Quick Answer: What Should Happen During the First Month of SEO?
The first month of working with an SEO company should typically include:
- Understanding your business and goals
- Establishing baseline SEO performance
- Reviewing Google Search Console and Analytics
- Technical SEO auditing
- Keyword and search intent research
- Competitor research
- Reviewing existing rankings
- Evaluating service pages
- Auditing existing content
- Checking for keyword cannibalization
- Reviewing internal linking
- Local SEO and Google Business Profile analysis
- Backlink analysis
- Creating or refining a keyword map
- Identifying priority opportunities
- Building the SEO roadmap
Some implementation can—and usually should—begin during Month 1.
But I don’t believe an SEO company should start making random changes simply to show a client a long list of completed tasks.
Month 1 should make the rest of the campaign smarter.
Here’s what that looks like in practice.
Step 1: Your SEO Company Should Learn How Your Business Actually Makes Money
Before I touch the website, I need to understand the business.
SEO isn’t just about generating traffic. I want to generate visibility for searches that can actually matter to your business.
So I want to know things like:
- What services do you offer?
- Which services are most important?
- Which services are most profitable?
- Who is your ideal customer?
- Where are your customers located?
- Which geographic areas do you actually serve?
- Are there services you want to grow?
- Are there services you don’t want more inquiries for?
- What makes your business different?
- Who do you consider your primary competitors?
- What does a valuable lead look like?
This information can completely change the SEO strategy.
Imagine two San Diego businesses both want “more Google traffic.”
One is a personal injury law firm trying to attract high-value case inquiries throughout San Diego County.
The other is a med spa in La Jolla that primarily wants appointments from people within a relatively small geographic area.
Those businesses shouldn’t receive the same SEO strategy.
That’s why one of my first jobs isn’t really SEO at all.
It’s understanding the business behind the website.
Step 2: Establish a Baseline Before Changing Everything
Before I start changing pages, I want to document what’s already happening.
Otherwise, how are we going to know whether the SEO work actually helped?
Depending on the client, I’ll look at data from sources such as Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and Google Business Profile.
I want to understand:
- How much organic visibility does the website currently have?
- Which pages receive organic traffic?
- Which keywords already generate impressions?
- Which pages already rank?
- Are any important pages close to page one?
- Which queries generate clicks?
- Is branded search growing?
- Which pages generate leads?
- What does local visibility look like?
- Are there obvious drops or unusual trends?
Sometimes a website already has valuable SEO assets.
I’ve seen situations where an important service page is sitting just outside page one.
That’s very different from a page Google barely surfaces at all.
I don’t want to ignore an existing opportunity because I’m rushing to create something new.
Step 3: Make Sure the Right Tracking Is in Place
This is one of the less glamorous parts of Month 1, but it’s important.
I want to know that we’re actually measuring what matters.
Depending on the business, that may include checking:
- Google Search Console
- Google Analytics
- Google Business Profile
- Contact form submissions
- Phone call tracking
- Appointment requests
- Important button clicks
- Other meaningful conversions
Rankings are useful.
Traffic is useful.
But neither tells the entire story.
A website could increase organic traffic substantially without generating a single additional qualified customer.
That’s why I want to understand what success actually looks like before we start measuring it.
Step 4: Perform a Technical SEO Audit
Next, I want to make sure Google can properly access and understand the website.
A technical audit may uncover issues involving:
- Crawling
- Indexing
- XML sitemaps
- Robots directives
- Canonical tags
- Redirects
- Broken links
- Duplicate URLs
- Mobile usability
- Page performance
- HTTPS
- Structured data
- Site architecture
- Internal linking
- Orphaned pages
Not every website will have serious technical problems.
I don’t believe in inventing technical work simply because a client hired me for SEO.
If the website is technically healthy, great. That means we can spend more of our time on other opportunities.
But if Google can’t properly crawl or index important pages, I want to know that before we invest heavily elsewhere.
Step 5: Research the Keywords That Can Actually Matter to the Business
Keyword research isn’t simply downloading a spreadsheet with 5,000 phrases.
I want to understand why someone is searching.
For example, these two searches may both involve SEO:
“What is SEO?”
and
“SEO company San Diego”
But those people are probably at very different stages.
One is looking for information.
The other may be looking for someone to hire.
That’s search intent.
During Month 1, I want to identify:
- Commercial searches
- Service-specific searches
- Local searches
- Informational searches
- Comparison searches
- Long-tail opportunities
- Questions potential customers ask
- Terms competitors rank for
- Keywords the website already ranks for
I don’t necessarily want the keyword with the highest search volume.
I want searches that make sense for your business, your website, and your competitive position.
Step 6: Build a Keyword Map
This is one of the most important things I can do for an established website.
I want important keywords and search intents assigned to appropriate pages.
