long does SEO take to work?
Online dating, 2-day delivery, binge watching a TV series.
SEO resembles the slow food movement in an age of fast food.
How long will you be waiting?
This article will discuss
- What are the SEO results?
- Average time to see results
- How fast SEO can produce results depends on a number of factors.
What are the SEO results?
Let’s first discuss what “results“, before we talk about how long it takes for you to receive them.
You will need to define your goals at the beginning of your SEO campaign. One of those goals may be revenue.
SEO can be used to drive revenue and many other things.
For the purposes of this article, only one metric is important to measure SEO success.
Organic traffic.
When I say that I will see SEO results in a reasonable timeframe, I mean a substantial increase in organic traffic. That is how I’ve always defined SEO success.
You want organic traffic to drive revenue.
The good news is, when SEO generates targeted traffic for a site, this traffic can be a major revenue generator.
Many factors, many of which fall outside the scope of search engine optimization (SEO), can influence whether or not you convert visitors to a site. Your price point, landing page and sales process are all examples.
Traffic is the best way to measure how well your SEO program is performing.
How long will it take for SEO to show results?
usually takes several months to a full year before SEO results are measurable. You may experience different results.
This is what I see most often with my clients.
Google suggests a similar timeframe for this video.
And research from Ahrefs supports this, too:
Here are a few real-world examples.
Ecommerce website
A furniture e-commerce business suffered a significant drop in traffic and search rankings after redesigning its website.
We identified that the main cause of the issue was an inflated index.
Here is the timeline of results after implementing our suggestions:
- We re-ranked 56 key phrases on Page 1 after two months.
- In just three months, traffic returned to the previous levels.
B2B Site
The website of a manufacturer suffered from a drop in rankings and organic search traffic. They didn’t understand why.
We found that improving the user experience, internal links and content quality could be improved after a thorough analysis.
Here is the timeline of results after implementing our suggestions:
- After four months the client began to see traffic results.
- In just nine months they achieved record organic traffic.
- In just two years they experienced a 100 percent increase in organic traffic.
B2C Site
We were approached by a nationwide drug screening company to improve the performance of their website.
We recommend on-page optimization and technical SEO as well as improvements to user experience, content, and the user experience.
Following our recommendations:
- In six months, the traffic had increased by 166% when compared with the same period of six months two years earlier.
What are the factors that affect SEO time?
The timeframe for a website is largely determined by several factors.
Three of the most significant are:
- Your actions.
- This website is a good place to start.
- The competition is on.
1. Your actions
The clock for “SEO results”, starts to tick once you implement the SEO program. It does not start when you hire someone or formulate strategies.
Inability to implement recommendations is the main reason why many businesses fail at SEO, even after hiring SEO specialists. This is the main reason for failures.
It can be due to many factors, such as “buy-in” for SEO or IT needing to make technical changes to the website.
No matter what the reason is, you will not see any results for each month you don’t implement SEO strategies.
2. This website is a good example.
It will take you longer to get out of a rut if you have a difficult website.
You might:
- You have a lot to do in terms of technical issues.
- Google has given me a Manual Action for SEO efforts in the past.
- Was negatively affected by the Google core update?
You might also have a brand new domain. This can typically take longer than an established site to show results.
What about quick fixes? They are rarer but can still happen.
It’s not uncommon for a robots.txt to accidentally block search engines’ access to a site. This still happens.
This can be done quickly to produce SEO results.
3. The competition
I’ve always believed that SEO should be aimed at beating the competition and not the algorithm. Depending on the space in which you play, competition can be fierce.
You may find that your competitors have more resources and can therefore work faster. You can still win in these situations if you remain creative and nimble.
Or maybe you are in a your-money-or-your-life industry where you will be held to a higher standard by Google and it might take more effort to compete.
Or maybe you’re after top rankings for million-dollar keywords.
My company took two years to move a client up to the top of the search results for a keyword with a long tail. To say that the client was satisfied with the results is a huge understatement.
Get better SEO results faster
There are ways to speed the process up. You’ll never see results as fast as those described in this article.
- Get a detailed technical SEO audit on your website. It will help you to identify the best way to improve your website and beat the competition.
- Hire an SEO expert consultant to implement a SEO program. It is well worth it to have an expert on your team as you battle the search wars.
The initial SEO results were good, but the ongoing results were better
SEO results that you get within a few months or a year may not be the best you’ll ever see.
SEO is a never-ending process, and you will see better results over time if your SEO strategy remains solid.
The article How Long Does SEO Take to Work first appeared on Search Engine Land.