Choosing and working with an SEO agency
SEO agency no results after 6 months? What to do next
Written by the Top SEO Experts Team
Reviewed by Siddharth GangalLast updated 19 min read
Quick answer
Six months is long enough to expect early signals from an SEO agency, but not always steady leads. Look for indexed pages, rising impressions and tracked calls, and suspect the work or the site if they are missing. If they are there and leads are not, check tracking, search intent and your Business Profile.
Watch out The worst week to fire an agency is the one in which you discover your tracking was never switched on. You would be dismissing the one team that could have fixed it, and the next team would inherit the same blind spot.
We are an SEO agency, so weigh our view accordingly. The checks below work on any agency’s reports, and most take an hour or less.
Is six months long enough to expect SEO results?
Long enough for early signals, sometimes too short for steady leads. Google says some changes take effect in hours and others take several months, so any fixed deadline is a guess.
Google’s SEO Starter Guide says “some changes might take effect in a few hours, others could take several months,” and that not every change produces a noticeable impact. Google’s page on hiring an SEO adds that no one can guarantee a number one ranking.
Ahrefs published a study on 15 May 2025. It found that 1.74% of 1 million random URLs seen in September 2023 reached the top 10 within a year. In a second sample of 2 million English URLs created in October 2023, the figure was 6.11%.
In that study, 40.82% of the pages that did reach the top 10 got there within one month. Most pages in the samples never got there within a year.
Watch out That Ahrefs study was published on 15 May 2025 and covers random pages, not local service searches. It gives scale, not a schedule for your site.
Our view For a service business, our house timeline is 6 to 12 months or more before organic leads are steady. That is typical, not promised.
Our post on how long SEO takes explains what moves first.
So the month-six question isn’t “do I have leads?” It is “do I have the things that come before leads?”
What should an agency have delivered by each month?
By month six you should be able to point to indexed pages, shipped changes, rising impressions and tracked calls. The table is our view of a reasonable sequence for a small service business. Timing varies by site, and none of it is a promise.
| Month | What should exist | If it is missing |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Access granted, tracking verified, audit started | Ask for the audit and the tracking plan in writing |
| 2 | Technical fixes shipped, key pages indexable | Check the Page indexing report |
| 3 | New or rewritten service and location pages live | Ask for a dated list of what changed |
| 4 | Impressions rising for target queries | Check that pages are indexed and not blocked |
| 5 | Early rankings, first calls or forms from organic | Check tracking and the Business Profile |
| 6 | A trend you can read: impressions, clicks, calls | Request a recovery plan with dates |
For more on months one to three and the first lead signals, see the first 90 days with an SEO agency. See also when an agency should show calls. Both go deeper than this table.
What does a month-six report look like when it is working?
A working report shows visibility growing before leads do. This is a hypothetical, not a client result.
In month one a site had 4,000 impressions and 120 clicks. In month six it has 11,000 impressions and 210 clicks.
| Measure | Month one | Month six |
|---|---|---|
| Impressions | 4,000 | 11,000 |
| Clicks | 120 | 210 |
| Click-through rate | 3.0 percent | 1.9 percent |
Clicks rose 75 percent, from 120 to 210. Impressions rose 175 percent. Click-through rate fell from 3.0 percent (120 / 4,000) to 1.9 percent (210 / 11,000).
A falling rate alongside rising clicks is usually the shape of growth, because the site now appears for many more queries. Our post on CTR falling as visibility grows explains why.
If calls in that example went from 14 to 15, the next questions are which pages get the clicks and whether they’re the right pages. Whether to fire anyone comes later.
Check 1: are your key pages indexed?
If your service pages aren’t in Google’s index, no amount of content work will produce leads. Check this first. It’s free and takes ten minutes.
The same starter guide says to search your site with the site: operator. If you see results pointing to your site, you’re in the index. For a finer view, use the Page indexing report in Search Console.
What does the Page indexing report say?
Google’s Page indexing report help says “Don’t expect every URL on your site to be indexed.” Only canonical pages count.
Key takeaway The question isn’t whether all pages are indexed. It is whether your money pages are.
How do you test your ten key pages?
