What a competent month looks like
The shape is fairly consistent across sites, and knowing it lets you tell an agency working from a plan from one working from a template.
| When | Most of the work | What you should see |
|---|---|---|
| Month 1 | Diagnosis: crawl, index coverage, speed, what each page targets against what it ranks for | A ranked list of fixes with reasons, not a 90-page export |
| Months 1–2 | The technical fixes at the top of that list, plus the Google Business Profile if you serve a place | Pages getting indexed that were not; faster pages on mobile |
| Months 2–4 | Content: improving pages already close, then writing the ones that are missing | Impressions rising before clicks do — that order is normal |
| Months 3+ | Internal linking, more content, and earning citations from real places | Clicks following impressions; more distinct search terms |
| Ongoing | Watching what moved, dropping what did not, and doing more of what did | A monthly note in plain English saying which of those it was |
Source: Cybrial’s own working pattern, written from client work rather than from a methodology deck.
The row people find surprising is the third. Impressions rise before clicks, often by weeks, because a page starts appearing at position 30 before it reaches position 8. An agency reporting flat traffic in month two is not necessarily failing; an agency that cannot show impressions moving by month three probably is.
The four kinds of work, plainly
- Technical — can Google reach, render and index your pages, and how fast are they on a phone on mobile data. Mostly front-loaded, mostly invisible, and the foundation for everything after it.
- Content — what each page is written to target, whether that matches what it actually ranks for, and where two of your own pages are competing with each other. This is where most of the ongoing time goes.
- Authority — being mentioned and linked by places that are themselves credible. Slow, hard to buy honestly, and the part most inflated in proposals.
- Measurement — conversion tracking, Search Console, and knowing which enquiries came from where. Without it every other conversation is guesswork dressed as reporting.
A proposal heavy on the third and silent on the first and fourth is worth reading twice. Links are the easiest thing to sell because they sound like the hard part, and the easiest thing to fake because a report can list them.
What you should actually receive each month
One page, in plain English, answering three questions: what was done, what changed, and what happens next. That is it. A dashboard is not a report — it is a place you can go and look, which is a different and lesser thing.
Two figures worth insisting on, because they are hard to dress up. Distinct search terms your site appears for, which is the honest measure of whether you are reaching more of the market. And enquiries, counted properly — including phone taps, which for most service businesses are the majority and are the most commonly missed.
Two figures worth ignoring. Rankings for a hand-picked list of terms, because the list can be chosen after the fact. And “keywords in the top 100”, which counts positions nobody has ever clicked.
Should you hire someone or do it yourself?
A genuine amount of this is doable alone, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise on a page selling the service.
- Claim and complete your Google Business Profile, and ask ten customers for a review. For a business serving a place, that will out-earn the first several months of any small retainer.
- Open Search Console and read the Pages report. It tells you which pages Google has indexed and which it has not, and why. That is not an estimate — it is Google telling you.
- Write the pages your competitors will not: what you charge, how long it takes, what happens if it goes wrong. Those are the searches people run before they call.
What is genuinely hard to do alone is the judgement — reading your pages against the results that beat them and deciding which gap is closable this year. And the discipline: doing something every month for a year when nothing visible happens in the first three.
Five questions that reveal everything
- “Who actually does the work, and how many accounts do they have?” At £300 a month the honest answer is a small number of hours, and that is fine if it is said out loud.
- “What will you do in month one before anything is published?” If conversion tracking and index coverage are not in the answer, keep looking.
- “Show me last month’s report for another client, redacted.” One page in plain English is a good sign. Forty pages of charts is not.
- “What would you tell me not to bother with?” Anybody who cannot name something is selling, not advising.
- “Who owns the accounts and the content?” You should. It should not be a question that needs asking twice.
And one to ask yourself: can you leave? A rolling monthly arrangement with no minimum term keeps the pressure on the person doing the work, which is where it belongs.
