How long does SEO take? Few days? Weeks? Months?
It is quite difficult to predict the results of search engine optimization as each content has its own SEO strategy. Sometimes it takes less time and sometimes it takes more time than usual. SEO is the foundation of your content. Without SEO, it is difficult for your content or your website to be visible to your audience.
It is understandable that SEO takes time to show results. In this article, you will get the answer as to how long does SEO take. Also, you will get answers to some other questions such as what factors influence the SEO results, Google’s take on how long does SEO take to work, the role of algorithms in SEO results, SEO timeline you should be considering, major SEO challenges, top reasons why to hire SEO agency for SEO results, and how Ap Web World can help you overcome SEO challenges.
Yes, we’ll know that SEO takes time to show results.
Even a well-executed SEO strategy may take enough effort and time to get higher rankings in the SERP.
Still, the common question is how long does SEO take to work?
In this guide, you’ll learn →
- Important factors that influence the SEO results timeline
- Major SEO challenges
- Role of Google updates in SEO success
- Average timeframe to consider, and a lot.
1. Factors That Influence The SEO Success
It’s important to consider key variables that may impact getting SEO results faster. These variables are:
- Competition
- Website authority
- Technical SEO issues
- Content
Let’s dive deep into one by one.
1.1.Competition
Here’s the simple math. The more pages are trying to rank on the same keywords, the higher competition is.
In general, some niches tend to be highly competitive because of the high market demand.
When you start a business, there might be many successful competitors in the concerned industry. Initially, it is suggested to work on your business, make it efficient to consider it’s a competitor. Later, you should keep a check on your competitors. Do not check all the competitors. Do some research and make a list of competitors which have the highest ranking in recent time and try to find their strategy, their mindset. Also, keep checking on the links they use. In this way, you will get a top ranking.
For example, over 1.4 million results are competing on the keyword ‘Content marketing tips.’
On the other hand, the search term ‘Gardening tips for balcony’ has only about 14.7k search results.
That’s a huge difference, right?
1.1.1 Action items:
If your website belongs to a highly competitive niche, it will be difficult to get faster SEO results than a low-competitive industry.
Search some head terms (primary topics related to your website) under quotation to get a quick sense of the competition.
For example, typing “[your head term]” will show you the number of results available for the search term.
Or, you can choose any of your favorite SEO tools to find the competition of every possible keyword.
Note: Keyword Difficulty (KD) in Ahrefs depends on the backlink profile of top-ranking pages. So, the higher backlink strength could be a strong signal of high competition.
1.2 Website Authority
Website authority (especially the backlink profile) plays a crucial role in SEO success and ranking faster on Google.
Ahrefs did a study that shows how high DR sites can rank faster compared to low DR sites.
It is found that the average time taken by high DR sites is 61-121 days for a specific group of keywords.
Therefore it is important to take website authority into account while forecasting the SEO results time frame.
1.2.1 Action items:
While assessing the authority of the website, consider the following items:
- Quantity and quality of the backlinks
- Mentions from high authoritative sites
- Content quality
- Number of pages
With the overall improvement of your site, you’re more likely to see your pages ranking faster in the top 10 of Google.
1.3 Technical SEO Issues
Technical factors such as indexing, site structure, sitemap, HTTP responses, and page speed can significantly get higher rankings than your competitor.
At the same time, sites with technical issues may have the opposite effect.
- Indexing issues
If the site is completely new, you might see indexing issues as Google takes time to understand the website’s relevancy and trust.
1.3.1 Action items
The first thing you need to do is audit the indexing status.
Use the search operator [site:example.com], as this will show you all the pages indexed by Google.
Alternatively, you can also search with a specific URL to see if the URL is indexed.
If Google does not index a page, it will not get ranked for any keywords. Therefore, indexing issues may negatively impact SEO success.
Again, if a site has too many pages with thin content or duplicate content, it might cause serious damage to the overall indexing.
So, it’s recommended to also either update or remove pages that don’t add value (thin, duplicated, or scrapped content).
Other technical issues you need to regularly check are:
- Site speed
- Thin content
- HTTP issues
- Redirection
- Structured data
- Sitemaps
- H1 tag missing pages
- Missing alt tags and more.
