What should I see after 6 months of paying for SEO?

0:00 Intro
After six months of paying for SEO, you should see measurable movement in rankings and organic traffic, but you should not yet expect a flood of calls from organic search alone. That is the honest answer, and I want to walk you through exactly what that looks like, what a good report shows, what the red flags are, and what to ask your agency so you stop guessing and start knowing.

0:24 Why Month Six Is the Honest Test
Six months is not long enough to declare victory. It is long enough to know whether your agency is doing real work. SEO compounds. The first three months are mostly groundwork. Months four through six are when you start seeing the first real signals. If you are at month six and your agency cannot show you any movement at all, that is a problem. Not a give it more time situation, a problem. The goal of this video is to give you a buyer side checklist so you know what you are looking for and what questions to ask. This is the most important framework in this whole video. SEO results split into two buckets, leading indicators and lagging indicators. Lagging indicators are the outcomes you want. Phone calls, form fills, booked jobs. Leading indicators are the signals that predict those outcomes three to six months from now. At month six, you should be seeing leading indicators move. Lagging indicators, the calls and the revenue, those come later, usually month nine through twelve for a brand new SEO campaign. If your agency is only showing you lagging indicators and those numbers are flat, they are setting you up to cancel before the campaign matures. If your agency shows you nothing but leading indicators and says, "Trust us,"

1:38 Leading Indicator One: Keyword Rankings
that is also a problem. You need both. By month six, your site should be ranking for something. That does not mean page one for every keyword. It means measurable movement. Here is a realistic picture. In my experience with contractor sites, pages targeting lower competition keywords, think emergency drain cleaning in city rather than just plumber, can reach page one in four to six months. Broad, high competition keywords often take twelve months or more. Your agency should be tracking a specific list of target keywords and showing you where each one ranks week over week. Not a screenshot, not a PDF with no dates, a live dashboard or a report you can verify independently. A question I hear a lot before people hire an agency, "How many keywords should my agency be targeting?" Good question. For a local contractor website, I would expect your agency to be actively targeting between twenty and sixty keyword phrases in year one, clustered around your core services and your city. Not five, not five hundred, twenty to sixty done well.

2:40 Leading Indicator Two: Organic Impressions
Impressions measure how many times Google showed your site in search results, even if no one clicked. This is a leading indicator because impressions grow first, clicks grow second, calls grow third. You should see impressions trending up by month six. Go to Google Search Console. Look at the last six months. If the impression line is flat or going down, something is not working. If it is trending up even slowly, that is a healthy sign. A common mistake is confusing impressions with rankings. You can get impressions at position forty-seven. That does not mean you are winning. Watch both together. SEO requires content. For a contractor site, that usually means location pages and service pages, plus a

3:19 Leading Indicator Three: Indexed Pages and Content Output
steady output of blog content targeting real questions your customers search. By month six, ask your agency, "How many pages have been added to the site since we started?" If the answer is zero or one or two, your campaign is behind. A typical local contractor SEO campaign should produce at least two to four pieces of content per month. That does not mean stuffed, keyword crammed garbage. It means well-structured pages and posts that actually answer the questions people are searching. Another one I hear a lot, "How many keywords should you focus on per page?" The honest answer is target one primary keyword and two to four supporting phrases per page. Not twenty, not one and nothing else. One main topic done well with related terms woven in naturally.

