Date: 07/2025

Author: Ryan Walsh | Walsh & Partners

Subject: Search Engine Optimisation | Organic SEO

 

 

What happens when you stop paying for SEO per month?

 

Table of contents:

·       What would happen if we stopped paying for SEO?

·       What will happen to our organic traffic?

·       (Google Freshness Update) Why it’s essential to keep your content marketing up to date

·       How technical SEO issues can affect SEO

·       How server/website hosting downtime can impact your business’s organic visitor numbers

·       Why SEO requires constant work

·       Why your competitors will never stop trying to reach the top

 

 

How long does it take for SEO to stop working?

 

Search engine optimisation (SEO) requires constant effort and perseverance by your appointed agency.

Blood, sweat, and sometimes tears go into getting a business to the top of Google.

One thing is sure in today’s highly competitive business landscape: reaching the top of Google is not easy.

The reason is that direct competitors in your business sector will never stop building links and publishing new content.

Holding on to or climbing to the top position on Google can be very lucrative for a business. This is why enterprises fight so fiercely for this top position.

Therefore, the competition is constantly exerting effort to reach the top of Google as well.

 

Googlebot and the constant evaluation

The truth of the matter is that Googlebot is constantly crawling and indexing your website, evaluating the quality of your business’s SEO.

Don’t know what Googlebot means?

It means that Google, along with other search engines, constantly evaluates and analyses the strength of your business’s ranking factors.

Your business’s SEO is being directly compared to that of your direct competition’s SEO, and this comparison is a constant and ongoing process conducted by Googlebot and its algorithms.

And, of course, the strongest comes out on top.

Marketing teams are therefore put under pressure globally by their respective clients and managers to achieve the top spot on Google.

This, in itself, really explains why, if you stop investing, you are leaving the door wide open for your competitors to overtake you.

 

Google ranking factors

Businesses, therefore, constantly have to work on the following areas, and more, to stay at the top of Google.

–            They have to build links

–            Publish quality and helpful content marketing

–            Look for ways to improve the business user experience (UX)

–            Improve the technical SEO and resolve any issues related to the company’s technical SEO

More quality links and higher-quality marketing can help to edge a business up Google’s ranks.

 

What happens if you stop paying?

The long and short of it is this: if your business stops working on improving your search engine optimisation for any length of time, you will often swiftly be overtaken by the competition.

Googlbot will notice, well, you’ve taken your foot off the accelerator.

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What are ranking factors?

Create a pie chart that shows all the various SEO  ranking factors that Google considers when determining a website’s ranking. Make the pie chart colourful and clearly express, using bold percentages, how vital, for example, backlinks, content marketing, etc, are to the SEO process.

Google ranking factors

 

Google Freshness Update

Content marketing might end up stating outdated information. Let’s give you an example, the business may have published an excellent article titled “the most energy efficient washing machines of 2018”. Yet organic visitor numbers will naturally decrease as this information is outdated.

Therefore, a large part of a marketing company’s work is updating and writing new content marketing.

 

Relevant

Google wants to serve the best and most relevant answer to a question.

Therefore, the information it offers must be relatively up-to-date.

 

Disappearing links

Links may also be deleted, as they can disappear when the source page is removed.

For example, a news website may have published an article on how you won the best law firm in Cardiff in 2021. This may have offered a do-follow and a high-value backlink. Yet once deleted, because, for instance, the publisher deletes pages after 5 years of publication, you will have lost that highly valuable backlink.

As your link profile starts to decrease, your website’s authority begins to drop in the rankings.

This relates to Google E-EAT, specifically the authoritative aspect. As your business loses links, it becomes less authoritative and therefore ranks lower on Google.

This is why tools such as Majestic, Moz Pro, Sitebulb, Backlinko, or Ahrefs should be used to check if good-quality backlinks have been deleted and to identify which new links have been built.

 

Can I pause SEO and restart it at a later date?

It’s a funny old game in SEO, because you can work hard to get your business to the top of the search engine results, yet when that mission has been accomplished, the company may want to pause your good work.

Here’s the key takeaway: your competitors will always be busy working on building links, creating content marketing, and enhancing technical SEO, sometimes shaving seconds off the homepage load speed, for example.

What are they trying to achieve?

They want to take your place, get that first-page position, and win the organic traffic.

It’s like being in a race, being in first place with a healthy margin between you and the race car behind you.

Do you want to take your foot off the accelerator and let your rivals catch up?

That’s a personal choice, but if you don’t want to be overtaken, you can’t afford to take your foot off the accelerator.

 

Keep chipping away

Talk to any of the best agencies in the land, and they will tell you that when it comes to improving a business’s organic traffic, you have to work at it diligently and over a long time frame. It’s a balancing act—you can’t stop and then suddenly start again working at a frantic pace, because this can lead to over-optimisation issues.

Built into the algorithms are features like spam filters (Google Panda and Penguin), which examine factors such as link velocity. Suppose a business builds backlinks too quickly, such as creating hundreds of links over a weekend. In that case, it can trigger a spam penalty because it doesn’t appear genuine—it seems artificial, as if the links were purchased.

Therefore, when consulting with a reputable agency, we advise striking a balance: work hard and consistently on your SEO, but avoid rushing to do a lot of work at once and overexerting yourself in a short timeframe.

