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How long should a new website retain a SEO agency for?
Posted by on November 14, 2025 at 3:54 pmI had hired an SEO agency for a 3 month contract for my new website and the initial contract is over.
I understand SEO results take time and 3 months are not enough. But I am at crossroads because I am due to renew the contract for another 3 months and I am unsure if the work they have done so far is satisfactory. But then again it's too early to say.
I have seen my website ranking for new keywords but at postions like 50-70.
In your experience what is a minimum time the SEO Agency should be retained once the basics have been covered.
Also should I only focus on link building or have a normal seo contract as the initial audit, technical seo, meta and schema have been taken care of and I am not changing anything from the main website other than adding new blog post.
Thanks in advance.
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1 Reply
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>I understand SEO results take time and 3 months are not enough.
I think 3 months for a brand new domain are too soon. I typically buy domains 3 months out and put up basic WP sites and let them soak up the sun for a bit and then pick the best one and move with that
Because I dont have a dog in the race here – can I play the devils advocate and lets pretend I’m the owner of your company and the main shareholder you play the role of the CEO
# Managing an SEO project means appreciating SEO projects
Whatever philosophy your SEO team practises on (Tech, Content, PageRank) – then they must have metrics to show if its a succes?
>I am unsure if the work they have done so far is satisfactory. But then again it’s too early to say.
# CEO Question time
But when you hired them, what metrics did you agree?
If 3 months is too little, why is 3 months a goal?
What other goals did you have?
What metrics should have been compete in 3 months?
If you know that 3 months isn’t enough, why agree to 3 months?
What if this SEO team is really good and now you’re risking losing them?
Equally, how do you not know that they are not doing anyhting?
Where did you start?
Who are our competitors?
Have they moved?
# Basic SEO analysis
You cannot separate PageRank and authority from Google SEO – the Google SEO starter guide says so.
Every KD (keyword difficulty score) is based on the top ten sites that ranks’ DA score – which is a reverse engineer of the old PageRank value (if it was still a number, which its not).
So what are you doing to obtain authority?
What pages do rank and why?
How did that happen?
Are no pages ranking?
Content SEO Analysis (if you dont like pagerank)
Who is linking to it?
How much was produced
how much was effective?
Why did people not link to it?
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I’ve worked for ten years in the seo agencies. It depends on your industry, “how competitive, keyword range, development process, etc,” you have to wait at least 6 months to see what comes.
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For a new website, I think 6–12 months, not 3. Positions 50–70 mean Google’s noticing you, now you need compounding work: technical fixes as they pop up, structured content clusters, internal links, and measured link building/digital PR. Renew, but switch to a month-to-month or 90-day plan with clear KPIs: pages shipped, topical clusters completed, referring domains earned, impressions/clicks and rank movement (e.g., 50–70 → 20–30). Don’t buy “links only.” You’ll stall without ongoing content, on-page tuning, and GBP/local citations if relevant. Require transparent reporting from GA4/GSC, a roadmap, and demoed wins. If they can’t show progress and a plan, change agencies.
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Depends on country/region, language and niche.
A specialised travel agency in the Dutch speaking part of Belgium is way less competitive than a financial advisor in NYC.
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hard to say. I always say to do all you can before hiring anyone.
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Depends on the industry + length of domain being tracked.
Crowded Industry that can be recycled quickly (clothing ecommerce) it could take 8-10 months + 8-10 months because the domain is new.
If the owner knows their industry, that time can be shortened. However you need to feed common words people search for, this can be done by providing surveys or asking “how did you find us” and asking what they typed.
A low ranked, established Website takes 3 months for changes to start ranking. A high ranked can take a month or two.
Tbh you should be able to ask them their current SEO strategy and verify if it would work. This would be asking for short and long tail keywords, local seo, business profiles, GSC hooks(these track events), etc.
My agency never signs new websites under a year, or for the minimum amount of months.
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Here’s the key part you should elaborate further on:
“I had hired an SEO agency for a 3 month contract **for my new website** and the initial contract is over.”
What does that mean? Did you get a brand new domain? a rebuild ontop of the old one? Did you get a new domain because the old one was bad?
One of the first things I look at when I’m talking to a potential client, is what they already have out there.
Time and time and time again “SEO agencies” will just rebuild the clients website ontop of an existing domain that’s already fried with spam/piracy/whatever because most of them are web devs first with little understanding of how the internet actually works and don’t know this is a thing.
One of my current clients originally came from a churn/burn website firm that specialized in the medical field – his performance was shit so he “jailbroke the domain” and went with the cheapest person possible – who turned out to be running malware/phising scams on the same host. Guess how well that turned out?
Sorry for the rant, but I’ve seen a dramatic uptick in this kinda shit…
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After 3 months for a 1 year old website you should see at least a keyword or 3 in the top 10, and an increased DR of +-5 points.
But the fact that your website is new makes it challenging. The chances of a new website being top 10 for any keyword is slim to none.
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What are your KPIs? What is the trend in achieving those KPIs?
I’ll be straight and blunt: **a position of 50-70 means nothing.** Anyone with two connected brain cells can achieve that in a week or two. However, it’s possible they actually did it in a couple of weeks and, with no clear KPIs, just went into autopilot (it happens all the time).
On the other hand, any serious KPI will take more than three months. If you have defined those KPIs, then you must study what was achieved and, more importantly, where they currently are within the strategic plan. Obviously, it will be very raw, but even if small, you should see some kind of indicator.
For example, did the strategy include backlinks? If so, how many and in what timeframe? And how many did they get? Did they make an estimated traffic growth projection? (And before anything else, be aware it’s impossible to promise a fixed number, but it is possible to assess some relative growth, like `”months 1-3: nothing; months 4-6: 10% traffic growth; months 7-12: 20% traffic growth,”` and so on.)
Finally, **the ultimate KPI: money in your pocket.**
I’m sure you didn’t make back your investment in three months, but did you get some value, or expect to get it in the foreseeable future? Did you get traffic from search engines to your money pages, and if so, what happened? Did you make a sale, did they bounce, did they abandon at the purchase flow, or something else?
Well, I don’t want to bore you with an MBA in a Reddit post, but hopefully you’ll get the gist.
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It depends. For technical SEO, a three-month audit is fine.
But SEO also includes content optimization, authority building, and training for the editorial (or content) team, so it’s natural to have longer contracts for a complete SEO strategy. It’s also common for companies with e-commerce, publishing operations, or larger websites to have an in-house SEO expert.
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I’ll never hire one ever again I got absolutely NOTHING out it except a bill for $2,000
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3-6 months to determine whether or not things are moving up and if u see progress then at least another year on top
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We do live in a world where we crave instant gratification and results – and in the world of domains and webhosting, that is not often the case. When you carve out a piece of the internet all for your own and try your best to drive traffic there, it will take extended, continuous efforts to keep the flow of traffic to your website. It is why “set it and forget it” kinds of SEO don’t often work, it requires constant monitoring with the ability to adjust and adapt to keep corralling traffic your way. You’ll tend to see real results within the 6-9 month range. And yes, while this does take a while, not everyone will know about the new road you built until they drive by it or see signs for it. It takes time for it to become habit or remain consistent!
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Go for at least 6 months, but based on a few things.
In the initial 3 months, what has the agency done for you strategically and planned?
Also, you need to have some idea about the current stats of your website. As you have mentioned that a few keywords are on 50 – 70, which means there has been some work done. You need to look for other things like that, not in terms of performance or results, but just to have an idea that things are moving, the agency is working, and it is okay to have them for another 3 months.
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Would I be able to take a look at your site and see if they have actually implemented the work they promised?
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