How Long Does SEO

Search Engine Optimization is the cream of the digital marketing crop when it comes to promoting your goods and services as well as boosting sales, however like all other endeavors, it takes effort, patience and consistency to be fruitful. The various factors that contribute to the ups and downs of SEO, as well as the complex algorithms and strategies needed for success, are overwhelming enough to baffle even the most experienced pioneers. So there is nothing to worry about, it happens to the best of us. There are, however, various factors that come into play, including strategies and tactics you can develop to speed up this process and tame those pangs of impatience.

Addressing the Age Old Question

The question of will it won’t it is often accompanied with, “how long will this take to work?”, and why should it not be asked? After all, you are investing time and money into this venture and look forward to a definitive positive result as soon as can be. Unfortunately, and very frankly speaking, it is not such a definitive cut and dry answer, there is no accurate timeframe to when SEO will start yielding results. Every SEO for every unique company works differently, and takes its own time to activate and draw in positive results. Before you to decide to throw in the towel and lose all hope, there is a common estimate that is almost entirely accurate. 

New SEO and Old SEO

There was a time when identifying unique keywords that drive the most traffic and remained the most relevant, was more than enough to boost businesses. However, this strategy tends to backfire, you are now stuck in a pattern to single out the #1 keyword, and a few crown keywords are not the key factors that can singularly drive traffic. 

Nowadays SEO is progressively enhanced by people searching for longer sentences rather than two or three select words, this can be largely attributed to an increase in voice recognition searches. Also, people include more precise details to look for an exact product they might be searching for. This new method of keywords are less competitive and more relevant due to the addition of details, so they yield higher conversion rates. In fact, research suggests people search for longer tail words more often than selective keywords. Therefore your main objective, is to focus your efforts on the longer tail searches that are progressing and upgrading, instead of solely researching for selective keywords. 

Rankings Are an Overrated Concept

Rankings can matter a lot, we get it, it has been brought up countless times, but it is not the only factor you should be focusing on. If your main strategy for utilizing SEO is how easily and quickly you will get to the very top ranking then the outcome will not satisfy you nor be helpful. SEO is essentially worthless unless is generates leads or boosts sales, which is a desirable outcome. In reality the question you should be asking, is how long it takes for your SEO to generate leads and improve sales, you should be desiring conversions, not just rankings.

 

The Role Competition Plays in How Long SEO Takes

The level of competition each business faces depends on the type, popularity, and demand of the product they advertise. For example, a fruit vendor in a small local market would face less competition than a high-end brand at a shopping mall. As we have already made clear, the more brands you are up against, the more competition you face and the more difficult it is to reach the top rank in the search results. The pattern will remain consistently proportional, as you rise to the top of rankings, the more competition you will be facing and the longer it will take to obtain a step up for the next rank.

Often times the high-ranking pages have an experienced team of SEO professionals behind them. A crucial aspect of the competition is the correlation between the bulk of competition and the proficiency of the SEO professionals maintaining the top-ranked web pages. Think of it this way, the higher the demand, the more competition each company faces, which means that they must offer more competitive deals to remain profitable. This is a situation that, inevitable, would only favor large multinational companies with a massive budget that can afford to hire SEO professionals that are the best at their game. Trying to compete in this type of environment is difficult, time-consuming and not to mention, ends up futile and disappointing. You need to evaluate and research your competition beforehand, not just for the present but for all future endeavors. That is just the start though, you also have to track and monitor their activities consistently, to know exactly what you are up against. You have to put in more effort than those bustling companies since they had a jumpstart, you need to work extra to catch up to them let alone surpass their rankings.

The Role Inbound Links Play in How Long SEO Takes

We have been told time and time again that backlinks play a huge role in the success of SEO, but their effect on how long it takes for the SEO to actually work is based on various elements. Primarily the capacity of links made available to your website, the more the links the quicker your success. In fact, having fewer, excellent backlinks affects your results far more than having a large amount of low-quality backlinks. This is also essential because excellent links are usually more challenging to earn, hence other companies find it more difficult to duplicate them. They also last longer, but then again the frequency with which you are gaining links can be a major contributing factor because if the backlinks are increasing suddenly or in unusually large amounts, it could indicate fraud or manipulation of those links through inorganic means. This could result in a hefty fine and penalty and your hard work might be washed down the drain. It is better to encompass natural link growth, where several factors are taken into account and a suitable link velocity is maintained. So, to sum it up, the faster you can earn relevant, excellent links, the faster you will rise up the search ranking, but that comes with a price. The speed at which you receive links (your link velocity) should have moderately steady development. As long as you follow the guidelines and rules, you have nothing to worry about, your progress is negatively affected only when you use unnatural methods or commit fraud.

The Role Content Plays in How Long SEO Takes

The type of content that you publish on your website also plays a major role in how quickly your SEO strategy will flourish, and the primary thing that you should be aware of is that quality matters. A lot. A lot of people, however, misinterpret this and start churning out 4000-word articles in bulk. See the thing is, you should be concerned more with the quality than the quantity of the content you pop out. In fact, there is no minimum number of words or even an ideal number of words for your content. Every content is catered to a different audience and regarding a different topic, so your main focus should be facilitating the clients, it needs to be adequate enough that it solves every reader’s problems and queries. We mentioned above how, if your link velocity is too fast it might seem unnatural to search engines. Do not follow this theory when it comes to content publishing, it will not hurt your ranking. If you have written and collected great content that is ready to be published, then there is no reason, with regard to SEO, not to publish it whenever convenient. The sooner you publish quality content in a competitive market, the fast your SEO improves your ranking, waiting and taking gaps will only take longer for your SEO to be successful. There’s also the risk that another company could publish the same content before you that gains all the attraction. It is worth noting that the age of a webpage does not affect ranking significantly, so stop worrying about every new page stealing your thunder, your experience might outshine their novelty. I would recommend continuing a consistent publishing schedule for two reasons: It proves to search engines that new content is added to your website on a regular basis, which means that it will be accessed more frequently and browsed through more often. This facilitates your SEO efforts and speeds them up. It encourages users to visit your website more frequently, thus enhancing user experience which further speeds up SEO and garners more reads. However, creating content is not a sole factor, deleting, modifying, and updating content as needed plays a positive role in the success of your SEO. The crucial decision is determining which content is valuable and should be kept, which needs upgrading and which is completely redundant and should be deleted. Ultimately, the key is to produce and publish unique, valuable content that pleases the audience and solves their queries. Higher-quality content with adequate semantics and style tends to earn more links compared to short low-quality content. So although content on its own is an important benefactor, it does further enable you to improve your backlinks, qualifying you to kill two birds with one stone, a true win-win situation if you ask me.

Hey! Don’t Give Up Just Yet

Many companies miscalculate exactly how much time, effort, and money it takes to be successful with their SEO strategy. Success by any measure of the word does not normally come within the first 3, no matter how much money you throw into the equation. The majority of the time, companies initialize their plans the right way but give up after 2 to 3 months, based on how their immediate success does not justify or compensate for the budget being allocated. This proves that they jumped into this venture with biased and unrealistic expectations. If you do not have the patience to consistently invest in SEO for a year or more then the effort is futile and redundant. Paying for just a few months of SEO is useless and no better than letting your money flow down the drain. SEO is a long-term marketing approach, it requires consistency, effort, and patience, and it should not be considered an easy route to generate and boost sales at the drop of a hat. However, if you make the proper smart investments, and plan on working for your success long term, SEO is made for you and shall not disappoint.