How do you gauge a successful SEO company?

[Elizabeth Wilson]

Has anyone hired an SEO company to help with their site?  What KPIs did you use to evaluate them?  

We hired one in January and I'm just not seeing any results or any real activity on my site. Wondering if it is all a scam or I'm just impatient.

Thoughts?

[McKinley Crowley]

@Elizabeth Wilson It takes a LONG time to see the results of SEO (especially if it is a brand new site). I would look at how well your key words are ranking and look into your google analytics to see website traffic patterns. It is really hard to quantify how well your SEO is doing because there is so much complexity in google algorithms but hopefully looking into key word rankings and traffic will help you gauge a bit.