How long will it take to see SEO results?

Here’s the answer in short: it depends on a variety of factors to see SEO results.

Some agencies will inform you that it takes about 4 to 6 months to achieve rankings, but it is also common for it to take between 4 to 12 months, or even 2 to 3 years. There is no one-size-fits-all strategy for SEO as each brand and website is indiviual and totally unique, meaning the variables are different. For this reason, you cannot apply the same SEO approach with every website.

SEO is a long-term effort if you’re debuting a new project – it will not happen overnight. You might begin to see SEO results in as long as six months, but it will be a couple years to compete with the leaders in your field. 

Don’t obsess over rankings.

There are hundreds of factors that determine the amount of time it will take for your website to rank and it is crucial that you do not obsess over rank change, as these fluctuate every day. Google constantly changes their search engine results pages in order to provide the best user experience possible. It can be detrimental if rankings are your only performance indicator – you will quickly find these don’t equal revenue.

Why does SEO take this long?

In the past, you could use lots of shortcut tactics to improve your rankings – like metakeywords – but this resulted in poor user experience for searchers. Since then, Google is continually optimizing its user experience, meaning it becomes more challenging for websites to rank. It’s all about high-quality backlinks and content in today’s market.

War of the SEOs.

Remember your competition is also investing in SEO. Today, this is an important aspect to business growth, meaning more and more companies are investing heavily in it to maximise their organic reach. If you consider how much you are spending in your SEO campaign, note than your competition is investing just as much in the very same thing. Therefore, the quality of your competition’s website can impact how long it takes for your website to achieve results.

Can I speed up SEO?

As mentioned previously, SEO is a long-term approach so if you are in search of overnight results, you are going to be disappointed. You can, however, use creative strategies to increase your SEO on low-competition keywords – for example, creating comparison content works well.