How long before we see any results?
Technical work shows first. Indexation and crawl errors move within weeks of a release, and Core Web Vitals field data updates on a rolling 28-day window, so give it about a month before the numbers reflect a fix. Ranking and traffic movement is a three-to-six-month conversation, and longer on a new domain or in a crowded market. If your budget only stretches to three months, say so — SEO is a poor fit for a short runway, and we would rather point you at paid search than take the retainer.
Can you guarantee we'll rank first for our main keyword?
No, and nobody honest can. The ranking systems are not ours to control and they change without notice. A guarantee usually means one of three things: the agency is quietly buying ads, it has picked a phrase almost nobody searches for, or it expects to be gone before the renewal. What we do commit to is the work itself — the technical state of the site, the pages published, the schema validated — and a monthly report showing what moved and what did not.
Do we start with technical SEO or with content?
Technical, but only the parts blocking indexing and rendering — a page a crawler cannot see properly earns nothing however well it is written. Once the site is crawlable, quick enough and correctly marked up, technical work hits a ceiling fast; shaving another fraction of a second off a page that already passes rarely changes a position. After that it is content, internal linking and patience. And if the site is already sound, we will tell you, rather than sell an audit designed to find nothing.
If we invest in SEO, do we still need to run paid ads?
Usually yes, at least while organic is still building. Ads buy traffic today and, more usefully, show within weeks which searches actually convert — the best brief a content plan can have. The trade-off is how the cost behaves: ads stop the moment you stop paying, organic pages keep working but take months to arrive. Know what we are, though — we build the landing pages, tracking and product feeds campaigns depend on; we are not a media-buying agency, and for serious ongoing ad spend you want a specialist.
How do you measure whether any of it worked?
We record a baseline before touching anything: crawl results, whatever Search Console history exists, Core Web Vitals on real pages, and how many enquiries the site produces today. The monthly report then tracks a short list — pages indexed, impressions and clicks split into branded and non-branded queries, Vitals, and the conversions your business counts as a lead. Splitting branded from non-branded matters, because someone who heard your name at a conference and typed it into Google is not evidence that the SEO worked. Attribution is never clean, and where an algorithm update or a seasonal dip explains a number better than our work does, that is what the report will say.