How Long Does It Take to See Results from SEO?

If you own a business or are a marketer by profession, you must be familiar with the buzzword, and you have likely been told to leverage SEO to compete in the market. It’s essentially because, today, Search Engine Optimisation is an essential component of any successful marketing strategy. So, are you ready to learn with us?

What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

Search Engine Optimisation is a comprehensive process to boost your rankings on a search engine that helps you reach more customers and be ahead of your competitors. It’s an open secret that SEO gets you the desired traffic.

In Fact, According To Statistics, 57% Of B2B Marketers Identified That SEO generated More Leads Than Any Other Marketing Activity. 

Businesses worldwide take the services of digital marketing agencies like us and invest in SEO to rank higher in search engine result pages, get increased web traffic, tap into a more significant audience set, and earn more revenue.

So now you might wonder how long it takes to see results from SEO, and when can I get to the first page if I start my SEO now?  If that’s so, by the end of this article, you will have all the answers to your questions and a detailed understanding of the SEO process, along with its estimated timeline!

What are the Factors Affecting The Results?

To know how long it takes to see results from SEO, you need to understand the factors that contribute to the time it takes to get the results. It includes:

• Competition
• Inbound links
• Content

One of the most common questions we get as an SEO agency is none other than, “What does it take to get results from SEO?”

It takes about four months to a year to see the results. However, this range depends on the abovementioned three key variables to determine how long it takes to see results from SEO. It’s one of the most annoying questions because clients expect a definitive answer, but there is simply no specific way to provide one due to the involvement of these variables.

Impact of Competition

The level of competition in your niche will determine the time and effort it will take to rank your business in the search engines.  You'll probably face significantly less or no competition if you're selling something like mint-flavoured brownies.

If you are selling products or services that people search for online, you are likely to face different degrees of competition based on demand.

For example, a small florist serving a small locality would face less competition than an event planner serving a large city, which would face less competition than a national courier service company.

Thus, the more competing web pages you’re competing with, the longer it will take to get to the top of the search results. We, as SEO professionals, need to analyse their activity over the past several months and then continue to track their activity in the future. To outperform your competitors, you have to put in more effort than they do if you want to pass them.

Impact Of Inbound Links

It’s a known fact that links are one of the most critical factors that contribute to SEO, but their effect on how long it takes to see the results of SEO depends on various other factors. This includes, firstly, the number or volume of links to your website. 

According to research, the first result on SERP has 3.8 times more backlinks than the other nine positions.  While having more links is generally said to help you achieve rankings faster, it’s not just a numbers game. Fewer, high-quality links from relevant and authoritative websites will have a far better impact on your rankings than a greater volume of low-quality links from irrelevant and less authoritative websites.

It can be an effective strategy because high-quality links are usually hard to get, so it will be difficult for competitors to emulate. Also, they last longer compared to the low-quality links generated by automated methods.

Another vital point to consider is how you earn the links, because a rapid increase could indicate abnormal activity on the search engine.

Impact Of Content

The third and last factor that plays a significant role in how long it takes to see the results from SEO is the “Content” published on your website. 

“Content is the king”, you might have heard this a lot. The quality of the content matters the most since it determines user experience and the time a single visitor spends on your website. 

Now here comes a frequently asked question of the ideal length of a single content piece, for which the answer is that it simply needs to be long enough to satisfy the user’s intent of visiting that particular page.

We recommend you maintain a consistent posting schedule that indicates to Google the new content being added to your website regularly. This encourages the search engine to crawl and index your website pages frequently.

Secondly, new content invites users to visit your website frequently, signalling a positive user experience to Google, and as a result, helping you to get the rankings quickly. A survey analysed 912 million blog posts and identified that long written content earns an average of [77.2%] (https://backlinko.com/content-study) more links than short articles. Hence, content also helps you to get backlinks from other authoritative websites.

Timeline To Determine How Long It Takes To See Results From SEO

Now that you have a clear understanding of how those variables impact the SEO process and the time it takes to get the results let’s see how they are set in our SEO timeline.

First Month

When you choose your best SEO agency, you approach them with your requirements. The first thing they will do after taking you onboard is research. An efficient SEO agency like Social Gravity will deeply analyse your current standing, nature of your business, competition in your niche etc. This helps them know about your brand and its goals to provide you with a comprehensive game plan.

The next step is to perform a detailed website audit to ensure it is completely optimised from UI/UX perspective. It aids in determining what you already have and what changes your website might need.

Generally, keyword research is also conducted in the first month of the SEO process. All the content for the website is prepared based on these keywords. They enable your content to rank in the search engine.

Second Month

The second month marks the beginning of technical SEO work. The website's backend is optimised for search engines, making all the needed changes. This includes all the on-page efforts from image tags to catchy page titles, inbound and outbound linking etc.

In this phase, the responsiveness of your website is also evaluated. If it isn’t responsive to other devices, it can hurt Search Engine Optimisation.

Third Month

This is the month where the magic starts to happen. Now your SEO agency will choose a list of keywords they would target in the first go. These keywords will be selected from the keyword research that they did initially in the beginning.

Once the keywords are selected, the essential part is content creation. Keywords will be paired with different types of content pieces according to the strategy formulated by your chosen agency. It may be long-form content over 2000 words long, blog content or even your service or product page.

The search engine will crawl and index your pages as soon as the content is published to your website.

Fourth Month

By this month, you should do the trick. You will continue updating the content regularly with the targeted keywords. Your agency will start working on backlinks to support the content efforts by this time. They will need to fix all technical issues and make your site completely functioning in all aspects. They might reach out to other companies and content creators in your industry to earn backlinks.

Fifth Month

It’s the responsibility of an SEO company to report their results back to you regularly. This should include a clear comparison of before and after results of Google Analytics. They should keep track of your SEO campaign throughout the process. By the end of the fifth month, you would see a rise in traffic, calls or conversions.

However, this process needs to be consistently continued over six months to achieve the highest return on investment.

Conclusion

No one can ever accurately predict exactly how long it takes to see results from SEO until you get on the battlefield and start the process. Get a free consultation with us and find out how long it will take to see results for your SEO.

However, you can surely make an educated guess based on the variables discussed above. Then, over time, when you are in the process, you can get a better idea, depending on the circumstances.