4:05 Leading Indicator Four: Backlinks and Domain Authority Trend
Backlinks are links from other websites pointing to yours. They are still one of the strongest ranking signals Google uses. By month six, your agency should have built some. Not thousands, not bought links from overseas link farms. Real, relevant local links. Think local directories, industry associations, local news mentions, partner contractor sites, chamber pages. Ask your agency to show you a backlink report. If they cannot name any new links built in six months, ask why. Let me walk you through what a solid monthly report looks like. First, it shows keyword rankings for your target list, where you started, where you are now, movement direction. Second, it shows organic traffic from Google Search Console, sessions, impressions, clicks, trending direction. Third, it shows conversions, phone calls tracked through call tracking, form fills, whatever your defined conversion actions are. People ask me this all the time, "Should an SEO dashboard show conversions? Should they show revenue? Should they include local rankings?" The answer to all three is yes. A dashboard that shows traffic but not conversions is hiding the number that matters. I'm not saying your SEO drives zero calls at month six. I am saying the report should show you what it does drive so you can make an informed decision. Fourth, the report should show site health, page speed, crawl errors, broken links, indexation status. This is table stakes. If you are getting a one-page PDF with a few graphs and no explanation, ask for a walk-through call every month, not once a quarter.

5:45 The Worked Example: A Garage Door Company at Month Six
This is a made-up example, but a realistic one. Picture a garage door company in a mid-size market. They started SEO in month one with a bare site. That site had five pages and no blog at all. There was also no Google Business Profile optimization done. By month six, here is what a solid campaign looks like. Their agency added fourteen new service and location pages. They published two blog posts every single month. That adds up to twelve posts total over six months. In month one, they were not ranking for anything. By month six, they rank on page one for eight local keywords. They also sit on page two for another twelve keywords. Organic impressions started at under two hundred per month. Those impressions grew to around one thousand eight hundred per month. Calls from organic search reached maybe two to five per month. That is not a lot, but it is still early. The pipeline is actively being built right now. By month twelve, if the work continues, those calls double. They could even triple by that same point. That is how the math typically works for local contractors. This applies to contractors in a mid-competition market specifically. Your numbers will vary based on competition and market size. Budget and site history will also shape your results. But this gives you a solid ballpark to work from.

7:06 Red Flags at Month Six
Here are the things that should concern you. No keyword ranking movement at all after six months. Traffic going down from month one to month six. Your agency cannot show you which keywords they are targeting. The only metric they celebrate is impressions with no click data. They talk about domain authority as the main KPI. Domain authority is a third-party metric. It is not a Google metric. It is useful context, not the goal. They have added no new content to your site. They send reports but cannot explain the numbers on a call. They resist giving you access to Search Console or Analytics. That last one is a serious red flag. You should own your Search Console account. You should own your Analytics account.

7:51 What to Ask Your Agency Right Now
If you do not, fix that today. If you are six months in, here are the exact questions to ask. One, show me the keyword list you are targeting and where each one ranks today versus month one. Two, show me organic impressions and clicks in Search Console for the past six months. Walk me through the trend. Three, how many pages have been added to the site since we started? Four, how many calls or form fills came from organic traffic last month? Five, what backlinks have been built, and can you show me the source lists? Six, what is the plan for the next three months, and what should I expect to see by month nine? A good agency answers all six without hesitation. If they dodge, pivot, or say the data is complicated, that is information.

8:35 The Budget Conversation
The next question is always, what should this cost? Our SEO plans run five hundred to twenty-five hundred dollars a month, month to month, depending on market competition and scope. Below that range, you often get volume without quality, content that is produced but never ranks, links that dilute rather than build authority. I am not saying price equals quality. I am saying if you are paying three hundred dollars a month and expecting page one for competitive keywords in six months, the math does not work. Month six is not about calls. Not yet. Month six is about proof of work, rankings moving, content published, impressions growing, backlinks built, conversions tracked. If all five are happening, you are in a good campaign. Give it to month twelve. If two or fewer are happening, you have a conversation to have with your agency. And if none are happening, you have a decision to make. If you have watched this far and you are not sure what your campaign is actually producing, I want to help you figure that out. We do a free visibility teardown at SEO.PushLeads.com/audit. We look at your rankings, your content, your backlink profile, your Search Console data, and we tell you honestly what is working and what is not. No pitch deck, no pressure. If your current agency is doing great work, we will tell you that. You can also call us directly at eight two eight three four eight seven six eight six. The teardown is free, the information is real, and you will leave the call knowing exactly where you stand.