What to expect from SEO: timeline, cost and results

How long SEO takes depends on the market, and no provider can give one number that fits every business. XO’s “private jet” went from page 2 to the top 3 within a few months. MBMI Metal Buildings took 12 to 16 months to reach number one nationally for “Steel Buildings” and “Metal Buildings.” Local and national SEO have different timelines, and we do not guarantee rankings.

By Donnie Strompf. Updated October 2026.

Key takeaways

• SEO timelines are measured in months. Our two documented national examples ran from a few months (XO) to 12 to 16 months (MBMI).
• Our SEO baseline is $1,000 to $1,600 a month, and it can reach about $3,500 in highly competitive markets. See SEO pricing for every service.
• Nobody controls Google’s rankings, so a provider can promise the work, your account access and clear reporting, and no provider can promise a position on a date.
• Rankings slip without upkeep. XO fell to position 7 while its SEO was paused.
• Track clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position in Search Console, and review them every 4 to 8 weeks.
• AI Overviews have cut click-through rates in some results, so fundamentals now serve two audiences: Google’s results and AI answers.

I’m Donnie Strompf. I’ve done SEO since 2008, and this page is the plain-language version of what to expect. The service itself is described on our SEO services page.

How long SEO takes, by situation

Your competitors and the searches you want to rank for affect how long SEO takes. The table below gives a dated example only where we have one we can publish.

Situation	What sets the pace	Example from our work
Local map pack	Google says local results depend on how closely a profile matches the search and how far it is from the searcher, and that more reviews and positive ratings can help (Google Business Profile Help, undated).	None published yet.
Local organic results	How many established sites already cover your service in your city, and the condition of your own site.	None published yet.
Competitive niche (law, med spa)	The number of strong competitors, which is why our price rises to about $3,500 a month in competitive markets such as law and med spa.	None published yet.
National head term	National competitors, site history, and whether the work continues without a pause.	XO: page 2 to the top 3 for “private jet” within a few months. MBMI: 12 to 16 months for two national terms.

We don’t have documented timelines ready to publish for the first three rows, so I have left them blank rather than invent a range. When a provider gives you a range, ask which of these four situations it describes.

You can read about our work in your own city on the SEO in Boynton Beach page.

XO: page 2 to the top 3, a slide to position 7, and back to position 1

XO is a private aviation brand, and we ran its national SEO in two stretches. In the first, “private jet” climbed from page 2 into the top 3 within a few months. XO then paused SEO during COVID, and the page slid to position 7.

The second engagement ran with weekly reports from July 2021 to March 2023, and “private jet” reached position 1. Route and city pages became XO’s top converting category by early 2023. Tracked conversions from geo and route pages rose from 121 to 174 a week, an increase of 44%.

In March 2023 the weekly tracked conversions split three ways:

Category	Tracked conversions a week, March 2023
Geo	174
Broad	140
Branded	159

The head term alone, “private jet,” produced 25 to 37 tracked conversions a week at 6 to 11%. When XO paused SEO, “private jet” fell to position 7, which shows the risk of stopping the work. The full account is in the XO case study.

MBMI Metal Buildings: 12 to 16 months to a national number one

I started doing SEO in 2008. MBMI was my first national number one, for “Steel Buildings” and “Metal Buildings,” and it took 12 to 16 months.

A 30-day result is not realistic for national terms like these. Anyone with a market like that one should hear the timeline before the first invoice.

A page with 50,000 impressions a month and no clicks

On January 23, 2018, I published a post on this site about Google Search Console that included a client story. The client had a page with more than 50,000 impressions a month and no clicks, according to the post. The page held much of its content in tabs, which the post says hid it. A competitor held what the post called a knowledge graph placement, which may have been a featured snippet. We removed the tabs and added jump-to links at the top of the page, one for each section that had been in a tab. The post reports that the client reached the top spot. The Search Console tips post has the details.

Treat that as one dated case, not a rule. Google’s current mobile-first indexing guidance (last updated December 10, 2025) allows tabs and accordions as long as the content stays equivalent to the desktop version.

The post also says the client moved “from 100’s of clicks to 1000’s.” Those two statements do not fit together, and the original gives no exact figures, so I am not repeating a click count here.

