An SEO report can contain dozens of suggestions and still leave a business owner unsure what to approve. A red warning, a technical label or a promised traffic increase does not explain what will change on your website. Before work starts, turn each important recommendation into a clear decision.
This guide explains how to review SEO recommendations with your provider. The aim is not to become a developer overnight. It is to understand the evidence, the proposed change, the risk and the way completion will be checked.
Separate the finding from the proposed fix
A finding describes something observed. A recommendation describes what somebody wants to do about it. Keep these separate in the report. For example, “three service pages use the same title” is a finding; “write a distinct title for each page” is a proposed response.
Ask for the affected URLs and an example you can inspect. A screenshot or report excerpt should include enough context to identify the page and date. A tool score alone is not a business case, and a change should not be approved simply because it makes a dashboard greener.
Ask what problem the change solves
Request a short explanation in plain language. Does the change help visitors understand an offer, help a search engine access a page, or correct inaccurate information? Different goals call for different checks.
A proposed rewrite of an unclear service description might be worthwhile even without a traffic prediction. Conversely, rewriting accurate text only to repeat a keyword more often needs a better explanation. Connect the work to a real page purpose instead of approving a list of isolated SEO terms.
Google's guidance on working with an SEO recommends asking providers to explain their recommendations and support them with trusted sources. It also warns against guarantees of first-place rankings. Use those principles when reviewing a proposal, not just when choosing a supplier.
Request a small approval record
For each meaningful change, record these details in a shared document:
- Page or component: the exact URL, template or setting affected.
- Observation: what is happening now, with a dated example.
- Proposed action: what will be edited, added or removed.
- Reason: the visitor or technical problem it addresses.
- Dependencies: access, content, approvals or development work needed first.
- Risk and recovery: what could break and how the previous state can be restored.
- Completion check: the evidence that will show the agreed work is done.
Keep the record proportionate. A spelling correction does not need the same review as a site-wide URL change. The purpose is to make consequential decisions understandable, not to create paperwork for every comma.
Review an example before approving a whole batch
Suppose a provider proposes rewriting twenty service-page titles. Ask to see two examples with the current title, the proposed title and the reason for the change. Check that the wording describes the actual service, keeps important distinctions and does not promise something the business cannot deliver.
This is a fictional approval exercise, not a claim about a client result. You might approve the first example, request a correction to the second and then agree on a rule for the remaining pages. That is more useful than discovering after publication that every title uses the wrong service area.
For larger content changes, use the service-page scope checklist to make sure the revised offer still explains what is included and excluded. SEO edits should not quietly change commercial commitments.
Put irreversible and site-wide changes under closer review
Deleting pages, changing URLs, altering index settings and replacing shared templates deserve explicit attention. Ask which existing pages, enquiries or integrations might be affected. Confirm that a usable backup or version history exists before approving implementation.
Do not accept “we can undo it” without knowing what recovery means. Restoring a file is different from recovering submitted form data, and reversing a URL change does not instantly reverse every search result. Have the person doing the work explain the practical limitations.
A request for access should match the job. Reviewing a report and implementing a template change may require different permissions. Do not send account passwords through a public enquiry form or give broad access merely because it is convenient.
Agree on priority, not just quantity
Ask the provider to distinguish urgent faults from useful improvements and optional experiments. A broken enquiry path may matter more to the business than polishing several already-clear headings. Dependencies also affect the order: finalising the service scope can come before rewriting its title and description.
Request an explanation of the priority and an effort estimate. Treat uncertain benefits as estimates rather than promises. You can approve a small first batch, review its implementation and then decide whether the remaining work still makes sense.
Check delivery separately from search performance
Completion means the agreed change was implemented correctly. Results mean the business or search outcome you hoped for has occurred. These are different questions. A page can have its intended title and a working form without immediately receiving more search clicks.
Before implementation, agree on the immediate checks: the correct page loads, links and forms work, the content matches the approved version, and relevant settings have not changed unexpectedly. Then agree on how later performance will be reviewed, including the reporting period and other changes that might affect interpretation.
Keep the approved work in an SEO change log. It gives future reporting a useful timeline without pretending that every movement in traffic has a single known cause.
Use four clear decision labels
Mark each recommendation approved, needs clarification, deferred or declined. Add a short reason and a named decision-maker. “Needs clarification: show the affected URLs and recovery plan” gives a provider something actionable; silence does not.
A good review process helps both sides. The provider knows what they may implement, and the owner knows what was agreed. Start with the next important recommendation in your report and ask whether you could explain its purpose, scope and completion check to someone else. If not, clarify those points before approving the work.