Hiring an SEO agency feels like a leap of faith when you cannot see exactly what happens behind the scenes. You sign the contract, pay the invoice and then wait, hoping results materialise. But what should actually be happening during those critical first months? Understanding the timeline helps you evaluate whether your agency is on track or falling behind. A reputable SEO Agency London businesses trust follows a structured approach that builds momentum systematically rather than promising overnight miracles that never arrive.
Why the First 90 Days Matter So Much
SEO is not a switch you flip for instant results. It requires research, technical fixes, content development and authority building that compound over time. The first 90 days establish the foundation everything else builds upon, and agencies that rush this phase or skip steps create problems that surface months later.
During this period, your agency should be learning your business deeply, fixing issues that hold your site back and implementing strategies tailored to your specific market. Cookie-cutter approaches fail because every business faces different competition, targets different keywords and starts from a different baseline.
Days 1-30: Discovery and Foundation
The first month focuses entirely on understanding where you stand and what needs fixing. Skipping this groundwork wastes time and money on the wrong priorities.
Comprehensive SEO Audit
Your agency should conduct a thorough audit covering:
- Technical health, including site speed, mobile usability and crawl errors
- On-page elements like title tags, meta descriptions and header structure
- Content quality assessing existing pages for relevance and depth
- Backlink profile identifying toxic links and authority gaps
- Competitor analysis showing what top-ranking sites do differently
Keyword Research and Strategy
Effective keyword research goes beyond finding high-volume terms. Your agency should identify keywords you can realistically rank for, given current authority, terms with commercial intent that drive actual business, long-tail variations capturing specific customer needs and local keywords if you serve geographic areas.
Goal Setting and KPIs
Before any work begins, you need agreement on what success looks like. Clear KPIs might include target keyword rankings, organic traffic growth percentages, lead or conversion targets and technical health scores.
Google Business Profile Setup
For local businesses, GBP optimisation often starts immediately because it delivers faster results than organic SEO. Your agency should claim, verify and optimise your profile within the first weeks.
Days 31-60: Technical Fixes and Content Planning
With the audit complete and strategy defined, month two shifts toward implementation. This phase addresses the technical issues holding your site back while planning content that will drive rankings.
Technical SEO Implementation
Technical fixes typically include:
- Site speed improvements through image compression, caching and code cleanup
- Mobile optimisation ensuring perfect functionality on all devices
- Crawlability fixes resolving errors that prevent Google from indexing pages
- Schema markup adding structured data that helps search engines understand content
- Internal linking improving how authority flows between pages
These fixes often produce noticeable improvements within weeks because they remove barriers preventing your site from ranking as well as it should.
Content Gap Analysis
Your agency should identify topics where competitors rank, but you have no presence. This analysis reveals missing service pages that should exist, blog topics your audience searches for and questions customers ask that your site does not answer.
Content Calendar Development
Based on gap analysis, your agency creates a content calendar prioritising high-impact pages targeting commercial keywords, supporting content building topical authority and local content if geographic targeting matters.
Link Building Strategy
Month two also establishes the approach for building backlinks. Your agency should outline target sites for outreach, content assets that attract natural links and competitor backlinks worth replicating.
Days 61-90: Content Execution and Authority Building
The third month brings everything together as content goes live and promotion begins. This phase generates the momentum that carries forward into months four, five and beyond.
Content Creation and Publishing
New content should start appearing on your site, including optimised service or product pages, blog posts targeting identified keywords and location pages if relevant to your business. Each piece should be properly optimised with target keywords, internal links, metadata and schema markup.
Link Acquisition
Active outreach begins to build backlinks from relevant, authoritative sites. Link acquisition methods typically include:
- Guest posting on industry publications
- Digital PR to generate coverage and backlinks
- Resource link building through valuable content
- Local citations for businesses targeting specific geographic areas”
Initial Reporting and Analysis
By day 90, your agency should deliver comprehensive reporting showing ranking changes for target keywords, organic traffic trends compared to baseline, technical health improvements since the audit, new backlinks acquired and conversion data from organic visitors.
This report establishes the baseline for ongoing measurement and proves whether the strategy is working.
What Happens After 90 Days
The first 90 days build the foundation, but SEO requires ongoing effort to maintain and improve results. After this initial phase, your agency should shift toward continuous content creation, expanding your keyword footprint, ongoing link building, strengthening domain authority, regular technical monitoring, catching issues before they hurt rankings and strategy refinement based on performance data. An SEO Agency London businesses rely on treats the first 90 days as the beginning rather than a complete programme.
Takeaway
Understanding what happens during the first 90 days helps you evaluate whether your agency is delivering real value or just sending invoices. Each phase builds on the previous one, creating momentum that grows over time.
Working with a London SEO agency with a proven, data-driven approach allows businesses to assess their current visibility, prioritise the right fixes, and plan the actions that will deliver the most impact. Senotrix exemplifies this approach, combining structured strategy with measurable results.
