You will see results for SEO, but not overnight. Gradually, your website will inch its way up in the search results. When can you expect to see results from SEO then? Give it four to six months until your SEO efforts come into full fruition.
Do not mark your calendar just yet. Your organic rankings may improve, and website traffic may increase for less competitive keywords in a few weeks. For moderately competitive keywords, it may take months for you to rank. For highly competitive keywords, it may take one year or more.
Can You Get Quicker Results?
It is possible to get results from SEO within three months. If you want quick results, choosing the right SEO agency is pertinent. Your SEO specialist will tell you that SEO is not all about keywords and content, but it is much more than that.
What is SEO All About?
SEO is about website platform optimisation. Known as technical SEO, it involves analysing a website for technical issues. Technical issues prevent your website from achieving its full organic growth. Here’s a few common technical issues your SEO specialist performing an SEO audit may uncover:
- Unnecessary redirect chains
- 404 errors
- Irrelevant pages that are bloating the index
- Loading issues
- Incorrect use of the Schema mark up
Your SEO specialist will fix these errors and before you know it, you will be reaching new heights on Google. Just resolving these technical issues can improve your search presence on search engines within the first month.
Next, your SEO specialist will tackle local search engine optimisation. Local search engine optimisation can also improve your website’s presence on Google. Most businesses overlook local SEO, and their rank takes a hit.
Your SEO specialist will optimise your Google My Business and other local listing directories on the internet. They will optimise the core pages of your website for local search results. Resolving these issues can lead to an increase in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
Certain pages of your website and your business listings will start to appear in more search results in just one month. You will see an increase in website traffic, phone calls, messages, and even people coming to your business’s physical location if you have one.
If results from SEO are possible in one, why does it take more? Your ranking will increase through technical SEO and local SEO because you only need to fix these issues to increase your rank, going up from the position you were at, before they resolved.
Even though your website’s rank will increase, it will do so gradually and incrementally not overnight. You need a super boost to increase your rank on Google. The super boost involves the keyword and content parts of SEO and it takes longer for you to experience the full benefit.
Once its full, in three to six months, you will start seeing results from SEO. They say a little patience goes a long and, in this case, it will. Moreover, knowing the steps and measures an SEO agency takes each month to ensure you see results from SEO will provide you with much-needed clarity on the whole SEO process.
The 6 Month Breakdown
Your SEO efforts will look something like in the first six months, note every agency has a varying approach:
-
Month 1
It consists of research and discovery, website audit, SEO keyword research, and planning. Engaging an experienced SEO specialist to perform the research and discovery process. Next, they will start to make technical changes to your website. But there are cases where it can take SEO specialists three months to perform research and discovery. The duration of this stage depends on the nature of the business and the extent of keyword phrases that can present new enquiries to your website.
-
Month 2
Your SEO specialist will perform technical SEO. They make changes to your website based on the findings of the SEO audit. Sometimes, they will need to redesign the website and ideally if this was the case for an overhaul website redesign, they would flag it in your earlier enquiry stage. Website redesign can take months to complete. The first month alone upon engagement can be the consulting alone as well as sitemap and content planning. They will optimise the website for SEO during this process before the site goes live.
-
Month 3
A focus on creating SEO optimised content for your website will become key during this month. It will consist of blogs, articles, whitepapers, FAQs, expanded company information, contact details, detailed product and/or service descriptions, and more. You should start seeing results from SEO during this month with your ranking on Google increasing towards the end of it. There is a chance of your rankings translating into sales or leads, but if they do not, it is not unusual because normally, that does not happen this soon. Note that content including blogs is not critical for every industry and may not be the time investment required earlier in the campaign. This is important to flag as content writing and blog posts require a considerable level of time, attention to detail and more.
-
Month 4
They will continue to create content, perform technical SEO, and build a solid link profile, which can include removing all low quality website links. You can expect to see a noticeable increase in rankings, lead generation, and web traffic. If you see these SEO results, your SEO is working. Again results vary depending on the progress of your SEO campaign before engaging the respective agency.
-
Month 5
Create a social media strategy. A social media strategy involves sharing your content on your social media platforms to increase traffic on your website. This can result in a good link building profile and generate sales and leads. You will continue to create content and even do some PR while you are at it. You will begin to see increased traffic from SEO, and this will result in increased leads.
-
Month 6
Are you experiencing a general trend of increase in organic traffic from SEO Channels. If so, you are heading in the right direction. However, note that even during month six, there is considerable volatility to rankings that are very natural to experience as Google considers you website as an authority in your seeing results from SEO. Why? There is no exact and well documented answer however our experience demonstrates this occurrence and volatility occuring for many of our clients before the correction follows with an increase in the months 8,9,10 onwards. Again SEO is not an in and out trial approach. The serious campaigns simply do take closer to month 12 to dominate.
4 Crucial SEO Factors
The following SEO factors play a crucial role in determining the length of time it will take your business to see results from SEO:
-
Keywords
The keywords and phrases you choose need to be relevant to your business. Relevant keywords will help generate quality traffic to your website. Since it already takes around three to six months to see results from SEO, it can take longer than that if you decide to do it on your own. Therefore, it is better to visit an experienced SEO specialist who can help you increase your rank on Google.
-
Domain Name
Optimise the domain name of your website for SEO before you create it. Your domain name needs to include a keyword if possible. While an SEO keyword rich domain name can increase your rank this is not a guarantee, it is still a good practice and just means results can come sooner than pure branded phrases. Other things to know about domain names:
- The age of your domain name determines the legitimacy of the information, business, and website.
- Domain names bought from a third party auction website can be penalised by Google due to the previous owner abusing and discarding it. Google and other search engines may have flagged the domain name because the last owner used black hat SEO methods and may have been involved in malicious activities. If that is the case, it will take longer for you to resolve the situation.
- Domain names owned by a business based outside of your city can create a problem for you. The domain name’s previous geographical location can cause a hindrance in your efforts to perform local SEO to reach out to people living in your geographical area. You will have to convince the internet that you are the new owner of this domain and doing so, requires time and effort.
- Ideally if you’re in Australia, opt for a .com.au domain than a .com as well as hosting in Australia. Having a .com can deter and reduce visitors from even considering to click on your website search results against your competitors as perception wise prospects would conclude your company is a USA based company as opposed to Australia. Finally from a relevancy perspective the authority and relevancy of a .com.au website is more favoured by Google.
-
Business Location
Have you claimed and listed your business on Google? Do it if you haven’t already. Niche businesses will see faster results from SEO if their target audience is specifically searching for products and services you provide. Businesses with several competitors will need to increase their SEO efforts and ensure their local SEO is up to date.
-
Content
Create content that adds value to your target audience and encourages them to visit your website each month to read your latest post. You can even invite guest bloggers in your industry to write a guest blog. You can also guest blog for other businesses in your area. Optimise the content you create for SEO, so it ranks on Google.
Yes, it takes long to see results for SEO, but in the end, all your efforts will be worth it when you see your website ranking on Google. Since 2007 TopRankings has seen evidence that SEO drives an estimated 70% of traffic to our clients by contrast to other channels such as Adwords and Social. Hiring the right SEO agency will help deliver on your long term lead generation and business growth objectives however again – patience is critical for long term white hat sustainable results to be achieved in organic search. For all other instant results Google Adwords Management is your best avenue to fill the void.