List your ten most important URLs and paste each into the URL Inspection tool. In the report’s “Why pages aren’t indexed” table, the labels that matter most for service pages are “URL marked ‘noindex’,” “URL blocked by robots.txt,” “Crawled - currently not indexed” and “Discovered - currently not indexed.”
The last two differ: Google has crawled the first but not indexed it, and has found the second without crawling it yet.
Our view The threshold is two or more of your ten key pages blocked or missing at month six. That calls for a written escalation to the agency, not more waiting. It’s also the cheapest fix on this list.
Our posts on a staging site getting indexed and the noindex header check cover two blockers that reports often miss. A sitemap won’t settle it either. Google’s sitemap documentation says a sitemap “doesn’t guarantee that all the items in your sitemap will be crawled and indexed.”
Check 2: can your tracking see a lead at all?
If tracking is broken, you can’t say SEO produced nothing, and neither can the agency. Many “no results” complaints turn out to be “no measurement.” Test this before blaming anyone.
Place a test call to every number on the site and submit every form. Confirm each appears in your call tracking and in GA4. Google defines a key event as “an event that measures an action that’s particularly important to the success of your business,” and you have to mark the event as one.
Then ask whoever answers the phone how many calls came from Google last month. Say the report shows 12 and the phone log shows 40. Your tracking sees 12 / 40 = 30 percent of calls, so you have a tracking gap and not an SEO gap.
Quick check Did every test call and every test form show up in your call tracking and in GA4? If not, you have a tracking gap, not an SEO gap.
Calls from your Business Profile are counted separately inside Google. Our post on SEO attribution explains how to add the sources together, and our guide to measuring SEO lists the reports we use.
Check 3: is your Business Profile doing its job?
For a local service business the Business Profile can drive as many calls as the website, so a weak profile can look like SEO failing. Check that it’s verified, complete and attracting actions.
Google’s Business Profile performance help shows calls, directions, website clicks and bookings, and says performance data is available only for verified profiles. Pull six months of calls and compare with the period before the agency started.
What does Google say about local ranking?
Google says local results are ranked mainly on relevance, distance and prominence, and that you can’t pay for a better local ranking. Prominence draws on links and reviews, so a profile with few reviews can stall even while the site improves.
Distance is out of everyone’s hands, and no agency can erase a closer competitor. Proximity and the map pack shows how to tell what is fixable.
If calls from the profile are rising while site leads are flat, the work may be paying off in a place your report doesn’t look.
Check 4: are impressions moving for the right queries?
Open the Search Console Performance report and compare the last three months with the three before. Impressions should grow for the services and cities you sell, not just for your brand name and loosely related blog topics.
Google’s Performance report help defines impressions as how often someone saw a link to your site, and clicks as how often someone clicked it. Filter by page and by query, and group the service pages together.
Match what you see to a cause:
- Impressions flat on service pages: the work isn’t reaching the pages that matter, or they aren’t indexed.
- Impressions up, clicks flat: pages are visible, but titles, snippets or positions are weak.
- Clicks up, calls flat: the traffic is the wrong kind, or the path to contacting you is broken.
- Everything up, leads still flat after 9 to 12 months: look at sales follow-up and the offer, not only SEO.
Our guide to the Search Console Performance report shows the filters we use for each case.
Want to apply this to your site?
Not sure where to start? Get a plan for your own business.
Check 5: what did the agency actually deliver?
Ask for a dated list of every change made to your site, every page created and every link earned. An agency doing the work can produce that quickly. If the answer is vague, or a monthly PDF, you have learned something.
What does Google’s hiring advice say?
That same hiring page suggests asking whether they will “share with me all the changes you make to my site,” and warns against secretive firms. It also says “Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire.”
That last line is about risk. Google’s spam policies list buying or selling links for ranking purposes as link spam.
They list scaled content abuse as many pages generated mainly to manipulate rankings. Sites that violate them may rank lower or not appear at all.
What should you look at in the work itself?
Look at the work itself. Are there location pages that differ only by a city name? Our post on location pages without doorways shows the difference.
Google’s helpful content guidance lists warning signs such as lots of content on many topics in hope some performs, and extensive automation.