How search works: crawl, index, serve

Google’s explanation of how Search works (last updated December 18, 2025) describes three stages:

• Crawling: automated programs find URLs and fetch each page.
• Indexing: Google analyzes the page and stores what it learns, choosing one canonical version when pages are duplicates.
• Serving: Google searches the index for matching pages and ranks them by relevance and quality, using details such as location and language.

Google states that not every page it processes is indexed. A page that is not indexed cannot rank, so indexing is the first thing to check when a page gets no impressions.

When a page gets no traffic, check each stage in turn:

• Can Google reach and fetch the page?
• Has Google indexed it, or stored a different version?
• Is the page in the index but outranked by a page that answers the query better?

Work through them in that order, since rewriting a page that Google cannot index changes nothing.

The fundamentals

Mobile-first indexing. Google announced in May 2019 that new websites would default to mobile-first indexing from July 1, 2019, as Wordtracker reported. In June 2024 it announced the final phase of the move, and PPC Land reported that sites whose content was inaccessible on mobile could be removed from the index after July 5, 2024. The practical meaning is that the phone version of your pages is the version Google evaluates, so any text, link or image that exists only on the desktop layout may not count.

Intent before volume. XO’s route and city pages became its top converting category by early 2023, ahead of the broad head term. Specific pages beat the broad term in XO’s weekly data. Check whether someone searching a keyword wants information or is looking for a business to hire. A person typing a service plus a city is ready to contact someone, while a person typing a definition wants to read.

On-page work. In the 2018 Search Console post, I wrote that a page can rank in the top spots and still get no clicks if its title and description do not match what the searcher wants. That is the first thing to check on a page with impressions and few clicks. Write one clear title per page, put the main topic first, use headings that describe what sits under them, and answer the page’s main question in the first lines. You approve every page we write before it goes live.

Technical SEO. Google’s Core Web Vitals measure three things, and web.dev lists these “good” thresholds at the 75th percentile of page loads: Largest Contentful Paint at 2.5 seconds or less, Interaction to Next Paint at 200 milliseconds or less, and Cumulative Layout Shift at 0.1 or less. The same page lists Interaction to Next Paint as the interactivity metric, so any guide that still lists First Input Delay as a current metric is out of date. Our technical SEO guide goes deeper on how Google crawls and indexes a site.

Internal links. Geo and route pages were the largest of XO’s three tracked categories in March 2023, and pages like that only work if visitors and crawlers can reach them. Link from your main service page to each supporting page, and from each supporting page back. Use link text that names the destination, such as “SEO services” rather than “click here.” A page with no links pointing to it is hard for Google to find and hard for a visitor to reach.

Backlinks. Links from relevant sites to yours are part of how Google judges a page, and they matter most in competitive fields where rivals already have them. Buying links to manipulate rankings is listed as link spam in Google’s spam policies (updated August 28, 2026), and violating the policies can lower your rankings or remove pages from results. Earn links from sites that have a reason to cite you, such as local organizations and industry directories.

Local search. Google says local results depend on relevance and distance plus how prominent a business is, and that reviews can help your ranking. It also says there is no way to pay for a better local ranking. For a business that serves a city, the Business Profile is the starting point, and we manage it as a separate service called Business Profile management.

What SEO costs

Our SEO baseline is $1,000 to $1,600 a month. In highly competitive markets, such as legal and med spa, it can run up to about $3,500. The price moves with how competitive your market is and how much technical and content work the site needs. Ad spend is paid to Google and is not part of the fee.

The pricing page lists every service price in one table, next to cost benchmarks from published surveys.

Measuring progress in Search Console

Search Console is Google’s own report on how your site performs in Search. Start with the measures in the table.

Measure	What it counts	How to use it
Clicks	The number of times someone clicked a link from Google to your site.	The outcome that brings visitors to your site.
Impressions	The number of times someone saw a link to your site on Google.	A rise means more visibility, even before clicks follow.
Click-through rate	Clicks divided by impressions.	If it is low on a page with many impressions, rewrite the title and description.
Average position	A relative ranking of your link, averaged across queries.	Compare periods, since one day proves little.
Queries	The searches that showed your pages.	Find questions your pages answer without targeting them.
Pages	The URLs that earned impressions and clicks.	See which pages carry the site.

The definitions come from Google’s performance report help. That page also says a click on an external link in an AI Overview or in AI Mode counts as a click.

