How Should I Review My AEO Agency's Work?

What are you reviewing when the agency sends an update?

Google recommends asking an SEO about measurement and explanations of proposed changes. AE applies that communication principle to agency review; Google does not endorse this workflow.

Our recommendation is to start by naming the decision in front of you. Is the agency proposing work, showing a draft, reporting completed delivery, requesting information, asking for a change, or explaining an invoice? Each item deserves a different response. A property manager might be comfortable approving a corrected service description while still needing an explanation of the reported traffic change. Treating the two questions separately makes the conversation clearer without requiring the owner to become a technical specialist.

Use this guide as a review map for the engagement. The five companion articles address payment structure, billing evidence, additional scope, customer information and changing providers. They are related buying decisions, not a sequence every business must follow. Start with the question you actually need answered and keep the relevant records together. The goal is a specific next instruction supported by the work you can inspect, rather than general confidence or frustration about the agency relationship.

Evidence: hiring-premise

How do you compare the commitment with the work delivered?

Our recommendation: Put the accepted description beside the item the agency wants reviewed. Identify the customer question, intended audience and delivery format. If the request was a page explaining which cleaning service to book, check whether the delivered page helps that choice. Do not accept a report screenshot as a substitute for a missing page, or reject a useful page merely because a later performance observation is still unavailable. Ask the provider to explain any difference between the requested work and the item supplied.

Our recommendation is to keep the comparison short and concrete. Record the current version, what matches the request, what appears missing and who can answer the open question. A real estate business may need its operations contact to confirm a service condition before its marketing contact responds. Preserve the relevant message or proposal so the discussion does not depend on competing memories. This is a management approach for organizing the conversation, not a determination of what a particular agreement legally requires.

Evidence: change-premise

How do you check the service facts without rewriting everything?

Our recommendation: Make a short list of facts that your business is entitled to confirm: services provided, geographic coverage, customer eligibility, availability, exclusions, contact route, and any quoted terms. Give each fact a responsible person. A leasing manager may know the application process; an operations lead may know access requirements; a licensed professional may need to check a regulated description. Do not let the agency infer these details from a competitor's page or an old social post.

Read for exceptions as carefully as the main promise. If a business serves an area only for a particular service, the page should not imply that every service is available there. If a consultation determines suitability, the copy should not announce acceptance before that consultation happens. Ask for a specific correction and the source that should replace the disputed statement. This produces a review the writer can act on, rather than a vague instruction to make the article more accurate.

Evidence: content-premise

Which claims need evidence before publication?

Our recommendation: Flag numbers, rankings, awards, comparisons, client outcomes, and assertions about what an AI system supposedly prefers. Ask what record supports the statement, what period it describes, and whether the evidence permits the wording used. A historical observation should not silently become a current result. An example should not become a typical outcome. If the evidence is unavailable, remove or narrow the claim instead of adding an impressive-looking citation that does not support it.

We recommend checking the claim against the record offered to support it. A source about one service does not answer a different service question merely because both appear on the same website. Mark the sentence that needs clarification and ask the business owner responsible for that fact to respond. You do not need a new statistic in every paragraph. A clear explanation of the customer’s next step can be useful without an unsupported performance assertion.

Evidence: claims-premise

How should customer stories and private information be handled?

Our recommendation: A customer story needs more than a convincing narrative. Ask whether the business has permission to use the specific name, image, quote, situation, and result in this context. A story previously shared in a private presentation is not automatically approved for a public article. If permission or scope is uncertain, hold that example. Do not solve the problem by changing a name while leaving enough unusual detail to identify the person.

Prefer public business facts when a customer record is unnecessary. A real estate article can explain appointment preparation without disclosing a seller's financial position. A cleaning article can explain access questions without publishing a customer's address or alarm instructions. For decisions about consent, confidentiality, or regulated information, use the business's responsible adviser. This guide is a content-review aid, not a determination of what information the business is legally allowed to disclose.

Evidence: privacy-premise

How do you review the offer and next step?

Our recommendation: Read the invitation at the end of the page as a separate promise. Confirm what the visitor is being invited to request, whether a fee applies, who qualifies, and what happens afterward. A free introduction is not the same thing as a free completed project. A request form is not a confirmed appointment. Avoid letting a helpful article become a vehicle for a broader promise that the business has not approved or cannot currently fulfill.

