Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility and ranking of a website or web page in search engine results pages (SERPs). SEO involves optimizing a website’s content, HTML tags, and associated coding to improve its relevance to specific keywords and phrases people use when searching for information online.
The main aim of SEO is to improve the visibility of a website so that it appears higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant keywords or phrases. In other words, SEO helps get more website visitors by improving the site’s ranking in search engine results.
As a business owner, you want to invest your time and money toward digital marketing strategies that work. One of the most common questions from curious business owners interested in exploring digital marketing is, “how long does SEO take to work?”
So, how long does SEO take to work?
Overview
How Long Does SEO Take to Work?
The answer to this question depends on several factors, including how competitive the keyword or phrase is, how well the website is optimized, and how much competition the website faces from other websites.
Generally speaking, SEO can take a few weeks to months to start working correctly. However, in some cases, it may take longer for the effects of SEO to be seen.
One of the main reasons it can take a while for SEO to work is that it takes time for search engines to index and rank a website. This is especially true if the website is new or has not been updated regularly.
Another reason SEO may take a while to work because it can take time for the changes made to the website to be reflected in the SERPs. This is because search engines periodically crawl and index websites, and it can take a while for them to pick up on the changes that have been made.
So, how long does SEO take to work?
It Depends on the Effort and Scope of Your Strategy
The answer to how long SEO takes to “work” depends on your definition of working – search engines may begin crawling and indexing websites as soon as their URLs go live, yet it can take weeks, months, or years for a page to rank well if it ever does.
Good SEO makes the difference between years and weeks, but even the best SEO might not be enough to help you rank for specific ultra-competitive keywords. If you set your sights lower, you can rank in as fast as a few days and even find yourself in the top five for a long-tail keyword you’ve discovered has gone relatively unused by the competition yet remains relevant for your clientele.
The root problem is those specific keywords are much harder to rank than others, and specific SEO techniques take time to work. Backlinks aren’t organically established in a day, and neither is authority. Older pages with a more significant history of editorialization and frequent updates will often rank better for evergreen search queries than the freshest, newest pages.
If you’ve come here expecting a concrete answer on how long you should be investing in your SEO before you begin to see benefits from it, the answer is that it’s complicated.
A good SEO-oriented team can begin making changes to your existing and future content in ways that draw in leads in as little as a few weeks, with noticeable changes in traffic within the same time frame. Understanding what factors speed things along can help you figure out where you should invest more time and money.
What Is Your Competition Up To?
First, let’s get the immutable fact out of the way – your success in any given field may dramatically depend on how competitive that field is online. It will be unbelievably expensive and difficult to pierce specific industries versus others. You will have a better time ranking as a niche restaurant in your city than as a tech company servicing a global audience.
By reducing your scope – focusing on a niche online or a regional audience – you can see more immediate gains at a smaller budget. There’s not much to be done about what your competitors are doing – but you can use that to your advantage, determining where their strategy has holes and exploiting these for an audience they haven’t tapped into.
Reverse-engineering your competition’s results can help accelerate your own results.
- Chris Rice, SEO Manager
How Much Are You Investing In SEO?
Money doesn’t solve everything, but it is still a versatile tool. Research-based pay-per-click campaigns, high-quality content, and professional SEO services can raise a serious bill. A bigger budget for your SEO will usually net you better, faster results.
Yet even a willingness to pay top dollar does not guarantee quality – you can throw every dime at a pay-per-click campaign, but if your parameters are wrong or if you’re working off bad data, you will be wasting that money pulling in leads that barely convert. It’s essential to pair your investment with your goals. SEO consultants and industry experts are worth the additional cost to ensure that your campaign dollars aren’t wasted.
What Connections Can You Leverage?
Organic SEO growth comes from orienting your webpage design philosophy around what search engines like Google call a good user experience. That usually means little to no intrusive content (such as pop-up ads or auto-play video), legible and clear formatting, blistering loading speeds, and no annoying UI bugs, such as clickable objects that shift as a page loads. These factors are what Google calls your Core Web Vitals.
But outside of organic SEO is an entire world of digital networking to help push your business ahead through collaborations, influencer events, sponsorships, guest posts, and more. Even a mention on a major news site (hopefully a positive mention) can be great for your online brand, as well as your offline brand. Short of mass-buying low-quality backlinks – which search engines like Google can heavily penalize you for – there are many ways to leverage online networking to speed up your search ranking growth and web presence.
Are You Targeting the Right Keywords?
We’ve mentioned the importance of paying attention to what your competition does – especially where they are directing their greatest efforts. If the competition is larger, has been around for longer, and has invested more in SEO, then chances are that throwing your money at trying to compete in the exact same keywords might be a difficult task.
Keyword research tools have come a long way in recent years, offering a wealth of data on effective and relevant search terms for your industry or business, tracking which keywords offer you the best leads and allowing you to do competitive research to identify untapped audiences.
Of course, suppose the competition isn’t utilizing their current ranking advantage to the fullest. In that case, there’s no problem in trying to utilize that to your advantage by outranking them with better, more efficient, more modern SEO strategies.
Is Your Website Up to Snuff?
We’ve mentioned the Core Web Vitals, but various ranking factors are hidden in every website. The way your website is formatted for mobile devices and various screen resolutions, the weight and size of your image and video content, how well your website is organized, and the various different elements in your backend – whether it’s a CMS like WordPress or an eCommerce platform – can affect your ranking. These factors change in importance and relevance over time, as Google makes thousands of amendments to its sorting and ranking algorithm every year.
Keeping up with how you should be doing SEO on any given day can be dizzying. If you want your company to excel at SEO and outrank the competition, you need help. Let us help you figure out the best action plan for your website and existing content.
