search result, to the ad click to your site, and right through the sales funnel until they make the online order.