Check who is doing the work, too. Our piece on whether your agency is outsourcing explains what to ask. The post on how to read an SEO proposal shows which promises to hold them to.
Check 6: is the market or the offer the problem?
Sometimes the SEO is sound and the demand is thin. If few people search for what you sell in your area, or competitors are far stronger, the ceiling is lower than the proposal implied.
Use Google Trends for your main service terms. Google’s traffic drop guide suggests it to check whether a drop was only for your site or throughout the web, and it shows seasonal patterns. Then search your services in your cities and look honestly at who ranks and what their listings look like.
What happens after the click?
Also check what happens after the click. A page that ranks but has no phone number above the fold, a slow form or an unclear offer turns visits into nothing. Our SEO service starts with this kind of diagnosis before any content is written.
Finally, ask whether the leads you do get turn into jobs. If your close rate is the problem, more SEO won’t fix it.
The six checks fit in one picture. Run them in this order.
- IndexingAre your ten key pages in Google's index?
- TrackingDoes a test call and a test form show up?
- Business ProfileIs it verified, complete and getting actions?
- ImpressionsAre they rising for the right queries?
- DeliverablesCan the agency list every change it made?
- Market and offerIs demand thin, or is the offer unclear?
Should you keep the agency, fix the problem, or switch?
Switch when the agency can’t show shipped work, won’t share access or a change log, or can’t explain the gap in writing. Stay and fix when the cause is tracking, indexing or a profile problem that is now visible.
These rules are our view, not an industry standard.
| What you found | Our read | Next step |
|---|---|---|
| Key pages blocked or not indexed | Agency miss, fixable | Ask for a dated fix plan |
| Tracking broken | Nobody can judge yet | Fix it, then wait 8 to 12 weeks |
| Impressions rising, leads flat | Early, or wrong queries | Segment by page type, review intent |
| No shipped work you can list | Real problem | Request a change log, then escalate |
| No access or reports shared | Red flag | Get read access before any other step |
| Guarantee language or paid links | Risk to your site | Review the contract, get a second opinion |
| Everything sound, market is thin | Not an agency issue | Reset the goal or budget |
Ask for a written plan with dates for the weak items, and judge whether it’s specific. “Continue optimizing” is not a plan. Attach your list of gaps to a message like this one:
Please send within five business days:
- A dated list of every change made to our site since we started. Include pages created or edited, redirects, technical fixes and links earned with URLs.
- For each gap in the attached list, what you will do, who will do it and by what date.
We will review your answer one week after you send it.
One more rule, on money. Treat what you’ve already paid as spent.
In a hypothetical, a $3,000 monthly fee over six months is $18,000 gone whichever way you decide. The only useful question is what the next $3,000 buys, and whether the agency can show you in writing.
How do you switch agencies without losing ground?
Own the assets before you give notice. Confirm you own the domain, Search Console, Analytics, the Business Profile and the CMS login.
Add the new team first, then remove the old one. Don’t change URLs or site structure in the same month.
- Own the assetsConfirm you own the domain, Search Console, Analytics, the Business Profile and the CMS login.
- Add the new team firstThen remove the old one. Do not change URLs or site structure in the same month.
- Clean up accessRemove old tokens and transfer primary ownership of the profile to you.
- Export what existsSave reports, keyword lists and content.
What does Google say about Search Console owners?
Google’s Search Console help says only owners can add or remove other owners. It warns that if all verified owners are removed, remaining users lose access after a grace period.
It also says a removed owner’s verification token keeps working until it is deleted. So remove old tokens when the agency leaves.
What about the Business Profile owner?
For the profile, Google’s owners and managers help says a profile has only one primary owner, who can’t remove themselves until primary ownership is transferred. If the agency holds that role, ask them to transfer it to you before you give notice.
Export reports, keyword lists and content. Our posts on who owns your SEO assets and SEO contract terms cover what to put in writing.
What does the data not show?
We have no industry figure for how often agencies deliver by month six, and we wouldn’t trust one. Timelines depend on the site, the competition and the starting point.
- The Ahrefs study was published on 15 May 2025 and covers random pages, not local service searches.
