The first 90 days of an SEO project

The first few months are typically when business owners give up, because the numbers are barely moving while the invoices keep coming. You can avoid this by agreeing in advance on deliverables rather than promised rankings.

Below is how I actually structure the first three months, detailing what happens each month, what you receive and what to look out for.

Before anything changes, I document the starting point: rankings, traffic, enquiries, technical errors and what AI assistants currently say about the business. Without a baseline, no one can determine later what the work actually delivered.

This also involves access: Search Console, Analytics, Google Business Profile and the website itself. You remain the owner of all these accounts; I work as an invited user.

First, resolving the errors holding everything else back: non-indexed pages, slow mobile loading speeds, duplicate titles, missing redirects from a previous redesign and pages competing against each other.

Alongside this, keyword research and competitor analysis. By the end of the month, you have a page plan: which keyword maps to which page, what needs rewriting, what should be merged and what new content is required.

Now the plan is put into action. The commercially most important pages are rewritten with a direct answer at the top, explicit facts and a clear next step. Titles and meta descriptions are made unique for every page.

The site structure is also put in order: navigation, internal links and structured data. During this month, you often see the first movement in Search Console impressions — not yet in rankings, but in the number of search queries you appear for.

With the foundations in place, new content is added: the pages from the plan that didn't exist yet, typically a comparison or pricing page and an explanatory guide. Every piece is linked internally to the relevant service page.

External steps also begin: completing the business profile, collecting reviews, aligning citations and acquiring the first relevant links. At the end of this month, the second AI measurement is run, allowing you to compare progress against the baseline.

Realistic: more impressions and appearing for more search queries, the first gains on less competitive keywords, and a technically sound website. What you shouldn't expect: a top-three ranking for your primary keyword within ninety days.

Nobody can guarantee a ranking, and anyone who does is selling something that doesn't exist. What can be agreed on: the work that gets done each month and the figures reported back to you.

Good: you see concrete deliverables every month, technical errors decrease, impressions rise, and you can verify what was reported directly in your own Search Console.

Not good: three months of reports without a single page being changed, an audit that never gets implemented, or explanations you can't verify. If that's the case, simply ask: what changes went live this month?