How long does SEO take to work?
Search engine optimisation is an ongoing process of improving a company’s off-site, on-page and technical search engine optimisation. It’s a continuing process in which you gradually chip away at enhancing the ranking factors to start to move up Google’s SERP’s.
It’s a slow process; there’s no two ways about that. If the website is brand new, that’s like a blank canvas. Because Google, that’s Google algorithm uses over 200 different metrics to work out how strong or indeed how weak the business search engine optimisation is.
And if you have had a website live for some time, it will generally have a substantial advantage over a brand-new website even by doing very
little search engine optimisation work.
Therefore, Brand new websites are hard to optimise, and it takes much longer to start seeing results.
How long does SEO take?How long precisely does SEO take to work?
It depends solely on this factor- how strong are your competitors?
If they are strong, they have excellent search engine optimisation, which they have worked on for years.
If you are up against stiff competition with super-strong SEO, it’s much more complicated.
Yet, if you operate in a business sector where only a few other companies invest in SEO, things are much more straightforward. Therefore, you can see results in a much shorter window of time.
So, this is why you can leap-frog a business onto page one in a small town or city and why it takes much longer to get a company on page one nationally. Right across the British Isles, you may face thousands of competitors investing in SEO, and locally, you might only be competing with a few companies.
Local SEO vs National
Usually, it’s much more straightforward to get a business on page one of Google.co.uk in a town, hamlet, or city. That’s because the level of competition is lower.
Then, compared with national or international competition, the competition is much stronger.
We would say it takes 3-6 months for local SEO to start seeing results, yet that depends on the competition level.
National SEO is a whole new kettle of fish, and it can often take up to a year to start seeing results. However, again, different industries are more complex than offers. For example, Getting a national manufacturer of industrial ice cream makers on the first page would be easier than a national solicitor’s practice.
And why is that so?
The number of companies making industrial ice cream machines is far lower than that of national solicitors.
Why does SEO take so long?
It’s a bit like a chef cooking a complex dish.
If you tell them to rush the process, the result may be a plate of food that the diner does not enjoy as much.
This is the same with SEO; it can’t be rushed, but here’s why it can’t.
Google hates spam
Try to get impatient and cut corners, implement spam, or go at it like you have had 100 espressos inside you; the results won’t be good.
Google’s core algorithm includes countless spam filters. It’s worth brushing up on your knowledge of Google Penguin, Google Panda, and numerous other updates.
Instead, you must consider this, implement quality work slowly, and monitor the results.
Rush it, implement spam, and just like that diner in a fancy restaurant turns their face up when the food is incorrect, you have a similar expression when you look at your SEO stats.
It can’t be rushed. Quality work must be drip-fed. Slowly and surely, you will rise to the top using the proper methods. Just remember one thing: Google hates spam.
It starts with crawling and indexing.
Can it be indexed?
Imagine writing 3,000 words of your business’s best advice, and then Google can’t read it. It can’t index it so that work will never appear in Google’s results.
This could be because, let’s say, that fantastic blog post you wrote could have code written into the header that says to Googlebot, “Don’t index this.”
So, all that work, all those long hours, and espresso writing could be a waste of time unless it can get indexed. So, first things first, your diligent SEO agency will need to see: Are there any indexation issues? Has someone placed a no-index code on the page? Is there a massive rise in 404-page errors because someone changed the URL structure?
First, can the page get indexed?
Googlebot can read it.
So, in the first few months, I often work through technical SEO improvements, possibly adding new pages and doing some on-page SEO.
But first, make sure that the website can be indexed and that you have up-to-date information flowing into your SEO tools to see where the website ranks in Google’s SERPs.
Without this up-to-date information, you can’t decide what to improve next. Therefore, you must set up various SEO tools like Moz Pro, Google Analytics, or Google Search Console. This way, you can gain a good idea of where the website ranks on Google.
Set up Google Search Console
At this stage, you might think, hold your horses—these SEO tools cost a small fortune—but the good news is that Google is highly generous and offers numerous SEO tools for free.
Google offers Google Analytics and Google Search Console, and here at this agency, we use these tools on an hourly basis. They guide our work; we use them to track where keywords rank, how many backlinks have been earned, and how many clicks the website receives.
Has the website been indexed?
Great news if it has.
In the following days, you might see that the website ranks on page 7 of Google.
But don’t be deterred.
We all have to start somewhere, and a website often gets indexed on a very low page regarding search engine optimisation. When the real work begins, you have to optimise over 200 various ranking factors, and this process never really stops.