Follow the link in the actual preview. Check that the destination uses compatible language and that any important limitation remains visible. If the article describes a review of public business information, the form should not unexpectedly ask for sensitive customer records. Record who confirmed the offer and when. This check is especially useful when an agency has reused an old button or copied a closing paragraph from another page. Familiar wording can still describe an outdated offer.

Evidence: claims-premise

What should you do when the review reveals extra work?

Our recommendation: Separate a correction needed to deliver the agreed article from a proposal to expand the engagement. A wrong phone number is not automatically a new strategy project. A request for an additional landing page, another audience, or a different service may be a genuine scope change. Ask the agency to explain which it is, what the original commitment covered, and what additional deliverable is being proposed. Resolve that distinction before approving work you do not understand.

Do not use the editorial approval as a substitute for a fee decision. You can agree that a proposed page would help customers while still needing to discuss its cost and timing. Keep the publication decision, extra-work decision, and payment decision visible as separate items. That makes disagreement easier to resolve and avoids treating an enthusiastic comment on a draft as a blank authorization for spending. Contractual disputes need the actual agreement and appropriate advice.

Evidence: change-premise

How should you record approval, revision, or a hold?

Our recommendation: Use a decision that names the version and the remaining conditions. Approval means the identified material is accepted for the agreed use. Revision means specific changes are requested and the resulting version will return for review. A hold means a named dependency, such as evidence or permission, has not been resolved. A conditional note should be explicit about whether the agency may publish after making the change or must return the draft first.

Keep feedback proportional. If the only issue is a factual correction, do not demand an unnecessary rewrite of every paragraph. Conversely, do not approve a page because most of it looks acceptable when the unresolved claim is central to the offer. Give the writer enough detail to fix the issue: the sentence, the concern, the responsible fact owner, and the intended replacement meaning. This preserves useful work while protecting the customer-facing promise.

Evidence: change-premise

How do you review reported results beside completed work?

Search Console documents report settings such as period and grouping. Our recommendation is to ask which observation the agency is showing and whether the comparison uses the same scope. Keep the public page check separate: open the URL and inspect the service description, links and contact invitation. That tells you what a visitor can see. A report answers a different question about recorded activity. Neither item should silently take the place of the other in a discussion of progress.

For a property manager, a completed page about service coverage and a chart of search activity may both be useful. Ask what each supports and what remains unknown. If the next conversation concerns the monthly bill, use the invoice-evidence companion to organize that review. If the concern is a proposed performance fee, use the pricing companion to frame the questions. Do not make this broad review map decide a payment dispute or attribute a new customer to an article without the relevant evidence.

Evidence: reports-premise

Which companion guide matches the decision you face?

Our recommendation: Use the pricing guide when comparing a proposal that ties a fee to results. Use the invoice guide when you need to connect a monthly bill with the work and evidence being presented. Choose the extra-work guide when the agency proposes an addition to the current engagement. These are different moments: the first concerns the arrangement being considered, the second concerns a billing explanation, and the third concerns a new request. Keep the original question visible so the discussion does not drift into an unrelated evaluation.

Choose the customer-information guide before responding to a request for private records. Choose the handover guide when responsibility is moving to another provider and you need usable history. The hub links to all five so an owner can move from the broad review to the specific question without treating a single checklist as sufficient for every decision. Our recommendation is to finish each conversation with the accepted next action, the unresolved item and the person who will answer it. A useful review ends with that clarity, even when the answer is to revise or wait.

Evidence: hiring-premise

Which review should you do next?

The proposed charge depends on a stated result.

Use the pricing companion to prepare questions about the event and evidence described in the proposal.

A bill arrives with a report or list of completed tasks.

Use the invoice companion to organize the connection between the charge, work and supplied records.

The agency wants to add another deliverable.

Compare the original commitment with the additional request using the extra-work guide.

The agency requests customer-level information.

Start with the information-request guide and take the specific purpose to the responsible business person.

Responsibility is moving to another provider.

Use the handover guide to identify usable records, current versions and unresolved questions.

Evidence: hiring-premise

This routing table is our editorial recommendation for choosing the next conversation. Each companion keeps its narrower decision separate; none determines contractual rights or guarantees a customer outcome.