Most small businesses want to know one thing about SEO: is it working? The good news is you do not need expensive software to answer that. The tools that matter most are free, and they come straight from Google.
The trick is knowing which numbers to watch and which to ignore. Plenty of dashboards will happily show you charts that look impressive and mean nothing. Here is how we track SEO progress for free, and what we actually look at.
Start with Google Search Console
If you only set up one tool, make it Google Search Console. It is free, it is Google's own data, and it tells you exactly how your site performs in search.
The report to live in is Performance. It shows four things: clicks, impressions, average position, and click-through rate. Set the date range to the last 3 months and compare it to the previous period. That comparison is your progress.
What we watch:
- Impressions rising means Google is showing you for more searches. This is usually the first sign SEO is working, often before clicks move.
- Clicks rising means people are actually choosing your result. This is the number that turns into enquiries.
- Average position improving (moving towards 1) means your pages are climbing.
- Queries tells you the actual search terms bringing people in. This is gold for writing your next page.
Sort the Queries tab by impressions. If a term has lots of impressions but few clicks, you are ranking on page two or your title is weak. That is a page to improve next.
Set up Google Analytics 4 properly
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is free and tells you what happens after the click. Search Console gets people to the site; GA4 shows whether they do anything useful.
The report to use is Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition. Filter to Organic Search. That is your SEO traffic, separated from ads, social, and direct visits.
Do not stop at visitor counts. The visitor number alone is vanity. What matters is what those visitors do. In GA4 you can mark key actions as conversions: a contact form submission, a phone tap, a booking, a quote request. Track those against organic traffic and you can see whether SEO brings the right people, not just more people.
Track your keyword rankings without paying
Paid rank trackers are convenient, but you can get most of the value for free. Search Console already shows average position for every query, which is the honest number because it reflects real searches on real devices.
For spot checks on a specific keyword, use an incognito window so your own history does not skew results. Better still, sign out of Google entirely. Rankings vary by location, so if you are a local business, what you see at your desk may not match what a customer three miles away sees.
A simple free habit: pick your 10 most important search terms, note their average position in Search Console on the first of each month, and drop them in a spreadsheet. After three months you have a clear trend line. No subscription required.
Watch your Google Business Profile stats
If you serve a local area, your Google Business Profile is part of your SEO, and it has its own free stats. Inside the profile you can see how many people found you through Search versus Maps, how many called, requested directions, or visited your website.
These numbers move faster than website rankings, so they are a useful early indicator that your local visibility is improving. We wrote more about getting the most from this in our guide to Google Business Profile optimisation.
Check your indexed pages
A page cannot rank if Google has not indexed it. In Search Console, the Pages report (under Indexing) shows which pages are indexed and which are excluded, with reasons.
If you publish a new page and it stays unindexed for weeks, that is a problem worth chasing before you worry about rankings. Use the URL Inspection tool at the top of Search Console to check any single page and request indexing.
Set a sensible checking rhythm
SEO moves slowly, and checking daily will drive you mad. Rankings wobble day to day for reasons that have nothing to do with your work.
We suggest:
- Weekly: a quick glance at Search Console clicks and impressions to spot anything sudden, like a page dropping off a cliff.
- Monthly: log your key rankings, review your top queries, and check conversions in GA4.
- Quarterly: compare a full three months against the previous three. This is where real progress shows.
If you want the fuller context on why patience matters here, our post on how long SEO takes to work sets realistic expectations.
The numbers to ignore
Some metrics feel important but tell you little:
- Domain authority and similar third-party scores are invented by tools, not Google. They are directional at best and easy to obsess over.
- Bounce rate in isolation. Someone reading your opening hours and leaving happy is not a failure.
- Total keyword count. Ranking for 500 terms nobody searches is worth less than ranking well for the 10 that bring customers.
Tie it back to money
The point of all this is not a prettier chart. It is more of the right work. When you can see that a particular query drives enquiries, you write more content around it. When a page gets impressions but no clicks, you rewrite its title. When a page will not index, you fix it.
Free tools give you enough to make those decisions well. If you are building or rebuilding a site and want tracking set up correctly from the start, that is part of our approach to engineering.
Start with Search Console this week. Add GA4 conversions next. Give it three months, and you will finally have an honest answer to whether your SEO is working.
Lewis, Technical Director
