First things first, and I can’t stress this enough, SEO is not instant.
You can spend as long as you like searching on google but unfortunately a straight answer just doesn’t exist.
To give you an average time scale 6 to 12 months should be efficient to see progress in your work. The time frame for SEO depends on various factors, such as previous SEO work, the age of your website, the amount of content and many more. But no two websites are the same- even if they are from the same sector and have the same competition. Every website is unique and even effected by different variables and factors, meaning an SEO timeframe can be difficult to develop.
However, if you’re spending a lot of time worrying about how long it’s going to take, you’re likely wasting your time. Instead focus your energy on making an investment and plan to be in it for the long haul. If quick results come, then great! However, SEO is a long-term marketing tactic with permanent value and shouldn’t be seen as a way to generate quick sales. An optimised website generates more traffic than a website that hasn’t been optimised, most importantly generates organic traffic. Displaying your services or products onto the screens of your ideal customers.
SEO has one of the best ROIs long-term, surely that’s worth the wait?
Quick Wins
There is the potential for immediate impact within SEO, which here at MR SEO we call quick wins. These can be anything from implementing our extensive keyword research to fixing technical errors on your site and can give you an immediate boost when ranking for particular terms.
That means that its although you may see smaller improvements on traffic and ranking positions on your site, it isn’t going to jump from 56 to 1st overnight. If you’re an ecommerce website, you’re not going to see customers flooding your store and making purchases, and chances are your revenue isn’t going to increase in the first week of implementing your campaign.
Long Term Strategy
Like anything, it’s difficult to pinpoint an exact amount of time that it takes for your company to see organic traffic from SEO. The length of time it takes to see organic results depends on various different factors such as:
Your competition
The different keywords you are ranking for
How healthy your site is
How easy Google can crawl your site
The volume of search behind your particular services or products
We will build a bespoke strategy to tackle the most important things for your business first so you can see results as soon as possible. Over the course of the months after, we will implement various updates, changes and audits in order to stay ahead of the game and ensure you are ranking as high as possible.
Why does it take SEO so long to work?
Since SEO is impacted by so many smaller things, it’s nearly impossible to see results right away. It takes Google time to determine things like:
The relevance of your page to a user’s search
What the images on your site are
Alt tags
Title pages
Headings
Meta descriptions
How long it takes for your page to load
How many backlinks you have on your page
Broken Links
All of this information, and more, determines where you rank in search engine results pages and can will all take time within your SEO strategy to see an impact.
How SEO has changed
Once upon a time before technology has advanced to how it is now the main strategy was to identify around 5-10 key words which were most relevant to your business and to focus on those. But there is no one specific keyword which is going to drive a lot of traffic to your website, if you are just focusing on a small group of keywords, you’re probably limiting the number of potential customers searching for you.
SEO today is driven by natural everyday language and is far more user friendly as people are searching for more normal questions other than just one key word and are being much more specific within their searches which is easier to rank for as the more detailed and specific you are the less competition will be in this area.
If you don’t have the time or technical knowhow to product a good SEO strategy yourself, consider using an agency that are genuinely passionate about our clients and are transparent in deliverables so you know exactly what you’re getting yourself into and to know the exact process we go through to achieve the best results. Our sharp communication keeps you in the loop each step of the way and sets realistic expectations for achieving your agreed-upon goals. For more information talk to one of our experts at our SEO agency in London.
What Often Delays SEO Results?
Pages often have to be updated with content that makes them crawl better under Google’s algorithm. Content about specific products or services to that page will help rankings. For example, category pages have little content just displaying products, which could cause issues but this can be fixed by adding category specific content explaining to google exactly what is on the page.
Many websites already have title tags and h1s but they are not targeting specific keywords, meaning they are not going to benefit and will be wasted. Many people don’t have access to specific tools that allow them to do keyword research, meaning they are unsure on which keywords would be most beneficial to them and therefore they would need to seek expert help.
Technical issues with the site will make it difficult for google to crawl your site, effecting your rankings. For example, duplicate content which Google defines as ‘content that might be replicated within your website or on other web domains’ making it hard for google to know which page should be ranked.
Although our society is often after instant gratification, especially in the technology sector, patience is required with SEO. Our online deliveries are dropped off on the next day or even the same day, money can be sent app to app instantly and holidays can be booked at the press of a button but SEO is a process you have to stick with if your results are not instant.
First thing first is to get a professional to do it for you. There are small SEO changes businesses can make that might see a small increase in their traffic or ranking but it’s what we do best, so you can trust us to do it properly.
We’ll give you detailed reports and updates constantly on the changes we are making, the goals of our strategy, all your analytics and important statistics and be in constant contact when you need to.
We offer bespoke SEO consultancy. Together we can decide what’s best for your company.
Conclusion
With all that in mind, it’s easier to understand why SEO takes a little longer to work than other strategies. But what is the exact time it takes to get serious results in ranking, traffic and conversion rates?
There is no exact time, but all things considered, it typically takes 4-6 months to see organic traffic from SEO. That time is measured from the very start of your campaign and implementation.
Once we have developed our bespoke strategy designed for your business, we will get to work on implementing whatever changes need to be made so you can focus on other important aspects of your business and grow further.
However, the work is not done after 6 months if you see an improvement!
We will work with you to give you constant, month by month, implementation updates. If you’re competitors increase their SEO, we have to stay on top of our game to ensure you secure their traffic. SEO is a long-term investment in seasonal services and products too, with many e-commerce sites seeing their best months around Christmas. With various impacts on SEO at all times, take the stress out of having to deal with it yourself and invest in us. A long term investment in SEO is a long term investment that should reap rewards and ROI (Return Of Investment).