In simple terms:
Keyword/search intent → target page
Without a clear keyword map, websites can end up with:
- Two service pages targeting the same phrase
- Blogs competing with service pages
- Multiple articles answering essentially the same question
- Important keywords with no appropriate page
- Pages trying to rank for too many unrelated searches
This is especially common on websites that have been publishing content for years.
Sometimes the solution isn’t another page.
Sometimes the solution is deciding which existing page should win.
Step 7: Audit Existing Content Before Publishing More
This is something I’ve become increasingly careful about.
When a website already has a substantial content library, I don’t automatically recommend publishing more.
First, I want to know what already exists.
I may find:
- Outdated articles
- Thin content
- Multiple articles covering the same topic
- Old posts competing with newer posts
- Blogs competing with service pages
- Strong articles receiving very few internal links
- Pages ranking for the wrong keywords
- Several weak pages that could become one strong resource
When multiple pages target substantially the same search intent, they can compete with one another and make it harder to establish which URL should be the strongest result.
That’s commonly referred to as keyword cannibalization.
Depending on what I find, I may recommend:
KEEP → UPDATE → RETARGET → MERGE → 301
That’s why “we’ll publish four blogs every month” isn’t automatically an SEO strategy.
Sometimes the website needs more content.
Sometimes it needs less—but better organized—content.
Step 8: Analyze the Businesses Already Winning in Google
Your SEO competitors aren’t always the businesses you consider your biggest real-world competitors.
I want to see who Google is actually ranking.
For important searches, I’ll look at things such as:
- Which businesses consistently appear
- Which pages Google ranks
- How those websites organize services
- Content depth
- Search intent
- Internal linking
- Backlinks
- Local signals
- Reviews
- Brand presence
- Areas where competitors appear stronger or weaker
The goal isn’t to copy them.
I want to understand what it will take to compete with them.
That’s especially important in competitive San Diego industries.
Step 9: Review Local SEO and the Google Business Profile
If you’re a local San Diego business, Month 1 should usually include a local SEO review.
I may evaluate:
- Google Business Profile categories
- Business information
- Services
- Reviews
- Photos
- Website links
- Duplicate listings
- Local citations
- Name, address, and phone consistency
- Location signals on the website
- Local competitors
- Geographic ranking patterns
Local SEO isn’t simply putting “San Diego” everywhere.
A business in Santee may require a very different local strategy from a business in La Jolla.
That’s why geography needs to be part of the SEO plan from the beginning.
Step 10: Review Backlinks and Existing Authority
I also want to know what other websites are already saying about the business.
I’m looking for things such as:
- Relevant backlinks
- Local links
- Industry links
- Press mentions
- Business associations
- Directories and citations
- Suspicious or low-quality link patterns
- Competitor backlink opportunities
I don’t automatically start Month 1 by trying to build a huge number of backlinks.
First, I want to understand what the website already has and where meaningful opportunities might exist.
Step 11: Identify the Highest-Priority SEO Opportunities
After all this analysis, the strategy should start becoming much clearer.
This is where I separate:
Things we could do
from:
Things we should do first.
Maybe the website has 50 possible improvements.
But if three changes could have a much larger impact than the other 47, I want to prioritize those.
For example, Month 1 might reveal:
- A valuable service page sitting at position 11
- An important page excluded from Google’s index
- Three blogs competing for the same search
- A missing page for a high-value service
- Poor internal linking to commercial pages
- Google Business Profile problems
- Strong traffic but poor conversions
- A major content gap competitors are exploiting
Those findings should determine what happens next.
Step 12: Create the SEO Roadmap
By the end of Month 1, I want a much clearer roadmap.
That roadmap may include:
- Technical corrections
- Service page improvements
- Keyword targeting
- Content consolidation
- New content
- Internal linking
- Local SEO
- Google Business Profile optimization
- Authority building
- Digital PR
- Conversion improvements
- Tracking improvements
But here’s the important part:
The roadmap should be based on what we discovered—not on a generic list of deliverables sold to every client.
That’s what makes Month 1 valuable.
It turns SEO from a collection of activities into an actual strategy.
Should Your SEO Company Make Changes During Month 1?
Yes.
Month 1 shouldn’t consist of 30 days of staring at spreadsheets.
If I discover an obvious problem, I don’t need to wait until Month 2 just because a template tells me to.
For example, I may immediately:
- Fix indexing problems
- Correct broken links
- Improve title tags
- Strengthen internal links
- Optimize a priority service page
- Correct Google Business Profile issues
- Consolidate obvious duplicate content
- Improve conversion tracking
Research and implementation can happen at the same time.
The difference is that the implementation should be informed by the research.
What Should You Receive From Your SEO Company After Month 1?
