You want customers across Arkansas to find your business when they search for what you sell, and you want those searches to turn into phone calls. Before you pay for search work, you also want to know when the calls will start.
Google answers the question “how long does SEO take” in its own SEO Starter Guide. Some changes show up in Google’s results within a few hours, and others take several months. How long your site takes depends on what it has today. A site with a page for each service starts in a different place from a site with one page and a phone number.
On both kinds of site, the numbers move in the same order. Impressions move first, then positions, then clicks, and calls come last. Every Friday we check your pages in Search Console, and your monthly report shows how your clicks and impressions changed from the month before.
How long does SEO take, in Google’s own words
Google writes its SEO Starter Guide for people who run websites. After you change a page, the guide suggests that you “wait a few weeks to assess whether your work had beneficial effects.”
We plan our work around that advice. When we change a page, we check the change on the live page the way a visitor sees it, and the change counts as done only after that check. Then we give Google a few weeks with the page before we judge the result.
Each site starts from its own place, so we never promise a month in advance. We give you the order in which the numbers move and the work we do at each step.
What moves first: impressions
An impression counts each time one of your pages appears in Google’s results for a search. Nobody has to click for an impression to count. We check impressions first, because a page has to appear in results before anyone can click it.
When we add a new page or rewrite an old one, the impression count is the first number we expect to change. A page can collect impressions for searches you never planned for. Those searches show us which topics Google connects to the page, and we use them to plan the next change we make to it.
If a service has no page of its own on your site, it has no impressions to count yet. Our first job then is to write that page, and we write service pages as part of the work. A new page starts at this first step and moves through the same order as every other page.
We do the Friday checks in Search Console for each client site, and two of them belong to this first step. We look at each new page to see whether Google has added it to its results yet. We also look for pages with many impressions and few clicks.
For a single page, the URL Inspection tool in Search Console shows whether Google has added it. A page that Google has not added to its results cannot collect impressions, and that is why this check comes before every other number.
A page with many impressions and few clicks already shows up for searches, so our work there starts with the title and the description under it. Those two lines are what a searcher sees in the results before picking a page. We rewrite them so the result makes clear that your page answers the search.
Every new page we publish sends at least three links to other pages on your site. On the day it goes live, two older pages link to the new one. Visitors and Google can then reach the new page from pages they already know.
Then positions 8 to 20
Position is the average spot where your page appears in the results for a search. Position 1 is the top of the list. A page at positions 8 to 20 shows near the bottom of page one or somewhere on page two.
Those pages matter because Google already connects them to the search. We rewrite the title and the opening paragraphs on a page like that before anything else. In the Friday checks we pull the pages at positions 8 to 20 on each client site, and those pages go to the front of that week’s list.
Two more checks happen on the same day. We look for two of your pages that compete for the same search, and we look for mentions of your business on other sites. Either check can add a job to that week’s list.
You can run the same position check on your own site this afternoon. Open the Performance report in Google Search Console. Turn on Average position beside the totals for clicks and impressions, because the table below the chart shows position only when that box is on. Then switch to the Pages tab. Find your service pages in the table.
A service page with an average position between 8 and 20 goes first on our list for your site. If a service page shows a position past 20 or has no row at all, we start with the page itself and what it says about the service. If you cannot open Search Console for your site, we set it up with you in your business name.
Then clicks and calls
Clicks come after a page moves up into view. A click counts each time a searcher picks your page from the results and opens it. Search Console shows a click rate for each page in its CTR column when the Average CTR box is on. That rate is the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions.
A low click rate on a page with a good position sends us back to the title and the description. A page near the top of the results gets more of the clicks for a search than a page further down. We work on position first for that reason, and we judge clicks once the position has moved.
Calls come last, and they are the number you hired the work for. Calls follow the other numbers because a call from search needs a page that shows high enough for a searcher to click it.
Sometimes a number that was rising turns down. We look for pages that lost clicks since the month before in the Friday checks, and each page we find goes on that week’s list. If your clicks fell after a change to your site, our post on why website traffic drops covers the technical problems behind a drop.
Why we change a title once in 28 days
We change a page’s title at most once in 28 days. Google needs time to pick up a new title, and searchers need time to respond to it before the next title goes up. When a title changes every week, nobody can tell which version brought the clicks.
While one page keeps its title, the Friday checks go on across the rest of your site. When the 28 days pass, we look at the clicks for that title before we choose the next change.
What your monthly report shows
We manage eight client accounts with a team of five people, and each client gets one PDF report a month. The search section of your report shows clicks and impressions from Search Console, and each number sits beside the month before. It also shows the visits your site got from search, with the same comparison.
A note in that section splits the searches for your business name from every other search. People who search for your business name already know you, and the other searches show whether new customers can find you. The report also lists the posts we published on your site that month and the search each post targets.
In the first reports after the work starts, impressions are the number to watch. Clicks start low in those reports, because pages near the bottom of the results get few clicks. When your pages move up, compare each month’s clicks with the month before.
Each report ends with the work we plan next and our focus for the coming month. Our post on how to read a marketing report covers the seven numbers that matter in a report. It also lists the questions worth asking the agency that sends it.
What we need from you
We need two things from you at the start. The first is the facts for your service pages: what each service covers, and which services you want more calls for. Each page we write starts from those facts and says what you do and where in Arkansas you do it.
The second is Search Console in your business name. If you already have it, you add us as a user and we work inside your account. If you do not have it yet, we set it up with you before any other work begins. The account stays in your business name for as long as we work together.
In Search Console, the owner of a site adds a new user from the Users and permissions screen in Settings. The owner role stays with you. Because the account is in your business name, the history of your site’s search numbers belongs to you. The search numbers in your monthly report come from that account, and you can open it yourself on any day to check them.
Send us your site
The Friday checks and the monthly report are both part of our SEO service, and we do the work ourselves from Arkansas. Send us your site through our contact page, or call us at +1 501.232.1017.
We open your Search Console data with you and show you where each service page stands today, and which step comes first for your site. Ty Woods answers for the work himself, and no account manager stands between you and the person doing it. The consultation costs nothing.