E54: How Long SEO Really Takes and Why Most Business Owners Get It Wrong (Part 2)
If you’re a local service business owner trying to figure out why your competitors show up above you on Google, this episode gives you clarity.
I walk through the real difference between local SEO and traditional organic SEO and explain why you need both strategies working together if you want full visibility. From optimizing your Google Business Profile to building authority through content and backlinks, he breaks down what actually impacts rankings.
You’ll also learn how often you should be publishing content, why SEO doesn’t stop once you hit number one, what causes sudden ranking drops, and how to tell if your SEO agency is truly delivering results.
If you want a straightforward explanation of what moves the needle and how to protect your rankings long term, this episode lays it out clearly and practically.
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Get Your FREE Marketing Domination Checklist: https://www.seangarner.co/
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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
EPISODE 54 TRANSCRIPTION
Introduction
Sean Garner [00:00]:
So what’s the difference between local SEO and regular SEO? How often should you be adding content like blogs to your website? And once your website starts ranking, can you stop SEO? We’re going to answer those and other common SEO questions that local service business owners have on this episode of the Marketing Domination Podcast.
So what is the difference between local SEO and regular SEO? In reality, it’s the same core concept. It’s all about being found everywhere your customers are looking. Traditionally, SEO stands for search engine optimization. At Sean Garner Consulting, we like to call it search everywhere optimization, because it’s about showing up wherever your customers are searching.
But when people ask this question, what they’re usually referring to is the difference between where you show up on Google. On Google, there are five main places you can show up. Two are paid and three are earned. The paid spots include LSA ads and PPC ads. The earned placements include AI overviews, the organic search results (the SERPs), and the map pack.
Most of the time, when people say “local SEO,” they’re talking about showing up in the map pack. When they say “regular SEO,” they’re usually referring to ranking in the traditional organic search results below the map.
Now, the key difference is that those areas use slightly different ranking factors.
If you’re a local service business, the map pack is typically the most important place to focus. That’s what shows up first when someone searches for something like “plumber near me” or “med spa in Tulsa.” The biggest ranking factors for the map pack include proximity (which you can’t control), optimization of your Google Business Profile, relevance, and review signals.
You want to make sure your Google Business Profile is fully optimized. That means correct categories, services listed properly, updated business hours, real photos, consistent NAP information, and ongoing activity. Reviews matter a lot here, especially review velocity and engagement.
When it comes to traditional organic SEO (the regular search results), the ranking factors lean more heavily on your website. That includes technical SEO, content depth, internal linking, backlinks, user experience, and topical authority. So while both local and regular SEO overlap, local SEO puts more weight on your Google Business Profile and proximity signals, while regular SEO leans more heavily on your website structure and authority.
Now, how often should you be adding content like blogs to your website?
If you want to grow in rankings, you should be adding content consistently. A good baseline is at least once per week. That doesn’t mean random fluff articles. It means helpful, relevant content that demonstrates expertise in your industry.
Content shows Google that your business is active and knowledgeable. It also helps you rank for more keywords over time. Think of it like expanding the size of your digital footprint. The more relevant, high-quality content you add, the more opportunities you create to show up in search.
Finally, once your website starts ranking, can you stop SEO?
Short answer: no.
SEO is not a one-time project. It’s an ongoing strategy. If you stop adding content, stop building authority, stop optimizing your Google Business Profile, your competitors won’t. And if they continue investing while you stop, they will eventually overtake you.
Think of SEO like going to the gym. Once you get in shape, you don’t just stop working out and expect to stay in shape forever. Maintenance still requires consistency.
That doesn’t mean you have to keep increasing spend forever, but you do need to maintain momentum. At a minimum, that means continuing content updates, monitoring technical performance, building authority, and actively managing your Google Business Profile.
If you want help implementing these strategies so your business can grow and dominate online, that’s exactly what we do at Sean Garner Consulting. Head to SeanGarner.co, book a call, and we’ll walk through a full audit of your website and SEO so you know exactly what needs to happen next.
Let’s get you found everywhere your customers are looking.
How to Optimize Your Google Business Profile
Sean Garner [01:08]:
Are you adding content to it on a regular basis? Is every part of it filled out? Are you adding images? Are you making sure that it’s fully optimized and continuing to add fresh content?