1.4 Role Of Content
Google ranks web pages, not a website. So, the more quality pages you have on the site, the better will be the overall performance.
But the condition is that the content has to match the searcher’s intent. Also, creating in-depth content helps in ranking for multiple related keywords.
But that doesn’t mean adding tons of pages with good content is all you need to secure the top positions.
Here’s why:
The ranking difficulty of keywords. Ideally, a new website should start with targeting long-tail keywords.
These keywords, in general, have low search volume and low difficulty as well.
One example of a long-tail keyword is ‘How to change colors in knitting‘ with a global volume of 350 searches per month and a KD of 5.
Take a look at the below illustration to understand the difference between long-tail and short-tail keywords.
1.4.1 Action Items to get faster SEO results
1.4.1.1 Long-tail keywords:
Choose the right keywords to get SEO success faster. Especially if the site is new, focus mainly on the long-tail keywords.
By adding modifiers like how, why, when, where, with, you’ll find many keyword variations to choose from.
1.4.1.2 Target geo-specific keywords:
Consider this strategy when your product or service influences specific regions (city, state, etc.).
Targeting geo-specific keywords with high buying intent is one of the best strategies to get a better outcome from an SEO campaign.
Consider that your brand is offering courier services to specific cities such as Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata.
Next, identify how people search for courier services in those specific cities.
To get a quick idea, you can use any SEO tool and search for the following keyword format:
- [your services] in [city name]
- E.g., courier services in Hyderabad, Courier services in Kolkata, etc.
These keywords have high intent and a better chance of converting into sales as compared to generic keywords.
So, start with these high-impact keywords to get faster SEO results and sales.
1.4.1.3 Branded keywords:
Branded keywords should be on the high priority list in your SEO campaign.
Wondering why?
Your competitors are rarely going to beat you for branded keywords. Find branded keywords using the Google search console.
First, open GSC and go to the ‘performance’ section.
Second, add your brand name under the ‘query’ section.
This way, you’ll find lots of queries people are asking about your brand. By answering those, you’ll have a better chance of converting visitors into paying customers.
1.4.1.4 Silo structure:
Good site architecture is essential to organize your content, help the user experience, and get Google to understand your site easily.
It’s recommended to organize your pages so that every important page on the site should be accessible within three clicks, starting from the home page.
Here’s a visual representation of effective site architecture (by Authority Hackers):
1.4.1.4 Silo structure helps in:
- Fast indexing of web pages
- Improving the UX
- Indicating Google about the site’s relevancy
Watch the below video to learn how to implement silo structure.
Check this video: How To Build PERFECT SEO Silos on WordPress (Step by Step)
Relevant read: Top SEO tips for a travel website
2. Major SEO challenge
Here are some of the most common SEO challenges you’ll face to grow search traffic and drive revenue for your business.
2.1. Dealing With Vanity Metrics
There are so many metrics you need to follow as an SEO person. But if you’re handling clients, you’ll realize that leads and sales are the two most important metrics for the business. Therefore the challenge is to show the ROI to your clients. So, in the end, your entire goal of an SEO campaign should be to drive more qualified leads and generate sales. Focusing on metrics like bounce rate, traffic, CTR can make you feel good, but you should prioritize sales and leads over vanity metrics.
2.2. Difficult to predict
Sometimes it is difficult to predict or visualize the outcome of the SEO effort. That’s why you’ll never find any legit SEO folk talking about ‘guaranteed rankings or traffic.’
The real challenge is convincing the clients as they might not be aware of the whole picture of SEO. In this case, you need to explain to the client how SEO works and what results to expect.
2.3. Executing SEO tasks are challenging
From content writers to web developers, SEO involves multiple teams together. This makes SEO execution difficult. Sometimes, you have to go through several approval processes to make a single change on the site.
Whenever you’re working on an SEO project, it’s important to align the different teams and have a solid communication channel for faster execution.
2.4. Other key challenges are:
Dealing with technical SEO issues
It becomes very difficult to deal with Technical SEO issues sometimes as there are alot.of technical things like Robots.txt, sitemap, code, schema all things which need some experience to solve and correctly implement.
