two months in and you're seeing that kind of impression volume - that's not bad. but impressions without clicks mean you're being seen but not trusted yet. That's where the real game starts.
A few things I've been digging into recently that might fill the gaps:
Google's own starter guide is surprisingly solid for the fundamentals - the kind of stuff that works regardless of algorithm updates. no fluff, just structure.
Link building is where most agencies stall. There's a running thread about creative approaches that goes way beyond the usual "write a guest post" nonsense. think resource-based, not transaction-based.
Topical authority clicked for me when i stopped chasing individual keywords and started mapping out the entire problem space my clients care about. One thread really nailed the difference between "authority" and "just being known".
the sitemap myth is worth watching - a lot of people assume submitting one fixes everything. it doesn't. Crawl efficiency comes from internal linking architecture, not a file.
"Crawled but not indexed" is the single biggest time-sink i see. understanding why Google spider hits a page and decides not to store it has saved me months of wasted effort.
and the AI stuff - Google's been quietly updating their guidelines on how they treat machine-generated content. worth reading if you're using any kind of automation. It's less about "avoid AI" and more about "don't be pointless".
None of this is magic. but stringing it together in the right order tends to shift things
