An SEO company improves your website’s position in Google search results. The work behind that breaks down into six core areas: a technical audit, keyword research, on-page optimization, content creation, link building, and monthly reporting. Each one does a different job, and together they make up what you’re paying for when you sign a retainer.
The mix shifts depending on where your site is right now. A brand-new site needs different work than one that’s been around for years but never ranked well. A site with technical problems gets a different first month than one that’s structurally clean.
Not every agency does all six things. Some skip technical work. Some outsource content. Some call link building “partnerships” and do very little of it. Knowing what each piece is helps you ask the right questions before you sign anything.
Here’s what each area actually involves.
The Technical Audit: Finding What’s Broken
Before any other work starts, a good SEO company runs a technical audit. This is a systematic scan of your website that looks for problems affecting how search engines read and rank your pages.
What they’re looking for: broken links (pages that return errors), slow load times, mobile display issues, duplicate content across multiple pages, missing title tags and descriptions, and crawl errors. A crawl error is what happens when Google’s automated bot tries to visit a page on your site and can’t access it. If Google can’t read the page, it can’t rank it.
A typical audit might turn up 47 pages that load in over four seconds. Each one of those is a page Google ranks lower by default. Page speed has been a confirmed ranking factor for years, and most sites have at least a few slow pages they don’t know about.
The deliverable here is usually a report, often a spreadsheet or PDF, with each issue listed and prioritized by impact. The most damaging problems go first. Lower-priority items get addressed over time.
This work comes first for a simple reason: you can’t build on a broken foundation. Spending money on content and link building while technical problems remain is like painting a house with a leaking roof.
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Keyword Research: Deciding What to Rank For
Keyword research is the process of figuring out which search terms your potential customers actually type into Google, and which of those terms are worth going after.
This matters before any other work because ranking for the wrong terms is wasted effort. A plumber in Frisco ranking #1 for a term nobody searches is not winning. A good agency delivers a prioritized list of target terms that includes:
- Search volume (how many people per month search that term)
- Keyword difficulty (how hard it is to rank, given the competition)
- Search intent (is the person looking to buy, or just researching?)
Bad keyword research targets terms with almost no search volume, or goes after phrases so competitive that a small local site has essentially no shot. Both are common problems.
Local businesses in the Frisco market often need both types of terms covered: specific geographic searches like “plumber Frisco TX” and broader category terms like “emergency plumbing.” A complete keyword plan addresses both rather than picking one lane.
On-Page Optimization: Fixing What’s Already There
On-page optimization means improving the pages that already exist on your site so they communicate more clearly to Google.
The elements a company typically touches: title tags (the text that shows up as the clickable headline in search results), meta descriptions (the summary text below that headline), H1 and H2 headings within the page, internal links between your own pages, image alt text, and URL structure.
Google reads all of these elements to understand what a page is about. When they’re vague or missing, Google has to guess. Guessing leads to lower rankings.
A concrete example: if your homepage title tag says “Welcome to Smith Plumbing,” changing it to “Plumber in Frisco TX | Smith Plumbing” tells Google exactly what the business does and where it operates. That one change can move a page several positions in local results.
The distinction from technical SEO is worth knowing: technical issues are things that are broken or inaccessible. On-page issues are things that exist but say the wrong thing. Both need attention, and they’re usually worked on in parallel after the initial audit.
Content Creation: Building Pages That Rank
You can’t rank for a topic if no page on your site addresses it. Content creation is how an SEO company fills those gaps.
The types of content they write: blog posts answering common questions, service pages for each thing the business offers, location pages for service areas, and FAQ sections. For a Frisco restaurant, that might mean pages for catering, private dining, and each neighborhood they deliver to. For a contractor, it might mean separate pages for kitchen remodels, bathroom remodels, and room additions.
Good SEO content is not keyword-stuffed text that reads like it was written for a robot. It’s actual writing that answers the question a real person typed into Google, with the target keyword included naturally because it’s genuinely relevant, not because someone jammed it in four times per paragraph.
New content takes time to rank. Pages published today often take three to six months to appear competitively in Google results. That timeline depends on the competition and the site’s existing authority. Any agency suggesting new blog posts will rank in two weeks is working in very low-competition territory or telling you what you want to hear.
One piece of genuine buyer advice: ask to see content samples before signing. Some agencies produce polished, useful writing. Others produce thin, generic content that does real damage to how visitors perceive your business. The difference is significant, and a reputable agency will show you their work without hesitation.
Link Building: Earning Trust From Other Sites
A backlink is when another website links to yours. Google treats these as votes of confidence: if other sites are pointing to your pages, the reasoning goes, those pages must offer something worth pointing to.
Two sites with identical on-page SEO will almost always be separated in rankings by their backlink profiles. The site with more quality links from relevant sources ranks higher. This is why link building is part of the job.
Legitimate link building looks like: outreach to relevant industry sites and publications, contributing useful content to sites that link back to you, getting listed in legitimate business directories, and earning links naturally because your content is genuinely worth referencing.