The next big factor for local SEO is reviews. Reviews are huge. You want to make sure you are constantly getting new reviews. And if possible, you want those reviews to be optimized. That means customers are mentioning the specific service you performed and the city where it was performed.
Then when you reply to those reviews, you’re doing the same thing. For example: “Hey, thank you so much for letting us handle your drain cleaning in your Tulsa home.” You’re reinforcing those service and location keywords in your responses.
The last part for local SEO is making sure the landing page connected to your Google Business Profile is properly set up and optimized with strong authority.
For example, a lot of service businesses may have multiple Google Business Profiles, but they send all of them to the same homepage. That’s a mistake.
We see this often with home service companies trying to break into new markets. Your Google Business Profile will usually only have a strong radius of about 10 to maybe 20 miles, depending on competition. If you’re in a competitive market, proximity becomes a limiting factor.
Yes, we’ve had clients in low-competition areas get 60–90 mile visibility, but in major metro areas like Dallas, Houston, Tulsa, or in industries like plumbing, HVAC, med spas, or medical services, you’re not going to get that kind of range.
If you want to break into new markets, you often need additional locations and additional Google Business Profiles.
When you do that, you should not send every profile to the same homepage. Instead, you create specific city landing pages.
For example:
yourwebsite.com/dallas
yourwebsite.com/denton
Each Google Business Profile should link to the city-specific landing page that matches that location. The content on that landing page should reinforce the same services and geographic relevance tied to that specific profile.
That alignment between your GBP and landing page strengthens your local SEO significantly.
Now, how do you rank in regular SEO — meaning the traditional organic search results?
That comes down to a holistic SEO strategy. The quick version includes four main pillars:
Technical SEO – A solid foundation. Proper site structure, crawlability, clean code, optimized title tags and meta descriptions.
User Experience (UX) – Fast loading, mobile friendly, clear calls to action, and a website that converts once visitors land on it.
Content Strategy – Consistently adding service pages, location pages, and blog content that demonstrates topical authority.
Authority – Building backlinks, citations, and digital trust signals so Google sees your website as credible.
When those pillars are strong, you’ll rank higher in traditional organic search results.
And here’s something important: ranking in the map pack and ranking in organic search are related — but they are not the same.
You’ll sometimes see businesses ranking number one organically but not appearing in the map pack. That’s often because they have strong website authority but weak reviews or GBP optimization.
You’ll also see the opposite — a newer business ranking well in the map pack due to strong reviews and activity, but not ranking organically because their website authority isn’t built yet.
You need both strategies if you want full dominance.
Now, how often should you be publishing SEO content?
You should be adding content consistently. Your website is not a “build it once and forget it” asset. It needs to grow over time.
A strong cadence for most local service businesses is at least once per week. That doesn’t mean random blog fluff. It means intentional content — service expansions, FAQs, blog articles answering customer questions, location pages, and topical content that reinforces your expertise.
The goal is to show Google — and AI platforms — that you are active, relevant, and knowledgeable.
Consistency compounds.
If you want help implementing this type of holistic SEO strategy for your local service business, that’s exactly what we do at Sean Garner Consulting. Head to SeanGarner.co, book a call, and we’ll walk through a full audit of your website and SEO to show you exactly what needs to happen next.
Let’s get you ranking everywhere your customers are searching.
How to Rank in Traditional Organic Search Results
Sean Garner [03:10]: Like we said earlier, one of those pillars of SEO in a holistic SEO strategy is content. We want to make sure that we're always adding content to our website on a regular basis. Now, we don’t want to just throw slop up there. We want to build what’s called topical authority. In the eyes of Google and these large language models like ChatGPT, we want to show that we’re covering the topic from every different angle. We’re not just stuffing a bunch of keywords onto a landing page or a blog article and thinking that it’s going to work.
We have to show that we’re experts and that we have a unique perspective. The best way I’ve found for creating blog-style content, especially if you’re not a writer, is to speak it out. For us, all of our blog content comes from these podcast episodes. That way, I don’t have to sit down and write a full article. I can talk about a topic, and then my copy team extracts what I said and turns it into blog articles.
If you don’t have a podcast, just record a Loom video or use your phone and talk through a topic and how you would handle it. Take that transcript and turn it into blog articles that are unique to you. Please do not think you’re doing content marketing by going to ChatGPT and saying, “Write me an article about Botox in my city,” and expecting it to rank. It won’t, because it’s not unique. It’s pulling from what’s already out there. We want to be the content others are crawling because we’re creating original, experience-based insights.
