Unfortunately, there is no definitive answer to how long SEO takes. There are several factors that affect how quickly you will see results. As a starting point, we usually align expectations with the client in a time frame called 3-6 months. In this post you will find examples of how SEO can go faster and get an explanation of why SEO takes longer than other marketing initiatives.
So don’t be alarmed if you don’t see results within the first month. The good results you can achieve with search engine optimization are definitely worth the wait.
Why does SEO take a long time?
The SEO work itself is divided into 3 main areas:
- Technical SEO
- On-Page SEO
- Linkbuilding
Our consultants will typically be able to handle the technical part and On-Page changes quite quickly (typically in less than one day).
One of the biggest ranking factors is link building. This involves the work of building and attracting good, relevant links to the website.
Google doesn’t want us as website owners to try to manipulate the results by manually building a quick link profile. Therefore, it is very important that links are built at a natural pace that suits the size of the website.
This work will typically take place over several months, which is why we usually only see results within 3-6 months.
What affects the speed of SEO?
There are several things that affect how quickly you can see results from your search engine optimization (SEO) work. Below are the typical factors we look at when evaluating a project for our clients:
- Competition in the market
- Website situation/condition
- Time/budget
Competition in the market
The competition in the market has a lot to do with how quickly we can create results. As with everything else, there are big differences between industries and keywords. The more competition there is in a given market and keywords, the longer it will take to get the attractive rankings.
The situation of the site
The site’s situation has a lot to say in terms of assessing how quickly our work will work. Has time been spent on SEO and link building in the past? Has the website built a reasonable link profile or do we have to start from scratch? Is the company well-known in the industry or is it a completely new company?
It will be easier and faster to get the attractive rankings if the company has previously worked with search engine optimization and is well-established in the market, compared to a newly started company.
Time / budget
As with everything else, time is an important factor. The more time and energy that is put into the project, the faster it will go.
If you work on search engine optimization yourself, it will be assessed based on the time you spend on the project. If you choose an agency to handle the optimization, this will be based on your budget (if the agency works on an hourly basis).
SEO can go fast
SEO doesn’t always take 3-6 months. When we start a new project for our clients, we immediately optimize the technical foundation and optimize the most important factors.
In addition, we always start by building a proper link profile from the start, with authoritative links. This usually means that we can quickly see the first results relatively quickly after starting the project.
Below you can see an example where we have gone from position 57 to 8 in just one month.
How can you speed up the process?
There are two good tips that we recommend that you use if you want to speed up the process.
Crawl the website manually
You can set Google to crawl individual subpages and re-index them in the search results with your new changes.
This means that you can see the effect of your On-Page changes much faster than waiting for Google to find and crawl your subpage itself.
You can find this feature in Google Search Console under “Googlebot simulator”
Speed
The second thing you can do is ensure that your website loads quickly. A fast website ensures that search engines crawl more of your subpages every time they visit your website.
Therefore, we always recommend that you look into speed optimization of your website as soon as possible, as one of the first things you do.
The long wait is worth it
As we’ve written in this post, SEO takes a long time and is a long-term strategy. However, it’s a strategy that is incredibly effective if you do the job correctly.
We have yet to experience a customer who doesn’t think it was worth the investment if done correctly.
Therefore, our clearest recommendation is that you start working as soon as possible, even though it may seem like a long and confusing project.
