I don’t track my time on client work. Not as a KPI, not as a log, not as a number on a report. I never will.
That sounds like an odd thing to say about running an SEO business, so let me explain where it comes from.
How I Got Here
I finished school and worked in sales roles across several different industries. Then I started studying a Bachelor of Business at QUT, majoring in marketing. I took an internship, and quickly realised I could be working in the industry rather than interning while I studied. So I did.
My first real role was marketing coordinator at a manufacturing company, where I learned a bit of everything. After about ten months, I’d hit my ceiling for growth, so I moved into my first agency role. Over the next four years I went from social media and paid ads, to SEO, to head of SEO.
I learned a huge amount my years working in the industry. I also learned something that I couldn’t unsee.
What the Typical Agency Model Actually Rewards
In the businesses I worked in, the output quality didn’t really matter. What mattered was time. The less time you spent on a task, the more you were rewarded.
Think about what that does to the work. If a task is measured in minutes, then the best-performing person is the one who ticks it off fastest, not the one who makes the website better. Analysis gets shortened. Content gets templated. The thoughtful, slow, sometimes boring work that actually moves rankings loses to the quick win that looks good on a timesheet.
The cycle I watched repeat went like this:
- Win the client, and butter them up in the early months.
- Do as little as possible on each task, so the hours fit the budget.
- After about four months of very little real time spent on the website, the client starts asking where the results are.
- Try to retain them with reports, meetings and explanations instead of improvements.
- Lose them, and start the cycle again with someone new.
That cycle is not a few bad apples. It’s what you get when you measure the wrong thing. It annoyed me for years, and it’s the reason ALC exists.
Why Time Is the Wrong Measure
The argument for tracking time is usually fair on its face: it keeps projects profitable and makes sure everyone is accountable. But in SEO it measures the wrong thing, for three reasons.
- Time isn’t results. Ten hours of well-directed work can beat forty hours of busywork. A single technical fix, correctly diagnosed, can matter more than a month of tinkering. If I billed or judged myself by hours, I’d be rewarding effort over outcomes.
- It punishes efficiency and thinking. When I solve a problem quickly because I’ve seen it many times, a time-based model says I did little. When I spend hours on something that didn’t need it, the same model says I did a lot. That’s backwards.
- It changes behaviour. If you’re watching the clock, you stop doing the extra thing that wasn’t scheduled but would clearly help: a better internal link structure, a page rewritten properly, a second look at why one service page isn’t converting. The clock tells you to stop. The client needed you to keep going.
What I Do Instead
I won’t pretend there’s no accountability. There’s just a different kind.
- I scope by outcome and priorities, not by hours. We agree what matters most for your business, and the work follows that.
- You get transparent monthly reporting showing what changed and what it did, not a list of tasks and minutes.
- You speak directly to the person doing the work. No junior account manager relaying messages. See how ALC works.
- No lock-in contracts. If the work isn’t earning its keep, you can leave. That keeps me honest in a way a timesheet never could.
What This Costs Me
Being honest: not tracking time means I carry the risk. Some months a client needs more of my attention than the package price would suggest if I counted hours. Other months need less. I accept that, because I’d rather be judged on whether your site improves than on whether I can prove how busy I was.
It also means I can’t pretend a package is several hours. That’s fine. It was never the real product.
How to Test Any Agency on This
Whether you hire me or someone else, these questions will tell you how an agency is really run:
- What will you actually change on my site in the first 90 days? Look for specific answers, not “an audit and a strategy”.
- How do you decide what to work on each month? If the answer is “whatever the hours allow”, be careful.
- Who does the work? Is it the person you spoke to in the sales call?
- What does your reporting show? Rankings and traffic matter, but so do enquiries, calls and revenue where you can track them.
- What happens if it’s not working? A good agency has a straight answer.
If a marketing provider can’t answer these without leaning on hours, that tells you something.
What I Want ALC to Stand For
I want people to feel inspired and motivated by women in business who aren’t afraid to say the truth. The truth about SEO is that it’s slow, it’s mostly unglamorous, and it rewards careful, considered work. A clock doesn’t measure any of that. So I don’t use one.
If that sounds like the kind of partner you want, book a free strategy session and let’s talk about what your site actually needs.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you really never track your time on client work?
Correct. I don’t log it and I don’t use it as a KPI. I scope and measure by outcomes and priorities.
How do you price SEO without tracking hours?
Packages are scoped to your business’s goals, competition and content needs, starting from $995 excl GST per month. See our SEO packages.
Isn’t tracking time how agencies stay profitable?
t’s one way, and it works for many businesses. My view is that in SEO it tends to reward speed over quality. I run ALC differently because of what I saw.
How do I know I’m getting value if there are no timesheets?
Through transparent monthly reporting on what changed and what it achieved, direct access to me, and no lock-in contracts so you can leave if it isn’t working.
Why did you start ALC?
After over six years in the industry, I saw a gap between how agency owners and business owners think about results. ALC is my answer to that. You can read more on the About page.
