A client's site went from 200 to 20,000 monthly visits in a year, but they think it's a fluke

I've been handling SEO for a local plumbing company for about 12 months now. When I started, their site was getting maybe 200 visits a month from Google. After consistent work on content and fixing technical stuff, they're now hitting over 20k visits. The owner, though, is convinced it's just a seasonal spike or luck... he doesn't believe the strategy actually worked. On one hand, I get that big jumps can seem weird if you don't know SEO. On the other, it's frustrating when the data clearly shows the cause and effect. Has anyone else had a client refuse to believe the results you delivered for them?

3 comments

3 Comments

sandragrant3d ago

Classic case of "my success must be a mistake." Maybe he thinks the plumbing fairy blessed his Google ranking?

david_palmer3d ago

Ugh, that's honestly so frustrating. I had a client once who saw a huge jump in leads and still called it a coincidence. Tbh, sometimes you just can't win even when the numbers are right there in front of them.

laura_wilson3d ago

Last year I had a dentist client who doubled their booked appointments but called it a market trend. I made a simple one page report showing the exact search terms we now rank for that we didn't before, like "emergency toothache [city name]". It connected the dots for them. Maybe a visual like that could help? I get what david_palmer means about it feeling like you can't win, but sometimes you just have to show the work behind the spike.