How long does SEO take: what you need to do to see results

The period for websites to get results from search engine optimization typically lasts a little more than most of us expect. In fact, it takes months to begin seeing effects on rankings and traffic. However, SEO works on a case-by-case basis, and there is no shortcut to achieving instant rewards when you implement a campaign for your website.

Despite its gradual nature, SEO is still the most prominent method to drive organic traffic and conversions. It’s essential to focus on the various factors influencing the process and work diligently to improve them, ultimately affecting the timeline and outcomes. Continue reading to discover why it takes so much time for these efforts to yield results and how to expedite the process.

How long does it take for SEO to work?

Due to algorithms, you won’t see any effects until the search engine determines your website’s quality, relevance, and usefulness. Most sites achieve some increase in traffic or higher site rankings from their SEO campaigns within three to six months. However, it’s common for SEO to pay off after a year or so, as there’s no set timetable.

Patience is key to a successful SEO campaign, as it doesn’t work momentarily.

There are three stages of SEO that involve improving current web pages, creating new content, and attracting authoritative backlinks from other websites. Let’s break down the timeline of them as follows:

• Stage 1. The main activities consist of research and audit. The process may take 2-4 weeks, during which specialists review all the pages on a website to fix existing content for better conversion rates. Tasks include modifying keywords, adding tags, or updating meta descriptions.
• Stage 2. Besides editing your current content, it’s crucial to create additional web pages for enhanced online presence. This process includes identifying the right keywords and types of content, which help websites become visible. The length of this stage depends on the number of pages, so don’t expect overnight glow-ups.
• Stage 3. Specialists also build backlinks to authoritative websites. Since these prove a website’s trustworthiness, site ranking will also increase in response. Actions to boost link building include reaching out to others in the industry, promoting on social media, or engaging in related posts and articles.

Furthermore, it’s important to measure the campaign performance frequently. Understanding how SEO impacts your site’s visibility makes adjusting strategies for favorable outcomes easier.

The most powerful analytic tools besides SEO services are Google Search Console (GSC), Ahrefs, and Semrush. GSC is a free option for website maintenance. In comparison, Ahrefs and Semrush offer all-encompassing features, including keyword research, search volume, and competition tracking.

Why does SEO take so long?

The reason SEO takes so long is how algorithms work. Search engines like Google require time to crawl (assess the site content) and index (store content in an extensive database). Only when this automatic process is completed, a website appear in the organic search results. Refer to SEO Starter Guide: The Basics if you’re into the technicality of how Google retrieves and displays information.

To check how your website has been crawled, indexed, and visible on Google Search, you can use Google Search Console. After analyzing your site, you’ll find a detailed Page Indexing report. If it indicates a significant number of pages are not being indexed, explore these pages. Should they include key pages vital for the site’s SEO, it suggests technical issues impeding Google’s crawling and indexing processes that must be addressed to improve your SEO results. However, if installing this Console is not feasible, there are alternative methods you can explore.

Unlike sponsored ads, where you pay for top placement on a SERP, SEO is a long-term investment in building quality content and improving UX for organic search rankings. Hence, you’d better consider the time commitment to brainstorming and executing strategies. Even if you expedite this process, Google still needs time to find, include, or update your site in the search results.

Altogether, SEO takes a long time to deliver results primarily due to how the search engine works and the time spent creating, editing, and publishing content. That said, you can follow SEO best practices to ensure that Google crawls and indexes your content more easily and, ultimately, speed up the waiting time for it to display or rank higher on SERPs.

What factors can affect SEO time and results?

Thankfully, SEO is a measurable method for tracking the rewards of your strategies over time. In this section, we list the six factors that affect the time and results, along with short descriptions of each. Investigating them will help you understand better and hasten the process. For an in-depth SEO audit checklist, check out the Key factors affecting your traffic article we have compiled.

Initial condition

The current state of your website plays a major role in SEO time and results. You may spend more hours fixing existing content than creating a new one. For instance, if the current pages perform poorly on SERPs due to inferior quality, you’ll need to rewrite or edit them. Other scenarios may involve technical flaws such as keyword integration, title and header tags, meta descriptions, and links.   

A thorough site audit will be an ideal option to assess the overall condition of a website. You can request professional assistance from SEO Audit Services for a comprehensive site check, technical SEO audit, and keyword research all at once. When the inspection is completed, you’ll receive detailed reports and recommendations to eliminate issues and select relevant keywords for improved visibility. This will allow you to reach results faster than fixing the site yourself.

