SEO: How to check
Each of these checks takes under ten minutes and needs no tool and no expertise. Do them yourself rather than reading about them in a report.
The checks, in order
01 Log into Search Console yourself
Once a month. Even without understanding everything, you will see whether page count grows and whether errors appear. It is your site, not their report.
02 Read one article all the way through
One they wrote for you. If you finish it knowing nothing new, the reader probably does not either.
03 Search for something a customer would search
Not your company name. The service plus the city. That is the search that brings money, and that is where progress shows.
04 Compare enquiries, not traffic
Enquiries this month versus the same month last year. If traffic doubled and enquiries did not, ask where the traffic is coming from.
05 Check in a private window
Google adjusts results to your history and location: a site you search for every day will rank higher for you than for your customers. If someone demonstrates a first place on their own screen, open a private browser window and search the same thing. More reliable still: look at the average position in Search Console instead of live results.