E53: How Long SEO Really Takes and Why Most Business Owners Get It Wrong (Part 1)
How long should SEO take for a local business?
That is one of the most common and most misunderstood questions in marketing. In this episode, I break down why SEO technically starts working right away, but why visible results depend on your competition, your market, and the foundation you are starting from.
I’ll walk through why competitors with ugly websites often still rank higher, why SEO is more important than ever with AI search tools like ChatGPT, and what actually drives rankings today.
If you want realistic expectations, a real strategy, and a clear path to dominating local search, this episode delivers exactly that.
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Sean Garner is a marketing consultant and Certified StoryBrand guide dedicated to helping small business owners grow and dominate their industries. He created the Marketing Domination podcast to teach people how to combine storytelling with strategic marketing to help businesses connect with customers and stand out online.
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MARKETING DOMINATION PODCAST
Introduction
Sean Garner [00:00]:
Here we go. So how long should SEO take for your local business? When should you start seeing results, and why are your competitors still ranking above you even though their websites aren’t as good as yours? We’re going to talk all about that in this episode of the Marketing Domination Podcast, covering the most commonly asked SEO questions for local service businesses.
How Long Should SEO Take for a Local Business?
Sean Garner [00:26]:
So when it comes to SEO, maybe you’re thinking about getting started for the first time, or maybe you’ve been doing SEO for a while and you’re just not seeing results. I get some version of this question all the time from prospective clients who reach out to us at Sean Garner Consulting.
The question is: how long does SEO take to work for local businesses?
And I don’t love this answer, but the honest answer is—it depends. You have to understand how SEO works and where you’re starting from in order to understand how long it’s going to take to see results.
For me, when I say “results,” I’m talking about ranking growth. So how long does SEO take to work? The reality is, SEO starts working immediately. But when you see results depends on where you are, where you’re trying to go, and who you’re competing against.
Sean Garner [01:59]:
I like to explain SEO this way. Think of entrepreneurship as a marathon. You’re a small business owner running this marathon, and SEO is part of your training.
Now imagine you’re racing against people who have been professional marathon runners for years—people who’ve won races, who train every single day. Meanwhile, you’ve been on the couch for 20 years and decide, as a New Year’s resolution, that you’re going to run a marathon.
It’s going to take you a while to catch up.
That doesn’t mean training doesn’t work. As you start training, you’ll see improvements. You’ll run longer, get faster, build endurance. SEO works the same way. You will see progress, but that doesn’t mean you’ll immediately outrank competitors who have been doing SEO for years.
Sean Garner [03:40]:
If your competitors already have a strong SEO foundation and they’re actively adding content, building backlinks, and optimizing their websites—and you’re just starting—it’s going to take time to catch them.
And here’s the key part: if you and your competitors are doing SEO at the same pace, and they’re already way ahead of you, it’s going to be very hard to close that gap quickly.
That doesn’t mean SEO doesn’t work. It means the more competitive your market is, the more effort, time, and sometimes money it’s going to take to catch up and eventually surpass your competition.
You need to understand where your competitors are and what they’re doing to have realistic expectations about your SEO timeline.
Is SEO Even Worth It Anymore With AI and ChatGPT?
Sean Garner [04:49]:
Next question: is SEO even worth it anymore?
Yes—100%.
SEO is definitely changing, but when we talk about SEO at our agency, we’re not just talking about “search engine optimization” in the old sense. We think of it as search everywhere optimization.
Your customers are still searching for products and services—they’re just doing it in more places. Google is still huge, especially for local service businesses. People are still searching “plumber near me,” “med spa near me,” “electrician near me,” and you want to show up higher than your competitors so you get that opportunity to win the customer.
Sean Garner [05:49]:
But now we’re also seeing things like ChatGPT, AI overviews, and other platforms playing a role. We’re getting messages from clients saying, “Hey, a customer found us through ChatGPT. They asked what provider to use, and we were recommended.”
That’s SEO.
So if your customers are still looking for your services—and they are—SEO is absolutely still worth it. The goal is to optimize your presence so you show up everywhere your customers are searching, not just in one place.
If you want to be found by more of your ideal customers, then yes—SEO is still one of the best investments you can make.
Sean Garner [05:11]:
And I’ll say this too—if you’re not investing in SEO, guess what? Your competition most likely is, especially now that there’s a renewed buzz around SEO because of AI. A lot of legacy businesses felt pretty confident and comfortable in their position on Google search. But with the rise of AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others, they’re realizing they need to optimize their content again to make sure they’re showing up in the right places. In just a bit, we’re going to talk about what you actually need to do to show up.
