There is no one-size-fit-all answer to this question. Rather, various factors play a role in determining your SEO success. On average, you will begin to see results within the first 6 months, this is if you’re outsourcing your SEO to an experienced digital marketing agency or freelancer. If you hire a beginner, expect to wait a little longer. Certain sites started seeing results within 3 to 4 months whereas others claiming 1 month is enough (only applies to non-competitive niche with low search volume).
Most businesses we’ve collaborated with often notice significant gains from SEO after 6 months of consistent hard work and effort.
Though there are methods that’ll help obtain quicker results, they aren’t as effective for your business to maintain sustainable growth in the long run. These tactics are termed “black hat tactics”. Suppose you start ranking high for competitive keywords within a short period of time, Google can identify fairly easily.
SEO is all about playing the long-term game. If you’re not all about being patient, opt for other digital marketing disciplines such as pain search or social advertising.
In fact, SEO isn’t a magic potion but a strategy. As we’ve mentioned earlier there isn’t a straightforward answer to how long does SEO take to work. It boils down to many factors such as…
Factors Affecting the Time it Takes for Your SEO Strategy to Work
1. Website Authority and Domain Age
Though Google has once announced that there isn’t a correlation between domain age and SEO, it still has a role to play.
Recently, we’ve encountered plenty of case studies proving that older websites can benefit faster from SEO than younger domains. There’s always a reason why.
Older websites naturally possess more backlinks compared to their younger counterparts. Backlinks indicate a site’s authority and trustworthiness. It takes time for new domains to acquire backlinks though there are much quicker (often unethical) ways to obtain them.
As the domain ages over time, the backlinks occur naturally as the site owners will do things like submitting their site to local directories, producing quality content, and promoting their site on different platforms. These activities will help generate more backlinks for the site as time passes by.
However, it’s not always about the links alone. You need to understand that old domains often carry a huge number of content assets, for example, articles, blog posts, images, videos, just to name a few. Even if the site never intentionally implements any SEO strategies, they’re prone to get clicks from search engines courtesy of their business recognition. As Google sees content as one of their ranking factors, older sites naturally rank for certain keywords.
Don’t feel discouraged if your new website has just ventured into SEO. It may take a while to gain a competitive edge on search engines, but it’s not impossible.
Check out 14 biggest SEO ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ and make sure you abide by them.
2. Link Building
Link building is amongst the best SEO methods to increase website authority. It can however, consume time and require creative outreach methods to acquire links from other sites. Albeit many SEO claims on the importance of on-site elements, links still have a role to play in competitive niches like finance and healthcare.
You can’t count on black hat link-building tactics anymore. Rather than using a cheap link-building solution that’ll risk your website being penalised by Google, building links ethically seems more ideal.
The best way you can build quality links is by creating high-quality and engaging content frequently. Harness your social media networks to spread your content and attract the right audience that’ll engage with your content. There are multiple ways you can repurpose your content, such as by converting an existing blog post to a video or audio. Doing this can earn you more clicks as the sites and blogs that encounter your content are more likely to share them with their following or mention them in their upcoming posts.
It’s not the numbers that matter, but the quality and relevancy when we discuss link building. A unique and creative approach will help build a legitimate backlink profile which will then exhibit your site’s authority on search engines.