If you take your foot off the accelerator, you can be overtaken by the competition. It’s hard work; there are no two ways, but what are the benefits?
The benefits rank at the top of Google, and the amount of business this can generate.
In short, therefore, in a low-competition industry, an agency could move you forward within a few months. In a high-competition business sector, it could take up to a year or more. This is why you need a bespoke quote and a leading search engine optimisation company behind you.
What factors influence how long SEO takes?
What are the main factors which determine how long it takes to see results?
What is the domain authority, and how old is the website?
A new website takes a lot more SEO to see results.
Let’s say you’re just getting out of the starting blocks in terms of improving your company’s search engine optimisation.
This often means the following:
– Zero links
– No content marketing
– Little or no on-page SEO
– No user data, so information on bounce rates, time on site
Google, therefore, does not have a clue at this stage how good the website is, so why would it replace a website with no SEO with a proven competitor’s website, which has proven it can answer the user’s query?
Therefore, this is the problem that new websites are up against.
For example, a website that has been around for donkey’s years and has high domain authority may have the following:
– Good time on-site and dwell times
– A low bounce rate
– A lot of quality content marketing g
– A lot of good-quality links
– Excellent on-page SEO
In summary, this is why it takes much longer to optimise a brand-new company website.
Competition
Level of competition
Earlier in the article, we mentioned that it takes longer for a business to get onto page one of Google.co.uk if there’s more competition. For example, if you have 25 businesses actively working on improving their search engine optimisation every month, it will take longer than if there were just 7 in comparison. So, it comes down to how much competition your business faces and how good its SEO is.
Some SEO might be weak, so cut forward and overtake them that bit faster, yet some businesses might be paying the top agencies, the cream of the crop, so to speak, to work on their site.
Consider, let’s say, one of the best agencies in the U.K. working on the site. They will have dedicated copywriters, link builders, on-page SEO experts, web designers, UX designers, etc., ploughing their knowledge into the site. Therefore, it will take longer to see results to overtake a competitor that a top agency backs.
Your strategy
How good is the strategy
When first hiring an agency, many businesses choose the agency based on price alone. Don’t get us wrong; the price point for SEO services is crucial. Yet some businesses have deeper pockets than others. One company might spend a few hundred per month, with competitors paying 10x that. Therefore, it comes down to how much time and marketing your direct competitors invest.
Businesses have to be realistic. Often, you can’t overtake a more significant business spending more, for example, if they have a 10x marketing spend.
Can you offer us a timeline of what you will be working on:
Month 1-3
Looking at the design, is the design up to scratch? Does it need improving?
What’s the mobile design like? What’s the desktop version like? Then, you must improve the on-page SEO and design and add quality content marketing. The added content marketing should have a very high Google E-EAT score.
Month 3-6
This is all about publishing quality content and building links. It is also about improving existing pages, fixing technical SEO issues, and ensuring that various SEO tools can further enhance marketing.
Keyword planning
Some excellent tools allow businesses to determine keywords to optimise their website. For example, Moz Pro is a fantastic tool. You can also use Google Search Console, which can offer insight into which keywords you should optimise the website for.
From experience, we would say that before you choose and select which keywords to optimise the website for, be realistic.
Some companies in some business sectors have spent millions improving their search engine optimisation. Therefore, you have to be realistic. You have to set a budget and be realistic about overtaking specific competitors.
For example, if you’re a solo barrister in a capital city who wants to rank on page one of Google, went you up against law practices in the “magic circle”- they could be spending millions on their marketing efforts. Therefore, you must weigh whether you have enough marketing budget to go up against these businesses.
Content creation
Content, content and more content
Content marketing requires extensive research and writing, as well as ensuring a very high Google E-EAT score.
You might wonder why businesses waste time giving away free information.
Well, content marketing is the cement that holds everything else together.
Without content marketing, with a very high Google E-EAT score, we would go as far as to say that for most businesses, it’s impossible to get those companies on page one of Google. So, content marketing that’s well-written and that your visitors will find helpful is essential.
SEO agencies across the land spend a large part of their client’s marketing budgets writing, improving, and updating content marketing from time to time. This is crucial because if you answer a query like “How do you remove a scratch from a car door?” and you’re the leader, ranking number one on Google globally, you could have tens of thousands of monthly visitors.
By offering this advice, you can link to the article that mentions the products you sell to remove scratches from paintwork, for example.
In summary:
Indexing
First things first: get the website indexed, make sure that all the pages and blog posts you want to appear in Google’s SERPs can appear, and fix any technical SEO problems, such as 404 page errors.
