Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How long will it take for my site to rank?

“It depends” is annoying, but true. Different sites are in different states and this can really affect the time-table. We usually start to see movement in the rankings around four months after the first links are built for newer sites. See, here’s the thing though. Doing SEO the right way takes a bit of time. In fact, Google has essentially removed the ability for new sites to rank quickly. Why? Because they want to know that a site legit. Age is a ranking factor. To see a site start to rank for keywords usually takes several months of building really awesome links to send the right signals to Google that a site is a quality, legitimate asset that’s in it for the long haul. More established sites can have different timelines. Contact us for a better estimation.

Q: How many backlinks does each package provide?

Some agencies promise a specific number of links. We don’t. Here’s why: a specific number of links isn’t the best metric of success. Fiverr sells them by the thousands for $5 each. What is relevant is whether your rankings and organic search traffic increase.

Instead of focusing on an arbitrary number of links, we focus on delivering customized plans for each client that give them just what they need. Those plans include the high-quality links they need to get their site ranking well.

Q: What do I get in terms of reporting?

Each month we’ll check in with you about how your campaign is going, comment on the work we’ve done, share some of the URLs so you can see what kind of links you’re getting, and weigh in with anything relevant we’re seeing in the SERPs for your particular industry.

We typically don’t list every link we got for you for a couple of reasons:

Some of the sites we deal with require NDAs on our partnership, and so we simply cannot share those links.
Link reports are one of the fastest ways for either your competitors to mimic your success, or for our link-sources to get over-run.

At Smash Digital we have a healthy paranoia of Google, and so we are reluctant to make this kind of information easily available.

What you do get is a custom page where you can monitor the current and historical rankings of your keywords. In other words, you can see how you’ve ranked for keywords in the past, as well as how you’re currently ranking for them (higher we hope). Keyword rankings are basically how we measure our success.

Q: Is there a contract I need to sign?

No! In fact, you can cancel at any time. However, we always tell anyone interested in our SEO service that, because it takes 3-4 months to really see how a campaign is going, it’s not worth your investment if you can only commit to a couple months.

Simply put, you won’t get an accurate picture of success/return if you can’t commit. SEO is a long game, and our service is set up to provide long term results.

Q: Have any of your clients ever been penalized?

No, to the best of our knowledge. Our team is constantly monitoring the latest Google algorithm updates, the latest industry news, and doing tests of our own. We work hard to minimize risk, and no client has been penalized due to the direct results of our link building.

Q: Once I'm ranking first for my keywords, can I just cancel my subscription?

So you’re in position #1 for your best keyword, congrats! You may be considering canceling our service to monitor the SERPs, maintaining the links we’ve built, and building new links as needed.

But there’s something you need to know. Who’s not hitting pause on their SEO? All the people you’re outranking. They’re all still working hard to climb the rankings, while you’re standing still.

One thing we can do on some projects is move clients down to a cheaper maintenance package to maintain the rankings. However, “Link Velocity” (the speed at which new links are acquired) needs to be maintained to keep rankings (it’s a thing). This means you need to continue having new links built on an ongoing basis.

Want to get more organic traffic?

I know we’re supposed to have some big call-to-action here, but that’s not us.
SEO is complicated, and it’s not right for all businesses.

Let’s just have a chat to see if we can help.