By the end of the first month, you should have a much clearer understanding of:
- Where your website currently stands
- What the major problems are
- Where your strongest opportunities are
- Which keywords matter
- Which pages should target those searches
- Who you’re competing against
- What technical problems need attention
- What content needs improvement
- What local SEO opportunities exist
- What your SEO company plans to prioritize next
Different SEO providers work differently, so you may not receive a giant formal document covering every item.
But your SEO company should be able to explain what they learned and what they’re doing about it.
If you ask:
“What are you working on and why?”
you deserve a better answer than:
“We’re doing SEO.”
Red Flags During Your First Month With an SEO Company
Month 1 can tell you a lot about the company you hired.
I’d be cautious if:
- They never ask about your business goals
- They don’t ask which services matter most
- They don’t request access to Search Console or relevant analytics
- They immediately promise #1 rankings
- They publish random content before researching search intent
- They can’t tell you which page they’re targeting for an important keyword
- They immediately build large numbers of questionable backlinks
- They don’t analyze your existing rankings
- They never look at competitors
- They don’t review your existing content
- They can’t explain how success will be measured
- They perform the exact same tasks for every client
- They can’t clearly explain what they’re doing
SEO can be complicated.
Your SEO company’s explanation of it shouldn’t have to be.
You should understand the general strategy even if you don’t understand every technical detail.
What Happens After Month 1?
Month 1 should give us the information needed to make Months 2 through 6 increasingly strategic.
That’s when the campaign may move more heavily into:
- Technical implementation
- Service page optimization
- Content improvements
- New content where genuinely needed
- Internal linking
- Local SEO
- Authority building
- Digital PR
- Conversion improvements
- Continued analysis
If you want to see how those pieces fit together over a longer engagement, read my 6-month SEO plan for a San Diego business.
If you’re specifically wondering when you should expect rankings, traffic, and leads to begin improving, I cover that separately in How Long Does It Take to Start Seeing Results With SEO?.
And if you want to understand what can derail a campaign during its early stages, read Why SEO Campaigns Fail in the First 3 Months.
The First Month Should Make the Rest of Your SEO Better
The biggest mistake I see businesses make is confusing activity with strategy.
Anyone can produce a list of SEO tasks.
Publish a blog.
Change a heading.
Build a link.
Add a keyword.
Run an audit.
But why are we doing those things?
That’s the question Month 1 should answer.
I want to understand your website well enough that I can tell you:
Here’s what’s holding you back.
Here’s where I see opportunity.
Here’s what I think we should prioritize.
And here’s why.
That’s a much stronger foundation for an SEO campaign than simply trying random tactics and hoping something works.
Looking for an SEO Company in San Diego?
I’m Jen Ruhman, a San Diego SEO expert with more than 20 years of experience working with websites and search optimization.
I work directly with businesses to identify what’s preventing them from earning stronger visibility and determine which SEO opportunities deserve priority.
My goal isn’t to fill a monthly report with tasks.
It’s to understand what’s happening with your website and put the work where it can make the most sense for your business.
If you’re considering SEO and aren’t sure where your website stands, start with my free SEO analysis.
Or call/text me at (619) 719-1315.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happens during the first month of SEO?
The first month of SEO typically includes learning about the business, establishing baseline performance, auditing the website, researching keywords and competitors, evaluating existing content and backlinks, reviewing local SEO, creating a keyword map, identifying priority opportunities, and developing the roadmap for the campaign.
What should an SEO company ask me during onboarding?
An SEO company should ask about your services, most important revenue opportunities, target customers, service areas, competitors, business goals, previous marketing efforts, and what a valuable lead or conversion looks like. SEO strategy should be connected to business goals rather than rankings alone.
Should an SEO company make website changes during the first month?
Usually, yes. Research and auditing are important, but obvious technical problems and high-priority opportunities can often be addressed during Month 1. Changes should be informed by analysis rather than made randomly.
Should my SEO company ask for Google Search Console and Analytics access?
In most cases, yes. Existing search and website performance data can reveal queries, landing pages, organic traffic patterns, conversions, and other information that helps establish a baseline and guide the SEO strategy.
Should my SEO company publish blogs during the first month?
Not automatically. Existing content should be reviewed first to determine whether the website actually needs new articles. In some cases, updating, consolidating, redirecting, or internally linking existing content is more valuable than publishing something new.
What are red flags during the first month of SEO?
Warning signs can include guaranteed #1 rankings, publishing content without keyword or search intent research, building large numbers of questionable backlinks immediately, failing to review existing search data, ignoring business goals, and being unable to explain what work is being performed and why.
What should I know by the end of Month 1?
You should have a clearer understanding of your website’s current SEO position, major technical or content problems, target search opportunities, competitive landscape, local visibility, and the priorities your SEO company plans to address during the following months.