We also need to be adding location pages, service pages, and subservice pages as we expand what we offer. The heart of SEO is being clear and proving to Google and these crawlers why you deserve to rank where you want to rank.
How Often Should You Publish SEO Content?
Sean Garner [05:06]: Everything that exists in the real world has to be articulated online. It doesn’t matter what you know in your head. It matters what you put on your website. All those years of experience, testimonials, and services you provide—if they’re not clearly and strategically presented online, Google won’t know, and it won’t show your content.
That’s what SEO is: taking what you do in the real world and optimizing it so you can clearly prove to Google why you deserve to rank.
As for how often you should add content, I recommend at least once a week. You can’t really overdo it, though daily is usually excessive for most small businesses. One to two times per week is a great cadence. For our clients, we typically publish at least one article per week, sometimes two or three depending on how competitive the market is and how large the site is.
On our agency site, we post four to five pieces of content per week because we repurpose podcast episodes, show notes, guest appearances, webinars, and trainings. That allows us to keep everything fresh and unique. Quality matters, but aim for at least once a week.
Most small business owners have a website, but it doesn’t actually work. If your site isn’t generating leads or revenue, it’s just an online brochure. That’s why I created the Click the Client Website Wireframe Template. It’s the exact framework we use to design high-converting homepages. It walks you through the 10 must-have sections every homepage needs so your site actually works. You can download it for free at seangarner.co/websitewireframe.
Now back to the show.
A great question I get is: Can I stop SEO once I’m ranking number one? I love that question because it shows people are thinking strategically.
SEO is not a one-time task. It’s ongoing optimization. Imagine telling a brand-new client, “We just built this new website,” and expecting it to instantly rank. That’s not how it works. SEO is a continuous effort of maintaining your foundation, adding expertise, building authority, and staying ahead of competitors.
Can You Stop SEO Once You’re Ranking Number One?
Sean Garner [09:33]: We just added all of these words on our website. How come it's not ranking yet? If it was that easy, every business would do that. They would just go to their website and type in “Botox services” or “hormone therapy,” add these magic words, and all of a sudden be showing up at number one. But it doesn’t work that way. Google’s job is to show the most relevant result for their customers. They have an algorithm, and everything has to be optimized to support that.
You have to realize that means it’s never going to be done. Because as soon as you get to the top, you can’t just sit back and say, “I’m number one. Nobody can catch me.” It doesn’t work like that. There’s always competition doing this at the same time.
So when can you stop doing SEO? How long is it going to take? It has everything to do with where you’re starting, where your competition is starting, how much you’re doing, and how much they’re doing. If you’re down here in rankings, authority, and content, and they’re up here, and you’re both creating the exact same amount of content and backlinks each week, that gap is always going to be there.
If you do rank where you want to rank, I don’t believe you can stop. You may be able to slow down if your competition isn’t doing anything. But if they continue investing and eventually pass you, then you’re behind the eight ball. We want to make sure that doesn’t happen.
If you truly want to dominate, you want to get to the top and then get so far ahead of your competition that it becomes almost impossible for them to catch up. To do that, you have to keep investing. Maybe not at the same volume as when you first started, but you should always be doing it.
All SEO is making sure your website is technically sound, making sure it converts well, making sure you’re adding information to prove your expertise and authority, and making sure you have other links pointing to it because you’re trustworthy. In the real world, you want a solid foundation, a great experience for people, continued learning, and consistent referrals. It’s the same thing with SEO.
Why Did My Rankings Suddenly Drop?
Sean Garner [11:35]: You can’t just stop it whenever you want. We have to always be doing it so we can continue to win and dominate our market.
Sean Garner [11:35]: Next is why did my rankings drop suddenly? So maybe you were ranking in a certain position or at number one, and then all of a sudden you see your rankings drop and you don’t know why. There are a couple of ways to look into this and troubleshoot it.
One, it’s always good to ask: has there been a recent Google core algorithm update? Has Google changed something? Did they roll out something new and maybe penalize your website or reclassify how it should be ranked?
When you see rankings drop, it can be frustrating. You can freak out and think, “I don’t understand why it’s not showing.” Is it a short-term thing or a long-term trend? If it’s slowly and consistently going down over time, you’ve got an issue. If it was just one day or one week and then it bounced back up, don’t worry about that. That was probably just an algorithm fluctuation.