 

What can happen to a business’s organic traffic?

What will happen in the short term if we were to stop paying for SEO?

 

A drop in organic traffic

Many people get lulled into a false sense of security, thinking they could have paused their search engine optimisation retainer months ago. Yet, there may well be no immediate drop in organic traffic.

The reason is that, in the first couple of months, you might not see any drop in sales at all.

However, trust us when we say that sooner or later, if a business stops paying for SEO, a drop in organic visitor numbers will occur.

Backlinks that have already been established, along with the content marketing supporting the website, can help ensure a healthy flow of organic traffic to the website for some time after you stop paying, yet this will not last forever.

Therefore, for a period of 1 to 2 months, you may not notice any decline in visitor numbers.

However, organic traffic can slowly begin to decline.

 

Surely a few months will be fine?

Use the analogy of a car race—you might be in pole position, with a healthy margin between you and the car behind. But do you want to take your foot off the accelerator?

 

Core Algorithm Changes

Search engines, such as Google and Bing, roll out core algorithm changes and can cause your rankings to move substantially up or down. From experience, the first couple of months after you stop paying for SEO, you may not see noticeable changes, so it can feel like nothing is happening.

However, it is often after a core algorithm update that you can see drastic changes—a website can drop from the first position on the first page to the sixth position or worse.

This happens because the Google core algorithm updates often involve crawling your website and analysing your SEO in much more detail. That’s when you can drop substantially down the rankings, sometimes massively.

Links: The currency of the internet

 

 

It might be a direct competitor holding the first position for years, and you might wonder why, as their website doesn’t even look that good.

The website might look dated, and you’re wondering, well, how is that competitor ranking number one on Google?

Often, it’s all about backlinks.

Suppose they have a strong backlink profile, including numerous high-quality links and powerful do-follow links from reputable businesses. In that case, this can often elevate a website to the number one position.

 

Link loss

Links can be deleted, broken, or redirected to 404 pages, so as your links start to die off, your authority drops. This is again another reason why you might want to think twice about pausing or stopping your SEO investment.

As competitors build new, high-quality links, their backlink profile becomes stronger, and search engines will consider their site more relevant. Meaning they move them up, and perhaps your business down.

If your site is perceived as a stagnant website, with outdated links disappearing, you will drop down the rankings.

 

Switching providers—will it affect my organic traffic?

It’s a bit like using a power tool: it’s only as good as the tradesman using it.

SEO is the same—it’s only as powerful as the SEO consultant you hire.

If your SEO consultant isn’t that good, the results won’t be effective.

On the other hand, if you switch to an SEO provider offering better work, you could see a positive impact on your organic traffic.

Don’t be afraid to change SEO companies, but do your research—pick a company that delivers.

Look for an established agency that employs white-hat best practices and focuses its efforts on initiatives that drive results, such as building high-quality links.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

Will our business’s search engine rankings on Google drop immediately if we stop paying?

The simple answer comes down to the level of competition your business faces.

If the competition is fierce, you’ll drop down the ranks faster, simply because your competitors are working harder and focusing on their SEO more.

However, even in less competitive areas, your business will gradually drop down the ranks if you cease investing in SEO.

Search engines want to show the best, most relevant, and up-to-date answers. A website with content marketing from 2018 will be considered outdated and replaced by a fresher website.

 

Why do I need to pay an agency a monthly fee?

This is often the most effective way to improve your SEO.

Constant work is needed—someone or multiple people must diligently work on your site, focusing on areas that will improve your SEO and ranking factors every month. This involves areas like content marketing, technical SEO, and backlinks.

 

What is a Google core algorithm update, and why can it make a business drop substantially?

Google core algorithm updates can take weeks to roll out and can result in significant changes in rankings.

 

This usually happens for two main reasons:

SEO is sometimes performed incorrectly, frequently involving spammy tactics. This means the business could incur a penalty, such as a Google Penguin penalty.

 

    The content is outdated, and long-term investment in SEO has been neglected, so that a core update can result in a significant drop in rankings.

 

Why does my content marketing need to be kept up-to-date?

Content marketing, such as articles published on your company’s blog, requires regular updates.

For example, you might have written an article about the 10 best washing machines in 2025, but by 2026 or 2027, that advice could be outdated or the products could have been discontinued.

Therefore, all blog posts must be kept up to date.

 

Why is website maintenance essential for SEO?

Websites must be kept up to date, especially with things like WordPress plugins.

If plugins become outdated, the website can sometimes go offline.

If a website is offline, even for a short period, it can’t be crawled or indexed, which means it’s not selling your products or services.

When this happens repeatedly, search engines may even consider the page deleted or assume the company has gone out of business, resulting in a drop in rankings.

 

Why do deleted links affect my organic rankings?

Deleted backlinks can hurt your SEO, especially if you lose a high-quality link from a respected news site, for example.

That link may have passed significant “link juice” to your homepage, so losing it means less authority and lower rankings.

This is why your agency must continually build new links, as all links naturally become outdated.

You may have earned valuable links through awards or press coverage, but if those links are removed, your organic search rankings can be negatively affected.

 

Why Choose Our Agency?

We are an established digital marketing agency based in South Wales.

We work with businesses of all sizes, helping to improve organic visibility and generate more sales.