ClarityCheck© is an unbiased, comprehensive service audit tailored for organizational leadership. It evaluates whether your marketing, SEO, PPC, and reputation management providers are delivering on their promises. Designed to be flexible based on your specific needs, the audit covers key areas such as SEO, paid ads, social media, and website performance.
Our transparent, data-driven analysis provides insights into what’s working well and highlights any underperformance or inefficiencies. With a customized roadmap, we equip you to hold providers accountable and maximize marketing impact.
Why You Need It
An independent service audit ensures transparency by uncovering the true performance of your marketing providers. By identifying whether your investments are being properly allocated, ClarityCheck helps you take control of your digital strategy and maximize ROI across SEO, PPC, and other channels.
- Unbiased Provider Analysis
- Identify Gaps in Service Delivery
- Optimize Marketing Investments
- Improve Strategic Alignment
What You Get
Starting at $750, ClarityCheck© provides a comprehensive audit of your marketing services with actionable insights. Our tailored analysis evaluates your providers’ performance and identifies areas for improvement to ensure you get what you’re paying for and maximize ROI.
- Actionable Performance Insights
- Contract Compliance Verification
- Optimized Spending Recommendations
- Clear, Transparent Reporting
Why Choose Us
With years of experience analyzing digital marketing performance, Foonster brings deep insights and an unbiased approach to every audit. We focus solely on ensuring your marketing providers deliver the value they promise, giving you peace of mind and clarity on every dollar spent.
- Extensive Industry Knowledge
- ROI-Focused Analysis
- Transparent, Detailed Reports
- Actionable Recommendations
The Discovery: A Tale of Uneven Contributions
A real estate company approached Foonster regarding an SEO agency under a two-year contract, aiming to boost organic traffic. The agency committed to off-site SEO efforts, backlink strategies, and general optimization work to drive growth through non-branded keywords. With this agreement in place, the company anticipated measurable improvements resulting from the agency’s efforts.
Several months into the partnership, the company noticed an increase in traffic. However, they struggled to attribute this growth to any clear, tangible contributions from their SEO partner. Concerned that they might not be getting what they paid for, the client approached us for an independent audit to investigate the agency’s performance.
Investigation Highlights
No On-Site Contributions
The Agency had barely logged into the company’s website or CMS during the entire engagement period. Instead, the client’s internal team had created 621 new pages, made numerous content edits, and handled on-site SEO work.
The Agency’s efforts amounted to only 28 minor edits across 13 pages—with no original content creation.
Misleading Performance Metrics
The agency measured success solely through organic traffic growth without accounting for the significant contributions made by the client’s internal team. The increase in traffic was driven primarily by the new pages and optimizations handled internally, not by the agency’s activities.
Backlink Strategy and Reporting Gaps
The Agency claimed that backlink generation was not a primary focus, but conflicting entries in the activity logs suggested otherwise.
However, no comprehensive reports on keyword analysis,keyword performance, backlinks, or before-and-after comparisons were provided, limiting the client’s ability to evaluate the Agency’s effectiveness.
Google Tag Injection Risks
The audit revealed a major issue: the agency used JavaScript through Google Tag Manager (GTM) to apply SEO changes. If the partnership ended, they could disable these scripts, taking the paid SEO work with them. Additionally, GTM was misconfigured to credit the agency for phone calls and conversions unrelated to their efforts, inflating their performance metrics.
Key Issues Identified:
- Unverified Efforts: With no on-site involvement or tangible deliverables, it was unclear what value the agency had provided.
- Misaligned Metrics: Organic traffic was an insufficient metric for evaluating success, especially when it didn’t distinguish between client-driven growth and external contributions.
- Lack of Transparency: The absence of detailed reporting created confusion and mistrust, making it difficult to assess progress or justify continued payments.
Outcome:
The client used the audit findings to renegotiate their contract, clarifying deliverables and metrics moving forward. They also implemented stricter oversight, ensuring that future partners provided transparent documentation and measurable contributions.
The Lesson:
Businesses should be wary of relying solely on broad performance metrics, like organic traffic, when evaluating SEO Agency partners. Without proper accountability and reporting, companies risk overpaying for minimal contributions. Independent audits provide the transparency needed to ensure service providers deliver real value and protect businesses and ensure you are getting your ROI.