Yes. An SEO company can track a competitor’s search performance on an ongoing basis, and most established agencies treat this as a standard part of their service. The important thing to understand is what “tracking” actually means here. An agency cannot see inside a competitor’s analytics account or marketing reports. What it can do is monitor the public and modeled signals that reveal how a competitor is performing in search, and watch those signals change over time.

What an SEO company can track

The most common starting point is visibility, sometimes called share of voice. Using rank tracking tools such as Ahrefs or Semrush, an agency builds a keyword list that matters to your business and then monitors where competing sites rank for those terms on desktop and mobile. Instead of looking at a single keyword, share of voice combines many rankings into one figure, so you can see whether a competitor is gaining or losing ground across the whole set.

Keyword overlap and gap analysis is a second area. These tools can identify which sites rank for a large share of the same keywords you target, which often surfaces competitors you had not manually identified. Gap reports then show terms a competitor ranks for that you do not, which is useful for planning content.

Backlink monitoring is a third. Tools maintain large indexes of links and refresh them frequently, so an agency can watch when a competitor earns new links, loses old ones, or runs a noticeable link building push. Finally, content moves can be tracked by watching new and updated pages, new ranking URLs, and shifts in the topics a competitor is winning. Some tools have also added monitoring of brand mentions inside AI search results, which is a newer area worth asking about.

How ongoing tracking works

Tracking is most useful when it is set up once and then reviewed on a schedule rather than checked at random. A typical setup involves choosing a defined competitor set, defining the keyword universe, and establishing a baseline. After that the agency reports on movement, usually monthly or quarterly, alongside your own performance so the numbers have context. Most reporting platforms can produce competitor comparisons automatically once the lists are configured.

The honest limits of competitor data

Competitor tracking is genuinely useful, but it is not exact, and a good agency will say so. Traffic and keyword volume figures from third party tools are estimates produced by models and clickstream data, not measured numbers. Accuracy tends to be better for larger sites and weaker for smaller ones, and it can vary noticeably from one tool to another.

The practical takeaway is to trust the direction more than the decimal. These tools are reliable for spotting trends and relative differences, such as one site holding far more referring domains than another, and less reliable as a precise count. An agency cannot see a competitor’s conversion rate, revenue, ad spend, or true profit, so search visibility is only one slice of how that business is actually doing. Data can also age quickly, since a single algorithm update can change the picture, which is why fresh exports matter.

What to ask an agency

Ask which competitors they would track and why those, since the right set is not always your obvious business rivals. Ask which tools they use, how often they report, and how they present competitor data next to your own results. Ask how they handle the gap between estimated and confirmed numbers, and what they would actually do with a finding, for example reacting to a competitor’s new content push or link gain. A capable SEO company will frame competitor tracking as an early warning system and a source of ideas, not as a guarantee that you will always know exactly what a competitor is doing.

You can tell whether an SEO company understands your goals by paying attention to what it asks, how it talks about results, and whether the plan it proposes is built around your business or copied from a template. A company that genuinely understands your goals will spend its early time learning about you rather than pitching tactics.

They ask the right discovery questions

The clearest signal comes before any work begins. A company that wants to understand your goals will run a discovery conversation and ask about your business, not just your website. Expect questions such as: What does your company do, and who is your customer? What are your main goals for the next year? What is the most valuable action a visitor can take on your site? What are your biggest challenges right now?

Those questions matter because they shape the entire strategy. For a service business the valuable action might be a booked appointment, for an online store a completed purchase, and for a B2B company a demo or quote request. If the company never asks what success looks like for you, it cannot build a plan around it. A company that jumps straight to keywords, audits, or a list of deliverables without learning your business is selling a standard package, not a strategy.

They tie SEO work to revenue and leads, not just rankings

A higher ranking is only useful if it brings in customers. A company that understands your goals will talk about leads, sales, and qualified traffic, not only positions and impressions. Listen for how they describe success in the first conversation. If every example is about moving up the rankings or increasing traffic, ask how that connects to your bottom line. If they cannot answer clearly, they may be measuring the wrong thing.