- Our month-by-month table is a working view, not a standard, and some sites move faster or slower.
- The month-six report example and the $3,000 fee are hypothetical. The numbers are illustrative.
- Search Console shows queries and clicks, not whether a visitor became a customer.
- Business Profile data covers verified profiles only.
We also have no US home-services case study to cite yet, so we claim no typical result here.
What does this mean for you?
Do not judge on leads alone at month six. Judge on the things that come before leads: indexed pages, shipped changes, rising impressions and tracked calls. If those exist, tracking, search intent and your Business Profile are the next places to look.
If they do not exist, ask the agency for a dated change log and a written plan with dates. A clear answer is a good sign. A vague answer tells you more than the report does.
What should you do this week if your SEO agency shows no results?
Pick one hour and run the checks in order:
- Test indexing on your ten key pages
- Place a test call and submit a test form
- Pull six months of Business Profile calls
- Compare Search Console impressions by page type
Then email the agency two requests: a dated change log and a written plan for any gap you found. Their answer tells you more than the report does. If you want an outside read, run the website SEO checker on your top pages first.
FAQ
Is six months long enough to judge an SEO agency?
Long enough to judge the work and the early signals, not always the leads. By month six you should see indexed pages, rising impressions, tracked calls and forms, and a written log of what shipped. Steady leads typically take 6 to 12 months or more, a planning range and not a promise.
What should an SEO agency have done in the first six months?
At minimum, the agency should have done these things. It set up access and tracking, audited the site, and fixed whatever blocked indexing. It shipped pages or edits you can list, worked your Business Profile if you rely on local search, and reported in calls or forms.
If you can’t name one thing that changed on your site, ask for the change log.
Can I leave an SEO agency before the contract ends?
Read the contract before you decide. Terms vary, and some carry minimum commitments or notice periods.
Find the cancellation clause, who owns the content and the accounts, and what you owe on exit. We are not lawyers, so have counsel review anything binding before you send notice.
How do I know if my SEO agency is doing any work?
Ask for a dated list of changes: pages created or edited, redirects, technical fixes, and links earned with their URLs. Then check it against your site and Search Console yourself. Google’s guidance for hiring an SEO says to ask whether they will share all the changes they make to your site.
Should I stop SEO if I see no leads after six months?
Not until you have checked indexing, tracking and your Business Profile. If one of them is broken, the fix is cheap and the SEO may never have had a fair test. If all three are sound and nothing has moved, ask the agency for a written recovery plan with dates, then decide.
How do I switch SEO agencies without losing rankings?
Keep everything that exists. Confirm you own the domain, Search Console, Analytics and the Business Profile as primary owner before you give notice. Export reports and content, add the new team before removing the old one, and leave the site’s structure and URLs alone for that first month.
Sources
- Google Search Central, SEO Starter Guide (accessed 22 Oct 2026)
- Google Search Central, Do you need an SEO professional? (accessed 22 Oct 2026)
- Ahrefs, How long does it take to rank in Google? (A study by Ahrefs) (published 15 May 2025, accessed 23 Oct 2026)
- Google Search Console Help, Page indexing report (accessed 22 Oct 2026)
- Google Search Central, Sitemaps overview (accessed 22 Oct 2026)
- Google Analytics Help, About key events (accessed 22 Oct 2026)
- Google Business Profile Help, Understand your Business Profile performance and insights (accessed 22 Oct 2026)
- Google Business Profile Help, Improve your local ranking on Google (accessed 22 Oct 2026)
- Google Search Console Help, Performance report (Search results) (accessed 22 Oct 2026)
- Google Search Central, Spam policies for Google web search (accessed 22 Oct 2026)
- Google Search Central, Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content (accessed 22 Oct 2026)
- Google Search Central, Debugging drops in Google Search traffic (accessed 22 Oct 2026)
- Google Search Console Help, Manage users and owners (accessed 22 Oct 2026)
- Google Business Profile Help, Manage your Business Profile owners and managers (accessed 22 Oct 2026)
Check your top pages with the website SEO checker, then Get Your Organic Growth Plan.
Want to apply this to your site?
Not sure where to start? Get a plan for your own business.