Tracking SEO effectiveness
It is difficult but important to track if SEO Activities are an effective result for the brand or not, many brands implement SEO Strategies but they do not know if it is effective for their company or not. It is important to track the SEO effectiveness and change strategy according to needs.
Dynamic nature of SERP
It is very well known that SERP is dynamic and everyday positions are changing. Some brands improve their ranking and some brands face issues in ranking. This is all because the SEO efforts are either good or bad. If your competitor is outranking you, then you need to do 10x better than them to beat the ranking and reach the featured snippet position.
3. Google’s Take On How Long Does SEO Take
You may try a few other things to speed up the process:
- Use Internal links for new pages
- Remove unnecessary web pages (URLs)
- Quality of the site (look for thin and duplicate content, site reputation, etc.)
Also, it’s important to note that if you recently did a website migration or disavow spammy links that affected overall search performance, it may take some time to reflect the changes.In fact, John Muller recommended a 6-12 months (on the safe side) timeframe to see the positive effect in SEO.
3.1 Role of Algorithm In SEO Results
No successful SEO campaign is a one-time process. The major reason is the frequent update on the Google algorithm. Almost every day, Google releases minor updates to improve the search engine.
As a result, we see volatility in SEO rankings. In fact, with the help of the Semrush sensor, you can track the daily SERP volatility.
Here is how to check the impact of any google algorithm update on your SEO effort:
3.2 Google search console report
Look for impression and clicks reports in GSC. If there’s a recent major update, you’re most likely going to see a sudden drop or increase in site traffic.
3.3 Assess the reasons:
Whether the algorithm updates positively or negatively impacted your site, you should be assessing the possible reasons.
Read Google’s official documentation on the update to see the key factors that have the most impact.
3.4 Content quality:
In most cases, the poor quality of the content becomes the primary reason for sudden traffic drop due to any major update.
In this situation, It’s recommended to check Google’s Quality raters guideline where you’ll find what Google considers as high and low-quality content.
3.5.Role of Inbound Links in how long does SEO take to work
Inbound links are another name for backlinks. These are some of the most important elements in SEO strategy. When one website links with another website then it automatically shows the result. It is quite natural that if you use high-ranking website links, it will give quite a good ranking to your website. Google also considers it as a positive indicator. Whenever any content with inbound links appears on google. It takes it as high-ranking content. But sometimes it is also risky as if your past content doesn’t have a high ranking and suddenly you got high ranking it will be against google webmaster guidelines. However, inbound links play a significant role in SEO success or help to solve the primary question of how long does it take for SEO to work.
4. SEO Timeline You Should Be Considering
Many factors influence the SEO results timeline. However, after helping hundreds of websites from different categories, we’ve seen that a brand new website may take about 6-12 months to show SEO results. When it comes to updating a site with proper SEO strategy and improving content quality, you may see the real changes from 3-6 months. Relevant read: SEO strategies for software companies.
Top Reasons Why To Hire SEO Agency For SEO Results:
- Expertise: An agency has multiple SEO experts from different categories that ensure that your SEO effort is not wasted.
- Fast execution: An agency is not a one-man army, so the SEO tasks are executed quickly.
- Experience: An experienced agency like Ap Web World has worked with businesses similar to yours. So, you get a proven way of generating better results from SEO.
- Hassle-free: Hiring an SEO agency helps you focus more on the business and the customers. It saves your time and makes you more efficient while driving the results.
How Ap Web World Can Help You Overcome SEO Challenges
After working on 100+ SEO projects, we know the key challenges and how to handle them. We have the biggest advantage over any freelancer or other agencies: we never depend on generalists to optimize and track the SEO campaign.
Instead, we rely on experts in each segment such as technical SEO, keywords research, local SEO to execute the plan. At the end of the day, we want to turn the website into an SEO asset that drives traffic & leads and generates sales. So, message us and get in touch with our SEO experts.
Conclusion
Hence, we hope that your major queries regarding search engine optimization or SEO strategy are clear. After reading this article you must have understood that how long does it take for SEO to work. SEO strategy depends on the company as well as the content. There are many factors that affect SEO but if you are considering all the things such as keyword research and other things. You will surely get success.