You can also judge this by the metrics they propose to report on. A goal-aligned company will want to track conversions, form submissions, calls, or sales alongside rankings and traffic. It will ask whether you have conversion tracking in place and help set it up if you do not. The reason is simple: traffic and rankings do not automatically turn into revenue, so a company focused on your goals reports on the outcomes that actually affect your business.

They tailor the strategy to your situation

Every business has a different market, audience, and set of competitors, so a plan that fits your goals should look specific to you. When a company presents its proposed approach, check whether it reflects what you told them during discovery. A tailored plan will reference your services, your customers, and your stated priorities. A generic plan will read like it could be sent to any company in any industry.

Watch for whether they prioritize. Understanding your goals means knowing what matters most right now, whether that is fixing technical problems, building content for high-intent searches, or improving the pages that convert. A company that treats every task as equally urgent has not connected the work to a business outcome. One that explains why it would start in a particular place, and how that choice supports your goals, has.

Practical ways to test this

Ask a few direct questions and listen to the answers. Ask how they would measure whether the engagement is working, and look for an answer tied to leads or revenue rather than rankings alone. Ask them to explain their discovery process and what they would need to learn from you before proposing a plan. Ask how the strategy for your business would differ from one they built for a different client. A company that understands your goals will answer these comfortably and in plain terms. One that gives vague or purely technical answers is a sign that the work would not be built around what you actually need.

In short, a company understands your goals when it asks about your business before talking tactics, measures success by the results that matter to you, and proposes a plan that clearly fits your situation rather than a generic checklist.

Case studies belong in your decision, but they should not carry it alone. A case study is the company telling its own story about its own best work. That makes it useful evidence and unreliable proof at the same time. The right approach is to treat case studies as one input, read them critically, and weigh them against references, direct conversation, and the company’s proposed plan for your specific situation.

What a case study can and cannot prove

A good case study can show that a company has handled a problem similar to yours, has a process it can describe in concrete terms, and can connect its work to a measurable outcome. That is worth something. It tells you the company has done real work and can talk about it without vague language.

What a case study cannot prove is that the same result will repeat for you. The outcome in any SEO project depends on the starting site, the budget, the competition in that market, the timeline, and factors outside the company’s control, such as search engine changes. A case study rarely lists all of those conditions. So a strong result is a sign of capability, not a forecast of your result.

Read for relevance first

Before you are impressed by a number, ask whether the example resembles your situation. A company that grew traffic for a large national brand may have done excellent work, but that says little about how it would handle a small local business, or the reverse. Look at the industry, the company size, the type of website, and the competitiveness of the keywords. If none of the published examples look like you, that is a meaningful gap. Ask directly whether they have done work closer to your case, even if it is not published.

Watch for what is left out

Case studies are written to persuade, so notice the missing pieces. Common omissions include the budget, the full timeline, the starting point before the work began, and what else changed during the project, such as a new website or a separate ad campaign. A chart showing growth is not useful if you cannot see where the line started or how long the climb took. If a case study reports rankings or traffic but never connects them to leads, sales, or revenue, treat that as a limited result, since traffic alone does not pay for the service.

The survivorship bias problem

A company publishes its wins. It does not publish the projects that stalled, the clients that left, or the campaigns that never moved. So the case studies you see are the survivors, and they make success look more routine than it is. This does not mean the published work is fake. It means the sample is incomplete by design. To correct for it, ask the company about a project that did not go as planned and what they learned. A company that can answer honestly is showing you more than a polished chart can.

Use case studies to start questions, not end them

The most practical use of a case study is as a conversation starter. Pick one and ask the company to walk you through it: what the situation was, what they decided to do and why, what they would do differently now, and whether you can speak with that client as a reference. Their answers tell you how they think, which matters more than the headline figure. A company confident in its work will welcome these questions. Hesitation or vague replies are a signal in themselves.

A reasonable way to weigh them

Treat case studies as supporting evidence rather than the deciding factor. Let them confirm that a company is worth a deeper look, then base your final choice on relevance to your goals, the clarity of the proposed plan, reference conversations, transparent reporting, and how the company communicates with you. If two companies present similar case studies, the one that explains its reasoning and adapts its plan to your situation is the safer choice. Case studies show what a company has done. They do not, on their own, show what it will do for you.