HomeResults
ResultsThe work, and what
it should actually produce.
Marketing results are easy to fake and hard to verify. So here is how we measure, what a realistic outcome looks like by channel, and the standard we hold ourselves to.
The only four numbers that matter.
Everything else in your report is diagnostic. These four are the scoreboard.
What the published data says.
We do not publish invented numbers. Everything below is third-party research from named studies, linked so you can open the source and check it yourself.
Average cost per lead from paid search, by industry, measured against the $66.69 all-industry average. The brighter bars sit above that average. Source: LocaliQ (WordStream), 2026 Search Advertising Benchmarks for Every Industry (2026). National averages across thousands of advertiser accounts — your own cost per lead moves with competition inside your specific DFW service area, your match types and your landing page.
| Industry | Cost per click | Click-through rate | Conversion rate | Cost per lead |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All industries average | $5.42 | 6.64% | 8.18% | $66.69 |
| Automotive repair & service | $4.35 | 5.56% | 15.51% | $29.96 |
| Restaurants & food | $2.05 | 6.83% | 8.05% | $30.57 |
| Beauty & personal care | $4.62 | 6.75% | 10.35% | $39.25 |
| Physicians & surgeons | $4.76 | 6.61% | 12.43% | $40.04 |
| Health & fitness | $6.17 | 5.81% | 6.94% | $67.36 |
| Dentists & dental | $8.00 | 5.66% | 10.67% | $72.97 |
| Home & home improvement | $8.33 | 6.47% | 8.05% | $90.92 |
| Real estate | $3.22 | 7.61% | 3.70% | $102.51 |
| Attorneys & legal | $9.87 | 5.87% | 5.55% | $131.63 |
Read the table as a sanity check, not a target. If a proposal quotes you a cost per lead far under the figure for your category, ask what is being counted as a lead. If it quotes far over, ask what is being wasted.
Six findings worth planning around.
These shape how long a programme takes, what it has to deliver, and where the fastest wins usually sit for a local business.
of new pages reach the top ten inside a year
Across two million pages tracked for twelve months. Of the ones that made it, most took roughly 61 to 182 days. For high-volume keywords the figure falls to 0.3%.
Ahrefs, How Long Does It Take to Rank in Google? (study of 2 million keywords and 2 million pages)
of pages currently in the top ten are under a year old
Pages holding position one average close to three years of age. Search rewards pages that have been earning links and clicks for a while, which is why SEO is budgeted in quarters, not weeks.
Ahrefs, How Long Does It Take to Rank in Google? (study of 2 million keywords and 2 million pages)
of consumers read reviews for local businesses
41% say they always read them before choosing. 68% will not use a business under four stars, and 31% now hold out for 4.5 or better — up from 17% a year earlier.
BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (February 2026)
look specifically for reviews from the last three months
44% want something from the last month. A strong average built three years ago reads as stale, which is why review generation has to be a running system rather than a one-time push.
BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (February 2026)
are more likely to use a business that answers every review
But 50% are put off by responses that read as templated. Replying is worth doing and worth doing properly.
BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (February 2026)
of Google Business Profile views come from discovery, not name searches
Across 45,264 listings, the average profile drew 1,009 monthly searches and 59 customer actions, with roughly 5% of views turning into a call, a click or a direction request. Most of that audience did not know your name before they saw you.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page is published third-party research, linked so you can check it yourself. We do not publish invented client results, and we do not publish another client’s numbers without their written permission. Use these as the outside reference point you measure any proposal against — including ours.
- 2026 Search Advertising Benchmarks for Every Industry — LocaliQ (WordStream), 2026. Thousands of LocaliQ and WordStream customer campaigns across Google Ads and Microsoft Ads.
- How Long Does It Take to Rank in Google? — Ahrefs, study of 2 million keywords and 2 million pages. Two million random keywords and their top-ten pages, plus two million newly discovered pages tracked over twelve months.
- Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 — BrightLocal, February 2026. Representative panel of 1,002 US adult consumers.
- Google My Business Insights Study — BrightLocal, 2019. 45,264 anonymised local business listings across 36 industries.
How each channel ramps.
Paid media is fast and flat. Search is slow and compounding. Knowing the shape of each curve is what stops you cancelling a channel two months before it pays.
| Channel | First movement | Meaningful lead volume | Full maturity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paid search / LSA | Week 1 | Weeks 2–4 | Month 3, after waste is cut |
| Local SEO / map pack | Weeks 3–6 | Months 2–4 | Months 6–9 |
| Organic SEO | Months 1–2 (technical) | Months 4–6 | Months 8–12 |
| AI search / AEO | Weeks 2–6 (entity work) | Months 3–6 | Months 6–12 |
| Website rebuild | At launch | Immediately — conversion rate lift | Months 2–4 as rankings settle |
| Reputation / reviews | Week 2 | Months 2–3 | Ongoing — it compounds |
Unlike the figures above, this table is our own planning guidance rather than published research — it is how we scope engagements, and it is labelled that way deliberately. The organic row is consistent with the Ahrefs finding that most pages which do reach the top ten take roughly two to six months to get there.
Engagement snapshots.
Representative examples of the kind of work we take on and how it is structured.
Multi-location dental group
Local SEO + paid media + website rebuild
Situation. Three DFW locations sharing one website, no location pages, one Google Business Profile optimized and two neglected, and a Google Ads account with conversions firing on every page view.
What we did. Rebuilt the site with true location pages and per-location tracking, rebuilt all three profiles, restructured ads by location with corrected conversion actions, and launched automated review requests.
Outcome. Verified metrics are released once the client approves publication. Ask on a call and we will walk you through the account live.
Home service contractor
Local Services Ads + local SEO + reputation
Situation. Spending heavily on broad match search terms with no negative keyword list, ranking well only within two miles of the office, and sitting under a 4.2 star average.
What we did. Moved budget into Local Services Ads, rebuilt the search campaign with exact and phrase match, added a 900-term negative list, built service-area pages and installed a review request system.
Outcome. Verified metrics are released once the client approves publication. Ask on a call and we will walk you through the account live.
What arrives every month.
You should never have to email your agency asking what happened.
A live dashboard
Leads, spend, rankings, map pack position and cost per acquisition, updated daily. Log in whenever you want — you are not waiting for the fifth of the month.
A monthly strategy call
Thirty minutes on what moved, what did not, what we are changing and why. Not a slide read-out of numbers you already saw.
A written work log
Every task completed that month, so you can see exactly what your retainer bought. No mystery line items.
What a campaign has to return.
Before you judge any agency, including us, work out what your own numbers have to do for the spend to make sense. Move the sliders to your reality.
Run your own numbers
Drag the four sliders. Everything on the right recalculates from your inputs — no assumptions of ours baked in.
Start with your own baseline.
The free audit produces the same starting document we would build a plan from: rankings, site health, profile strength and wasted ad spend, benchmarked against the competitors currently ahead of you.