Why “Worse” Websites Sometimes Rank Higher?
Sean Garner [05:46]:
Next question: why does your competition rank above you if they have a worse website? Well, the first thing to ask is, what do you mean by “worse”? We use a five-pillar approach to holistic SEO to make sure businesses show up everywhere. One of those pillars is user experience—making sure your website looks good, has clear calls to action, and loads quickly.
But I see this all the time, especially in home services. You’ll see a company ranking number one with a website that looks terrible—like it was built 20 years ago. Maybe it’s just a picture of their truck, a headline that says “City Name Plumber,” and a phone number. Meanwhile, another business has a beautifully designed website and is ranking lower.
That’s because design alone is not the only ranking factor. A lot of these older businesses have been online for a long time. They’ve built a strong SEO foundation. They have authority from years of backlinks, chamber of commerce listings, local news mentions, and other sites linking to them. That authority is why they’re still ranking above you, even if their website looks worse.
Now, that should actually excite you. It means they have foundational authority, but they’re weak in other areas. If you come in with a great-looking website that converts well, clear brand messaging, the right keywords, and you implement a full holistic SEO strategy, you absolutely can outrank them.
Where it should feel more challenging is when your competition has been online longer than you, is doing more SEO than you, and also has a really good-looking website. That’s when you know you’re competing against businesses that are more digitally savvy, and you’re going to have to put in real work to beat them.
What Actually Moves the Needle in SEO Today?
Sean Garner [08:00]:
For the most part, websites that look better tend to rank higher over time because those businesses are usually investing in their entire digital strategy. Their websites look good, and they’re also doing the backend work you don’t see—technical SEO, content, links—which helps them rank higher in Google.
One last thing on this: people judge you based on how your website looks. One of the ranking factors is user experience, including bounce rate. When someone clicks on your website, do they take action or leave immediately? Your website is your digital storefront. If it looks cheap or unprofessional, people may assume your service is low quality too. A clean, professional, user-friendly website gets more engagement, and that absolutely helps with SEO.
Next question: what actually moves the needle in SEO today? We’ve done a lot of deep dives on this, but in simple terms, there are five pillars. There’s technical SEO, user experience, content strategy and content, authority through links and link building, and your Google Map Pack or Google Business Profile and where you’re showing up in the Google Map Pack.
What Is Technical SEO and Why Does It Matter First?
Sean Garner (09:42):
What you need to do for each one of those requires a different strategy. But remember, if even one of those pillars isn’t working, that creates a big opportunity for someone else to come in and beat you.
So if you truly want to grow in the rankings, you have to make sure you have that five-pillar approach locked down and that you’re maximizing every single one of them. Some of these are mostly one-time setup items, others require some upfront work plus monitoring, and a couple of them are constant, ongoing efforts.
So here’s the quick version of a holistic SEO strategy. I like to relate it to building a house or having a physical storefront. Your website should be thought of as your digital storefront.
I’ve talked about the five pillars of holistic SEO. The first one is technical SEO. This includes things you may have heard of like title tags, meta descriptions, site structure, and how your website is technically set up. Is it easy for Google and search crawlers to find and understand the information on your website?
Think of this like the foundation of a house. Does the house have a solid foundation that can actually support everything you want to build on top of it? Nobody would buy a house with a missing or broken foundation, and Google isn’t going to favor a website—no matter how good it looks—if the technical foundation isn’t sound.
This is one of the areas that is mostly a one-and-done cleanup. You fix the technical issues, optimize the foundation, and then monitor it as you add new pages. But for the most part, it’s about getting that base solid.
How Much Content Do You Really Need to Rank Higher?
Sean Garner (11:45):
The second part of your SEO strategy is content. This is the actual information on your website. How does Google know who the best result is? They don’t know what you do in the real world—you have to show them by putting that information online.
This includes service pages, location pages, and blog content that demonstrates your expertise. The more clearly you explain what you do and who you serve, the more topically relevant you become, and the more likely Google is to rank you higher.
Using the house analogy again, content is like the size of the house. How many rooms does it have? A ten-bedroom house has more value than a one-bedroom studio because of how much it can hold. Content works the same way—more relevant, high-quality content gives your site more authority and usefulness.
How Does Google Business Profile Affect Rankings?
Sean Garner (12:45):
The third pillar is user experience. When someone lands on your website, do they take action, or do they immediately bounce? Does the page load quickly, or does it feel clunky and slow?