To fix any issues, such as Screaming Frog, Google Search Console, and Moz Pro, you should use various tools.
Then, you should make sure that the website can be indexed. This is one of the tasks that your chosen marketing agency should work on first.
You will want to get all the pages and posts you want to appear in Google indexed. Then, you use SEO tools to monitor essential statistics, such as organic traffic, keyword average position, and bounce rates.
Typically, it takes three to six months before real momentum shows.
So, within three to six months, this may not mean the business ends on page one of Google. Yet, you should start to see keywords moving closer to page one. It might be that some of the longtail keywords end up on page one, but the main keywords take longer.
Let me give you a brief example; in our industry, it takes much longer to get our website on page one for SEO Cardiff than for a longer tail keyword. The reason is that this is a high-volume keyword, which will bring in more organic traffic if you rank high on Google. Because more agencies want to rank for that keyword, it will mean more work and effort, and it will often take longer to get the business on page one.
It is simply because more agencies are focusing on alos ranking on page one for that keyword.
So, some keywords are more difficult to get on page one than others. This is often referred to as keyword difficulty, meaning how hard it is for a business to get on page one for that keyword.
Competition, content quality and link quality. What is the Google E-EAT score?
How fast a website can move up Google’s ranks boils down to how strong your direct competitors’ SEO is. It will take much longer to overtake them if they have top-quality content marketing, good-quality do-follow links, and a high Google E-EAT score.
If their search engine optimisation is weaker, it’s not that strong, and agencies like ours can move forward much faster.
Domain authority
Some websites will have good and strong DA without paying for SEO.
Sometimes, a business will have operated for so long that it will have accurate domain authority without paying an SEO agency.
For example, a business may accumulate links from suppliers, from awards the business has won and from a local newspaper.
It will, therefore, sometimes have a good-quality backlink profile without doing outreach.
The company has also published helpful, well-written content marketing pieces from time to time.
So naturally, you might have some businesses ranked on top of page 2 of Google because the website already has quite good domain authority, also referred to as DA.
Now, for these websites, sometimes it’s just a matter of nudging them onto page one of Google, which won’t take as much effort or work as it would a brand-new website.
A brand new website might get indexed, and the Google algorithm may initially rank it on page 10 of Google.
Therefore, a brand new website will take much more work and effort to move a business from page 10 of Google to page 1. However, an established business with a better DA, that’s domain authority, that’s ranking currently on page 2 of Google, well, this might need a nudge, an instalment of work to nudge it onto page 1 of Google.
That’s not to say that when a business gets onto page one of Google, all future SEO work should stop. No, because your direct competitors often won’t stop working to improve their search engine optimisation, which is why search engine optimisation requires a lot of effort on an ongoing basis.
Frequent algorithm updates by Google
Google updates its algorithm on a very regular basis. For example, most SEO agencies agree that Google (Alphabet) implements hundreds of minor updates throughout the year. Now, these often move the website up or down a few places.
It’s the significant updates, called “Google core algorithm updates”, which can have much more of an impact in moving businesses up or down Google’s SERPs. Some of the updates will target spam, such as spammy links, so if a website has spammy links, sometimes it’s even possible, through an algorithm update, that the website receives a penalty. This can sometimes mean the website has been removed from
Google because of the spam links.
Therefore, it’s essential that whichever agency you hire regularly monitors the SEO metrics. For example, if, after an update, the ranking flux ends and the website has moved substantially in terms of where it ranks, the SEO agency must determine why this has occurred.
For example, it could be because of a spike in 404 pages not found; for example, the URL structure may have changed, or good quality links leading to main pages may have been removed. There are many reasons why a business can move down Google’s SERPs. However, it’s the
SEO agency’s job to determine why and what happened and, if necessary, adjust the SEO marketing plan.
Continuous process
What’s important to remember is that even when a business occupies the top spot on Google, the work doesn’t stop. There will also be a mass of companies that often want to take your place. They want that top position on Google because it offers a massive competitive advantage to that business.
So, if you have 100 do-follow quality links, you can bet that a direct competitor will look to outdo that work and build 101 quality links.
And so it goes on; this is why SEO agencies, the good agencies, don’t take their foot off the accelerator, even when they get their client to the top of Google.
Would you like to partner with us:
We are a leading SEO company based in Cardiff’s centre. We work mostly with solicitors, but we can also work with businesses in any sector.
We can offer you a free, no-obligation quote.