Website history and authority

Old websites are more likely to see SEO results faster than new ones, as the Google search engine assumes them to be more established and credible. Simply put, they are around long enough to be trusted and possess a decent backlink profile. That’s why history and authority significantly contribute to a site’s performance and, eventually, rankings and traffic.

In contrast, new sites, especially those younger than a year, may face a period of fluctuation in rankings because Google isn’t acquainted with them. That said, being a newly created site isn’t necessarily a drawback. These websites enjoy a shorter time to index and potentially avoid ineffective SEO practices compared to older ones. Therefore, we recommend not jumping in and purchasing an old domain to speed up SEO time and impacts since it may backfire.

Established SEO goals

Your SEO goals also make up a considerable factor affecting its time and results. Goals here refer specifically to the main objectives of your campaign, which may include organic traffic, SERP rankings, and sales conversions. Either way, SEO is a long-term, consistent effort in content creation and technical configuration. Hence, it should take at least a few months to accomplish anything.   

To facilitate an affluent campaign, you’ll first need to formulate clearly defined goals. So, what characteristics that make a good one? It should be specific, measurable, realistic, relevant, and within a timeframe. For example, imagine you’re running an online business and anticipate more visitors to fill out the contact form, let’s try “having 50 visitors leaving their contacts by the end of the month.” With this goal, you can carry out SEO strategies accordingly to attain it.  

Available resources

Money, time, and effort are the resources you invest into SEO. A large allocation of funding and labor gives you an advantage in leveraging the SEO timeline. However, there’s a need for efficient resource planning since you don’t want to pour in everything you have and see months flying by without satisfying results from the campaign.

You can assign your resources based on the priority level of strategies. If you feel there’s an urgent need for more quality content, consider hiring experts to provide Content Marketing Services. Conversely, you should engage a technical SEO service for relevant keyword research when your current phrases no longer adapt to the industry. Spending wisely helps you take one step closer to the desired results. 

Competition in the market

Competition is one of the key factors causing SEO to take so long to work. While you’re racing for higher rankings in the search results, your competitors are doing the same thing. The challenge is even harsher when the market is small, with major players ready to invest millions in search engine optimization. As a result, you should know how to conduct SEO competitor analysis to identify their strategies and your unique position.

For example, if the common keywords in your industry are super competitive, it’s almost impossible to rank in less than a year. Instead, you can opt for a low-competitive one in your SEO campaign for the short run. Thus, SEO results come to you faster as you earn clicks from search engines. When your site becomes reputable with valuable backlinks, it will be time for difficult keywords.

Development of SEO strategy

An effective SEO strategy paves the way to rapid timelines and results. Therefore, it’s essential to build a feasible plan and constantly evaluate performance to make adjustments accordingly. A solid approach should entail consistent work on on-page and off-page SEO, addressing specific business needs and requirements.    

At the same time, maintain flexibility to modify your SEO plan when needed. Remember that search engine algorithms are dynamic, so you want to keep your strategies pertinent as time passes. That’s why you may need to reassess it to see whether it still works out and then add new tactics or remove those no longer applicable. If you have no idea how to start, read our comprehensive guide, Seo Basics — A Complete Guide To Search Engine Optimization For Beginners.

7 tips on how to get SEO results faster

The Google search engine relies on a lot of factors for ranking. Make sure your website meets the minimum technical requirements to get indexed first. In addition, follow the tips below to refine your approach to SEO and achieve faster results. For more details specific to new websites, refer to our 7 SEO Tips To Boost Your New Website’s Rankings, in which we summarize everything you should know about SEO if you start from scratch.

1. Use low-competition keywords

Low-competitive keywords are a detour to avoid the battle over highly competitive ones. It isn’t a smart move to crash head-on with big competitors in the industry, given they have well-known brand images and abundant resources for SEO keywords. That’s why you should choose relevant, low-competitive ones for the business while attracting authoritative links to strengthen the site’s reputation.

An example of low-competitive keywords would be the long-tails. As the name suggests, they are longer phrases that appear in search queries. This way, you’ll get visitors with specific intent that potentially results in high conversion. You can use Keyword Planner to determine which ones fit your website. The tool offers thousands of long-tail keywords with specific information on search volume and cost-per-click.

2. Refresh old content with actual information

Don’t expect content from 10 years ago to draw in organic traffic for your website. In this information age, it’s crucial to stay up-to-date or even ride a trend. Therefore, you’d better review your web pages regularly and refresh them with new data. In most cases, updated content helps boost traffic to your site instantly. It’s cost-effective and, at the same time, shows the search engine that you put effort into making your pages relevant.

Visitors would be pleased to read new, accurate facts instead of outdated pages that give nothing more than an old piece of yesterday’s news.

