Its time to confess all folks!
The little secret that most Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) agencies still don't want to acknowledge is that SEO still works even when you stop employing the agency... but with one huge caveat.
Yes, unlike paid digital marketing, which stops delivering new visitors almost immediately after it is turned off... the SEO efforts made to improve a client's website ranking in search engines won't be immediately reversed when you stop using that agency*.
So in the same way that organic rankings improve over time from effective optimisation efforts, sites tend to take time to drop lower and lower when SEO is ignored.
How quickly these rankings drop depends considerably on the site, the competition and a number of other factors. And my experience has been that continual sustained SEO efforts have better success that turning that optimisation effort on and off over time.
*Unless they have used paid inbound links and stop these straight away. In which case, you shouldn't have hired that agency for SEO in the first place!
