How Long Does SEO take?

SEO is an effective and important form of internet marketing. Results from SEO efforts are rarely instant, and long-term SEO strategies take patience and persistence to finally pay off.

HOW DOES GOOGLE KNOW THAT YOU’VE BEEN DOING SEO?

Google and other search engines have little “bots” or “spiders” that constantly crawl the Internet and look at every site in order to determine the value of each site. Search engines use the information to create complex algorithms that eventually determine a website’s rank on a search engine results page.

These spiders crawl your site more or less frequently depending on how often you update your site. If Google notices that you’re doing a lot of SEO work, they will crawl your site more frequently, which will lead to better results for you. Andrew Eagar recently covered this topic in one of the latest episodes of The Booster Seat.

BUT HOW LONG WILL SEO TAKE?

The results from SEO vary depending on what type of SEO you employ, how long you do SEO, what type of site you have, the industry you are in, and the history of the site you’re trying to optimize. Since many factors are involved in SEO, it’s nearly impossible to give one hard-and-fast answer to how long SEO will take. Simply, SEO takes different amounts of time for each site.

However, in our experience with our clients and strategies, we usually expect to see results starting somewhere from six to nine months after we start SEO. Tweet This This estimate does not mean that after six months exactly you will be on the first page of search engine results. Nor does this estimate mean that if you have been engaging in SEO for more than nine months and have seen no noticeable difference, you should quit your SEO efforts.

This estimate is simply a guideline that you can use to measure your results and notice that small changes add up for noticeable, long-term differences. Additionally, the longer you keep up your SEO efforts, the more effective the results over time.

Good SEO has a powerful and lasting impact on your website traffic and rankings, which in turn leads to more business for you. Tweet This Rankings on search engine results pages are achieved through several tasks which take time to be implemented and then recognized by search engines. There are no shortcuts or tricks to make this happen faster if you want true, lasting results. Depending on the competitiveness of your keywords, the budget you’re working with, and the current search trends, initial results take time to really be seen. Like all good things, however, the results are worth the wait.