Think about how Google evaluates this. If someone searches “IV therapy clinic Tulsa,” clicks on your site, and then immediately clicks back to the search results, Google sees that as a signal. It says, “We thought this was relevant, but users aren’t engaging with it.” So Google lowers that result and tries showing something else.
Search engines are always trying to give their users the best possible result. They’re not working against you—they’re trying to keep people on their platform so they can serve ads. That means they reward clarity, relevance, and engagement.
So again, content is like the size of the house, technical SEO is the foundation, and user experience is what makes people actually want to stay inside the house once they walk in.
Sean Garner [13:24]:
The third aspect is your authority. This includes things you may have heard of, like backlinks and link-building activities. Authority is how Google knows who to trust, because anyone can throw up a good-looking website, use AI to write a bunch of blogs, and publish a lot of content. But if there’s no authority behind it, it’s not going to rank. Using the house analogy, this is like location. Certain neighborhoods in your local community have higher home values simply because of where they’re located. Homes can be smaller, but still worth more because of the area. Digital authority works the same way. How many other websites are linking back to yours and signaling that it’s trustworthy? That’s one of the ranking factors Google looks at. That’s why digital PR, guest posting, chamber of commerce links, citations, and quality link placements all matter when it comes to getting your website to show up.
Sean Garner [14:59]:
People don’t want to move into a house with a bad layout, and it’s the same digitally with your website. Then we move to the next major piece, which ties all of this together. The fifth pillar of SEO, and what actually moves the needle for local service businesses, is your Google Business Profile. This includes building out citations and local directories and making sure all of that is set up correctly. When we talk about SEO strategy, technical SEO and user experience are more upfront things you handle early on. Content is ongoing, because Google wants to see you continually increasing your knowledge. Authority is ongoing as well, through consistent link building. Your Google Business Profile is a mix of both. There are upfront optimizations you need to do, but to keep it growing, you have to stay active by adding images, keeping information up to date, posting regularly, and most importantly, collecting reviews consistently. You don’t want to get a bunch of reviews and then stop. Review velocity matters. We’ve seen clients beat competitors with more reviews simply by getting reviews more consistently. If competitors got a lot of reviews years ago and then stopped, Google notices when another business is active and gaining momentum. That’s how you can overtake competitors, even if they have more reviews than you.
How Much Should You Pay for SEO?
Sean Garner [17:14]:
That’s our holistic approach, and that’s what it actually takes to move the needle for SEO today. If you’re missing one of those pieces, just like with a house, you won’t be able to maximize value. The same is true with rankings. So the next question is how much you should be paying for SEO and why it costs what it does. You can see there’s a lot involved, and it’s not cheap. If you’re paying very low prices, you’re probably getting low-quality work. At a bare minimum, SEO should cost at least $1,000 per month if you expect results. I’ve seen people say they’re paying $200 a month for SEO, but when you think about what actually needs to happen, that doesn’t add up. Technical SEO and user experience require tools and setup. Google Business Profile management can be partially automated, but it still needs human oversight. The biggest ongoing work is adding quality content consistently and building high-quality links. From an agency perspective, we negotiate link placements, pay for digital PR, and invest in authority-building for clients. That costs money. If you’re paying a few hundred dollars a month, don’t be confused or frustrated when SEO isn’t working. The bare minimum to see traction is around $1,000 a month. If someone is charging less, I’d want to see the results, because there’s always more that can be done.
Sean Garner [19:15]:
Quick side rant on SEO agencies. A lot of agencies undercut real SEO by offering fluff. They say they’re doing SEO because they provide technical audits, keyword reports, and dashboards. That sounds impressive, but if you don’t know what actually moves the needle, you’ll think SEO is happening when it’s not. After the upfront technical work, the real drivers are consistent content creation and high-quality backlinks. If an agency says it takes three to six months just to fix technical issues, find a different agency. That should be handled in month one. If they’re not publishing content regularly or building quality backlinks, you won’t grow. Cheap, spammy backlinks can actually hurt your rankings. So when agencies say they’re doing SEO but aren’t moving the needle, now you know why. Hopefully this gives you clarity on what it takes for SEO to work, why it’s worth it, why competitors may be outranking you, and what actually drives results. If you want someone to implement these strategies for you, that’s exactly what we do at Sean Garner Consulting. I’d love the opportunity to meet with you. Go to SeanGarner.co, book a call, and we’ll do a full audit of your website, SEO, and paid ads to help you grow, reach the people you’re called to serve, and dominate online.
