“We’ve been doing SEO for months… why haven’t we seen results yet?”
This is one of the most common and understandable questions that SEO companies hear from clients.
It usually comes from businesses that have already invested time, money and trust, becoming understandably frustrated. But it often comes from business owners who don’t fully understand what they have bought and may have been sold to rather than listened to.
So here are some honest answers.
SEO does not start working when the contract is signed. It starts working when Google begins to trust you.
And trust takes time.
In the early months of proper SEO, most of the work is invisible:
- Technical issues are being fixed
- Poor content is being removed or rewritten
- Search intent is being properly understood
- Foundations are being laid that users never see
None of that looks impressive on a graph in month 1 or even month 6, in some cases.
Other uncomfortable truths are these:
You could be a new business starting with a new URL or working on an existing one, which often takes longer because you are undoing past damage. Areas, such as Thin Content, Short-term link building, and Generic SEO pages written for keywords rather than customers, also hinder progress. If you have an existing website, it’s a good idea to get a report before you start. Try this https://gtmetrix.com/, which can give you a very good idea of the technical performance factors that directly influence your website’s SEO.
Quick Case Study: Here’s what happens with quality SEO: As part of clients’ SEO campaigns, we conduct research, build a plan and deliver work such as creating high-quality content.
One client in particular has one blog that drives more traffic to their website than any other source. The search engines look to this trusted business to deliver quality information and, therefore, are satisfied that it is worthy of a consistent high ranking in local and national searches. But you can’t take this for granted; competitors are always on your heels, so to maintain or develop a hard-earned ranking, you need to keep up the SEO work.
Google does not forget quickly when you skimp on meeting their expectation. However, it rewards Authority, Consistency and Quality if you put the effort in.
SEO results usually arrive in stages:
- First, rankings stabilise
- Then, impressions increase
- Then, traffic improves
- Finally, enquiries follow
If someone promises you leads before that groundwork is done, they are either guessing or cutting corners. The businesses that see the strongest SEO results are rarely the most impatient. They are the ones who commit to doing it properly and allow it to compound.
At Colour It In, we would rather have an uncomfortable conversation early on than oversell outcomes we cannot responsibly deliver.
SEO is not a switch – It’s a system
And when it works, it works for years, not weeks.
If you are measuring SEO success purely on short-term rankings, you are looking at the wrong signals. (also see our blog on PPC HERE)
If you are measuring it on long-term visibility, credibility and quality enquiries, you are asking the right questions.
That is where real results come from.
The Colour It In team takes time to explain this to our clients, which is why they trust us to build stronger relationships and better SEO Campaigns. Another misconception is that SEO works as a standalone marketing tool; it needs to be part of your business’s marketing mix. That’s why it’s often a good idea to work with a company that understands the broader marketing landscape to help you choose tools that will do the job for your business.
If you are looking to use SEO as part of your marketing mix, then talk to a professional who understands both SEO and Business. If they give you the facts from the start and haven’t promised something they can’t deliver, you have found a good SEO company to start working with.