What it does not look like: buying links from link farms (networks of low-quality sites that exist purely to sell links), using automated tools to generate hundreds of spammy links overnight, or operating private blog networks. These tactics can get a site penalized by Google, meaning your rankings drop sharply rather than improve. The penalty can take months to recover from.
Honest note: link building is slow and hard. Any agency promising 50 links within 30 days is almost certainly doing it wrong. Quality links from relevant, real websites take time to acquire.
For local businesses, local citations and Google Business Profile are closely related to link building and matter just as much. A citation is a mention of your business name, address, and phone number on another site (a local directory, a chamber of commerce listing, a review platform). Inconsistent NAP (name, address, phone) data across these listings is a known issue that affects local search rankings.
Reporting: What You Should See Each Month
A real SEO report covers: which keywords moved (up or down), your organic traffic from Google as measured by Google Search Console or Google Analytics, any new backlinks acquired, the work completed during the month, and the work planned for next month.
Google Search Console is the most direct source of ranking data because it comes from Google itself. Any agency that doesn’t use it in their reporting is either working from incomplete data or hiding something.
Bad reporting is easy to recognize once you know what to look for. It includes traffic graphs that look impressive but don’t explain why traffic changed, reports full of technical jargon that make it hard to evaluate progress, and months where “work completed” is vague or missing entirely. Vanity metrics (raw visitor counts that include bot traffic, social media mentions, etc.) can make a flat month look like a growth month.
The question that cuts through bad reporting: “Which keywords moved, and by how much?” If an agency can’t answer that in plain terms, that’s a problem.
On timelines: the first three to six months with a new agency are typically foundation work. Visible ranking movement usually shows up somewhere between months four and nine, depending on how competitive your market is. For the full breakdown of realistic timelines by industry and competition level, a separate guide on how long does SEO take covers the specifics in detail (when published).
Good SEOs vs. Bad SEOs: How to Tell the Difference
Most agencies are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Knowing the signals on both ends helps you ask better questions before you sign anything.
| Good Signs | Red Flags |
|---|---|
| Explains their process in plain terms | Guarantees a #1 ranking on Google |
| Sets realistic timelines (months, not days) | Claims results in 30 days |
| Shows real client results or case studies | Vague about what work they’ll actually do |
| Sends monthly reports that include keyword rankings | Reports full of charts and graphs but no rankings |
| No long-term lock-in contract | 12-24 month contracts with no exit clause |
| Asks about your business goals before quoting | Quotes a package before asking a single question |
The guarantee issue is worth a specific note. No one controls Google’s rankings. Google does not allow SEO companies to guarantee positions, and their own guidelines say as much. Any agency that guarantees #1 rankings is either misleading you or targeting terms with so little competition that ranking for them won’t produce meaningful business.
The contract length issue is similarly telling. A company confident in their work doesn’t need to lock you in for two years. Monthly or 90-day agreements with reasonable notice periods are the norm among agencies worth working with.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does an SEO company do each month?
Each month, a typical SEO company does a mix of technical fixes, content work, link outreach, and reporting. The exact breakdown depends on where your site is in the process. Early months are heavy on auditing and setup. Later months shift toward content production and link acquisition. You should receive a written report showing what was done, what changed in rankings, and what’s planned for next month.
How much does an SEO company charge?
Most small business SEO retainers run between $500 and $3,000 per month depending on market size, competition, and scope. In the Frisco market, local agencies have published starting rates in the $400-$600 per month range. National agencies tend to charge more. The right budget depends on how competitive your target keywords are and how much ground you need to make up against established competitors.
What does an SEO company actually do to your website?
They audit it, fix technical problems, rewrite key page elements (title tags, meta descriptions, headings), create new content, and work to earn links from other websites. Most of the work is not visible to visitors: it targets how search engines read and rank the site. The exception is content, which both search engines and visitors see.
Can I do SEO myself instead of hiring a company?
Some of it, yes. Setting up and optimizing your Google Business Profile, rewriting title tags and headings on your key pages, and getting listed in local business directories are all things a business owner can handle without an agency. The harder parts, including technical auditing, link building, and maintaining a consistent content strategy over months, are where a professional adds the most value. For seo for small business owners who want to understand the full picture before deciding, that guide covers the tradeoffs in depth (when published).
How long before I see results from an SEO company?
Most reputable agencies quote four to nine months before significant ranking movement for competitive terms. Low-competition local terms can move faster. A new site needs longer than an established one. Anyone promising results in 30 days is either targeting terms with almost no real search volume or misleading you about what those early results actually mean.
What to Do Now That You Know What You’re Buying
You now know the six things an SEO company actually does: technical audits, keyword research, on-page optimization, content creation, link building, and monthly reporting. That’s enough to hold any agency accountable when they pitch you.
The next step is knowing how to compare the ones you talk to. A separate guide on how to choose an SEO company covers what questions to ask, how to read a proposal, and how to compare agencies side by side without getting lost in jargon (when published).
If you’re ready to see which agencies serve the Frisco market, the SEO companies in Frisco directory lists the ones we’ve profiled, including what they specialize in and what they charge.
This guide was reviewed by the seofrisco.com editorial team, an independent resource for Frisco business owners evaluating SEO options.