How Long Does It Take For SEO To Work?
How Long Does It Take For SEO Changes To Take Effect?
SEO doesn’t usually produce immediate results; in a few instances it can produce immediate results however investing in SEO services or performing SEO improvements in-house are investments that pay off down the road.
How long will it take for SEO improvements to start showing?
It depends, and on a number of factors. You’ll see results within 3 to 6 months, but merely “seeing results” and achieving lasting ranking are two different things.
Time Until SEO Services Start Working Depends On the Economy Of Scale. Believe it or not, there is an economy of scale involved in the time it takes for SEO services to take effect. Every website is different, in terms of structure, number of pages, content requirements and many other factors, and every one of them impacts how long it takes for search engine optimization efforts to start showing results.
Why Does SEO Take So Long?
It also depends on how much and what type of SEO work needs to be done.
Does you website need technical improvements, on page optimization, of page optimization or a complete content overhaul?
Each of those SEO changes takes some time. The more that needs to be done, the longer it will take to do the work and the longer until search results reflect it. Part of the time involved has to do with the search engines and how often they crawl your website. Until Google, Bing and Yahoo see the updates to your site, your rankings won’t change.
Popularity of a website, for instance, is a factor. Older, more established sites tend to be more closely monitored, but newer sites – especially brand-new websites – aren’t “noticed” as quickly by Google and other search engines. The size of your website is also a factor. If your site has thousands (or more) of landing pages, not all of the pages may be indexed.
Granted, there are ways to speed this process up – you can submit a site for re-indexing – but even that doesn’t change your rankings overnight. Instead, it merely registers that the changes have occurred. The speed at which the changes are noticed by search engines is also impacted by the above factors, among others.
Lastly and probably the most important one to consider is your competition. Generally, the higher the search volume (number of searches per unit of time, usually on a monthly basis) for a keyword there are, the more firms there are competing for those keyword rankings. More competition means there are more websites competing for the same keywords, meaning your updates in rankings can take longer. In some industries, financial services for example even the best SEO may not do the trick. There are companies that spend millions on SEO, competing in those fields requires a strong time and money commitment.
SEO Is Complex – 200 Different Ranking Factors
There are numerous seo factors and work that needs to be done before any website SEO begins to pay dividends. There are three pillars of SEO: technical SEO, content, and links. Each involves different SEO work to improve, and each takes different amounts of time to complete. Within each “seo pillar” are various improvements that may need to be made that can be completed quickly or require larger investments of time to complete, let alone start boosting rankings.
Technical SEO optimizes the technical aspects of a website. This can include site and internal link structure, increasing scalability for mobile browsers, fixing any latent issues causing slow loading times, among many other things. Some fixes are quick, such as optimizing for specific keywords. Others, such as scaling for mobile, 301 redirects for pages that have been moved, or creating an internal linking structure can take longer.
Content, what appears on a page when one looks at a website, likewise can involve a number of fixes. Landing page copy, pictures, videos and other site content may need optimization to begin ranking. This can take very little time – such as optimizing images in a matter of hours – or much longer, say if a site needs all landing and home page copy rewritten.
Links to your website are also important. A few bad links can ruin your site’s SEO. Going through a site’s backlink profile can take days to weeks, depending on the number of links. Shedding bad links can take time, as can building new ones.
It all comes down to exactly WHAT your site needs done, to determine how long an SEO overhaul will take. That’s where a free seo audit can be handy in determining where you stand now and what can be done to improve SEO results.
Good SEO Ensures Long Term Web Traffic Growth
SEO is an investment, but just like other investments, the real dividends take time. In other words, SEO is not something that should be done for immediate gains, and in fact, promises of immediate gains are either snake oil or black hat tactics. The former will waste time and money, and the latter will result in search engine penalties – which can cripple your business. Even today I still see so many agencies selling directory submissions and outdated SEO tactics. The truth is that any SEO Expert or agency can promise #1 rankings because they do not own google.
The earliest SEO improvements don’t show right away, but you should start seeing results within a month or two. They won’t be dramatic, and in fact, some rankings may suffer initially. However, within 3 to 6 months, and as more SEO is done and time goes on, rankings climb faster and faster as every SEO improvement begins to cumulatively take effect. How long will it take to get from the starting line to the first page?
It all depends, however, once the SEO work is done – and done right – the seo gains over time will result in more customers visiting your website over your competitors.
