How working with Drift Strategy Group works
What actually happens, in order.
6 stages, starting with a free audit that carries no obligation. Written out in full because a business deciding whether to hand over its website, hosting and search visibility deserves to know what it is agreeing to before the first call, not after.
Free SEO audit
A written review of your site, its search visibility and your local competitors, with the findings ordered by what to fix first.
No cost, no obligation, and no access to your accounts required. This is where most engagements either start or honestly stop — if the audit finds a constraint we are not the right firm to solve, it says so.
Plan and scope
The audit becomes a specific, prioritised plan: what happens first, why, what it costs, and what result to expect.
Pricing is scoped against what the audit actually found rather than applied as a flat rate to every business. You get a realistic timeline here, including the slow parts — local ranking movement typically starts within 60–90 days, durable competitive gains usually take six to twelve months.
Build
The website itself, planned around the searches your customers actually run and built to load fast on a phone.
On a rebuild, every existing URL is mapped to its replacement with a permanent redirect and indexation is reviewed after launch, so the rankings you already have carry across instead of resetting.
If the site is fundamentally sound rather than the limiting factor, it does not get rebuilt — the technical issues get fixed in place instead, which is usually cheaper and lower risk.
Host
Managed hosting, monitoring, backups and security updates, so performance and uptime stay someone’s direct responsibility.
This is the stage most agencies hand back to a separate vendor. Keeping it in one place is the reason the rest of the work holds up over time rather than degrading quietly after launch.
Structured data, analytics and Search Console are configured before launch rather than a month after, so there is measurement in place from day one instead of a gap nobody can reconstruct later.
Optimize
Technical SEO, local search, structured data and content — the work that turns a good site into a findable one.
This runs continuously rather than as a one-time project, because rankings, competitors and search behaviour change whether anyone is watching or not. What was priority one in month one is rarely still priority one in month six.
Report
Rankings, traffic and conversions tracked continuously and explained in plain language by a person every month.
Data collection and first-draft summaries are automated; the judgement is not. Each report says what changed, the most likely reason, and what is being prioritised next month.
A developer builds the website. An SEO agency audits it afterward. The client coordinates changes between them. A separate hosting company manages the infrastructure. Each vendor optimizes for their own piece, not the outcome.
One technical partner owns the website, the hosting, the technical SEO, and the ongoing optimization — so nothing gets lost in handoffs between vendors who don't talk to each other. More about the background behind that →
How it works, frequently asked
How long until I see results?
Most businesses see initial local ranking movement within 60–90 days. Durable, competitive gains typically take six to twelve months and depend heavily on how contested your market is. Anyone promising a specific position by a specific date is guessing.
Do I have to commit to a retainer?
No. The audit is free and carries no obligation, and scoped project work — a rebuild, a technical fix, a migration — can be bought on its own. Retainers exist because SEO and hosting are ongoing disciplines, not because you are locked into one.
Who actually does the work?
The same person who does the strategy. Drift Strategy Group is deliberately small — there is no rotating account team and no handoff to a support queue after the contract is signed.
What do you need from me?
Your website address, a sentence about what you are trying to accomplish, and — once an engagement starts — access to your domain, hosting and analytics. During the work itself, the main thing needed from you is timely answers on content and approvals, which is usually what determines the timeline.
What if I already have a website I like?
Then we do not rebuild it. Plenty of engagements are technical fixes, hosting and ongoing optimization on a site that is fundamentally fine. The audit will tell you which situation you are in.
Start with the audit.
It costs nothing, carries no obligation, and tells you where you actually stand before you decide anything else.