I suggest a review every 4 to 8 weeks. Compare the latest period with the one before it. Look for pages with many impressions and few clicks, and for queries where you appear on page 2, because those pages are the closest to a gain. Our guide to finding missed keyword opportunities in Search Console walks through the screens.

Google announced Search Generative AI performance reports on June 3, 2026, and PPC Land reported that they roll out to a subset of sites first and are built around impressions. If your property has the report, it is a separate view, so check your own Search Console before relying on it.

How AI Overviews change the numbers

Ahrefs found in its February 2026 update that the top-ranking page’s click-through rate was 58% lower on keywords with an AI Overview. The study covered 300,000 keywords and compared December 2023 with December 2025.

Another Ahrefs study found that AI chatbots sent 3.5 million visitors in March 2026, about 0.28% of total web traffic across 74,752 websites. The two figures measure different things. The first is about clicks lost on results that show an AI answer, and the second is about visits that arrive from chatbots.

eMarketer reported on April 2, 2026 that AEO and GEO describe essentially the same approach, and that 40% to 60% of cited sources change from month to month. It advised starting from SEO fundamentals. We take the same view, which is why this page covers both. If you want to see where your business appears in AI answers today, the free AI-visibility audit shows you.

Five questions to ask before hiring an SEO company

Searchlab’s April 23, 2026 guide to marketing agency red flags lists five questions to ask before you sign. Here they are with what a good answer looks like.

1. Who will work on my account, and can I meet them? You should get names. I lead SEO strategy, Jay Hebbar handles design and development, and Roni Strompf writes content and runs paid media.
2. Which comparable clients can I call as references? Searchlab suggests at least two reference calls with clients of similar size and industry.
3. What is delivered each month, in what format, and on what schedule? A dashboard alone is not reporting, according to Searchlab.
4. Who owns the Google Ads, GA4, Search Console and Tag Manager accounts? Searchlab says you should own them and give the agency user-level access.
5. What is the notice period? Searchlab recommends avoiding lock-ins longer than 12 months with no exit clause.

You can ask us all five on a call. We meet clients by Google Meet or Zoom.

FAQ

How long does SEO take for a small business?

It depends on your market, and we guarantee no ranking. XO’s “private jet” reached the top 3 within a few months, while MBMI needed 12 to 16 months to reach number one for two national terms. Local and national work run on different clocks, so ask any provider which one its estimate covers.

How much does SEO cost?

Expect $1,000 to $1,600 a month for our baseline plan, and more where many strong competitors target the same searches. A quote far from the cost benchmarks and service prices on our pricing page deserves a question about what is included.

Can anyone guarantee first-page rankings?

Nobody can, because Google controls rankings and no outside company can sell a position. Searchlab’s April 2026 guide lists guaranteed top-3 rankings within 30 days as a red flag. Ask for the monthly scope in writing before you sign anything.

Does SEO still work with AI Overviews?

Ahrefs reported a 58% lower click-through rate for the top-ranking page on keywords with an AI Overview (February 2026 update). Its March 2026 data put AI chatbots at about 0.28% of web traffic. Keep pages crawlable and answer questions directly, which is also where eMarketer advises starting for AI answers.

How often should I update my website for SEO?

Update a page when its facts change, such as prices, services, staff or hours. Between those changes, review Search Console every 4 to 8 weeks. If a page has many impressions and few clicks, rewrite its title and description first, then check again at the next review.

Can I do SEO myself or do I need an agency?

An owner can set up Search Console, complete a Business Profile, and fix titles and descriptions on the main pages. Hire help when the site needs technical repairs or the market is competitive. Keep ownership of every account either way.

Can I rank without backlinks?

In a low-competition niche, sometimes, because few competing pages have strong links. In competitive fields, plan on earning links from relevant sites, since your rivals probably have them. Skip link-buying packages, since Google treats purchased links meant to influence ranking as spam.

Why did my traffic drop after I hired an SEO agency?

Check migration errors first, such as broken redirects, a noindex tag or blocked pages. Then open Search Console and see whether impressions or clicks fell. Steady impressions with fewer clicks point to an AI answer or weak titles. Falling impressions point to indexing, rankings, seasonality or an algorithm update.

Next step

The SEO services page covers what the work includes. To see where your business appears in AI answers today, get the audit first and then talk to me for 15 minutes about your market.

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