We see big spikes and drops across clients. If it’s just a one- or two-day spike or dip and then it normalizes, that’s just the algorithm shifting. But if you’re seeing impressions and rankings consistently decline, something is wrong.
Typically, it’s a technical issue. Maybe you recently updated your website and changed your domain without realizing it. A common thing I see is switching from the www version to the non-www version. Visually, the website looks the same, but in Google’s eyes, that can look like a completely new website. If you don’t properly handle that inside Google Search Console and transfer everything correctly, it can crush your rankings.
Another possibility is competition. Maybe a competitor came into town and started spending a lot more money on SEO. This ties back to the previous question—can you stop SEO? No. Because what happens is competitors can take over your real estate if you stop.
We love seeing lazy markets. When legacy businesses have taken their foot off the gas, we can come in, work hard, and get results quickly. We did this with a client, PJ Doors, a garage door company in Richmond, Indiana. There were legacy businesses that had been around for 15 or 20 years but weren’t actively doing SEO. Within 90 days, we got PJ Doors ranking number one in a 25- to 30-mile radius because the competition got comfortable and complacent.
So if your rankings drop, most likely something is wrong technically, your strategy broke, you stopped doing SEO, or a competitor ramped up their efforts. That’s why you keep doing SEO.
How to Tell If Your SEO Company Is Actually Doing the Work
Sean Garner [13:13]: Next question is how do I know if my SEO company is lying to me? This is a big frustration for me because the industry is starting to feel like the used car sales lot of the digital world. A lot of people think they’re buying SEO, but because business owners aren’t educated on what SEO actually is, they don’t understand what they’re paying for.
Sean Garner [15:13]: They think that they’re doing SEO, but just like we talked about with a holistic SEO strategy, they’re not getting the whole thing. So they’re not really going to see results. Somebody might be paying for SEO services and just getting technical SEO monitoring and reporting.
That’s not going to move the needle. That’s just going to make sure what you have isn’t broken. If you truly want good results with SEO, you need the full strategy, just like we do for our clients at Sean Garner Consulting.
One thing I believe every business should do if you’re working with an SEO agency is demand transparency. You should have access to everything. They should not be keeping ownership of reporting tools like Google Search Console or Google Analytics. You should have direct access. You shouldn’t have to go through them to get your own data.
There should be a reporting dashboard where you can always see what’s going on with your website. There should be at least a quarterly meeting cadence, if not more often, where they explain what they’re doing and the results you’re getting. A lot of agencies throw around big words to confuse clients, but it should be simple: here’s what we did, here are the results, and here’s the data to prove it.
To know if they’re lying to you, you have to be educated. That’s why I’m glad you’re listening to content like this. We love teaching local service business owners what good marketing looks like so you can hold agencies accountable. This is your business. You don’t want to waste time and money. You want to make sure they’re implementing a holistic strategy that actually grows your business.
Here’s the quick version: if they’re not adding pages to your website on a monthly basis, they’re missing a big opportunity. If they’re not adding backlinks to your website on a regular basis, you’re missing a big opportunity. Those are the two biggest needle movers in SEO. The other stuff, like technical SEO, is important—but it’s foundational. It’s not the growth engine.
What Actually Moves the Needle in SEO
Sean Garner [18:02]:
Your UX, or user experience, and technical SEO are more foundational. Those are typically one-time setup items, though as you continually add content to your website, you do need to revisit and maintain them. But if that’s all your agency is doing—technical SEO, reporting, and keyword tracking—that’s just giving you reports. It’s not moving the needle.
If you want to grow your SEO, you have to be adding content and adding backlinks consistently. From a local SEO standpoint, they also need to be helping you generate reviews and optimize your Google Business Profile—adding images, publishing posts, and making sure it’s continually growing.
If you’ve been frustrated with this because you’ve tried to do it on your own, your rankings are dropping, you’re not able to consistently add content, or you’re working with an agency that’s not delivering results, we’d love the opportunity to work with you at Sean Garner Consulting.
We help local service business owners grow their businesses and dominate their industries so you can serve the people you’re called to serve.
If you’d like to work with us, go to our website at SeanGarner.co and book a call with me. I’ll personally do a deep-dive audit of your website, review your SEO, and show you exactly how things are performing. Then we’ll see if it’s a good fit to work together and help you stand out online.
Have an awesome day. We’ll talk soon.