SEO requires hard work and consistency over a long period. For that reason, constantly checking the performance of your old content is a good habit to maintain. Simply utilize Google Analytics or similar tools to identify posts and articles with declining traffic in the past few months. Then, you can add relevant information, include new keywords, or replace visual elements.

3. Implement schema markup

Schema markup is a code that SEO specialists implement on web pages to help Google understand the content more easily. As a result, the search engine can display it in an enhanced format, often referred to as rich snippets, improving the chance of getting clicks. Having this code, given you use the right one, will make your page stand out from the rest on a SERP since it is more noticeable regarding appearance.

There are multiple types of schema markup, some of which are local business, course, product, article, review, and organization. Depending on what your website represents and communicates, you should choose suitable types of markup to enhance visibility. Implementing schema markup is straightforward without the need for coding skills. Reliable digital tools are available to assist in marking up your pages. 

4. Fix technical SEO errors

SEO errors prevent search engines from crawling and indexing a website, making it impossible to become visible, let alone land in the top rankings. However, SEO errors are inevitable, and there’s no need to freak out when you spot them on your website. You should figure out what has been done wrong and which is the best method to make it right. The earlier you correct the mistakes, the faster your website appears in search results.

If you’re not a fan of anything technical, a Technical SEO Services Company would be your perfect companion in fixing SEO errors. From technical SEO audit to image optimization, you’ll enjoy a full suite of services to improve every aspect and speed up results. A  team of qualified SEO experts will help your website secure a top place in search rankings.

Maybe you haven’t identified any SEO errors, but wonder why it takes so long to see the results. For this reason, a Technical Website Audit Service is ideal to ensure your website’s health. The most common issues that fly under the radar include messy site structure, unnecessary elements, slow loading speed, and inefficient codes. At the end, you’ll receive a full report of technical tasks for your developers.

5. Add internal links to related content

You may miss the most obvious technique for higher rankings — adding internal links between the pages within your website domain. Search engines gain insights into your site’s structure and hierarchy, allowing them to rank your pages faster. Thus, an important page should be linked to at least another one to boost SEO. A tip for you is to consult SEO Link Best Practices for Google for detailed instructions on creating crawlable links to enhance rankings on SERPs.

Not only that, but internal links also engage visitors to stay on your site longer, exploring multiple related content by clicking on them. That’s why it’s a major mistake not to include them in your SEO strategies. However, a crazy number of links on a page does more harm than good. The maximum you can add is 150 per page, though you should give visitors an enjoyable read rather than a series of eye-poking colored texts.

6. Target TOP-10 keywords

The fact that keywords contribute so much to SEO results makes their research the most challenging task. How do I choose the right ones? Aim for those that can raise your content to TOP 10 in search results. It doesn’t matter if they’re high- or low-competitive keywords — there’s a chance for clicks and conversions as long as your site is ranked within the first 10 places with promising leads and conversions.

It’s also crucial to monitor the rank of your competitors and control the presence of these keywords in the content. To do this, you can use paid tools, which offer a wide range of features, or if that’s not feasible, consider using the Search Results report in Google Search Console. It shows which key phrases are used to find your site, their positions, and the number of clicks they generate. With these insights, you can identify the necessary keywords and pinpoint areas for improvement. In short, the more times your site lands in the top search results, the faster your business generates revenue from organic traffic.

7. Optimize your website for mobile

The expanding number of mobile users indicates the importance of mobile SEO. It targets leveraging rankings in search results on smartphones and tablets, ensuring unified optimization across digital devices. Today, there are more cellphone users than ever, and the number continues to rise steadily. Hence, you’d better develop a set of working SEO strategies for such devices to reach more visitors.

In particular, the mobile-first indexing mechanism is why mobile SEO influences time and results significantly. In other words, Google’s crawler prioritizes the mobile version of your website, meaning it relies on the information on your phone instead of desktop pages for rankings. So, if your site isn’t mobile-friendly, you lose the opportunity to receive high rankings or even pop up in search results.

Steady effort wins the SEO race

SEO is a long-term investment in building high-quality, user-friendly content that boosts your site’s rankings on SERPs. While results typically take three to six months, they can be longer, depending on various factors. All in all, don’t expect instant success. Instead, focus on consistent efforts to refine your content and technical aspects.

Following the 7 tips outlined in this article can accelerate your SEO results and improve your site’s visibility. Remember, search engines prioritize quality and relevance, so keep your website evolving to meet these standards. And if you need expert assistance, our SEO services at Halo Lab are here to help. Reach out to us anytime for cutting-edge strategies that will elevate your site’s performance and boost your business to new heights.