Quality SEO is something that will take a while to effectively boost rankings. When your business implements a new SEO strategy, Google and other experts recommend you should allow 6-12 months to see the fully realized benefits of a campaign. It is important to remember that these numbers are not hard facts and your campaign may need more or less time. Still, 6-12 months is a good benchmark for the majority of SEO campaigns to work their best.
The success and how long your SEO takes for the best results are dependent on how big your campaigns are, your target market, and your current SEO tactics. Your company’s SEO should come from a reputable SEO agency rather than a cheap one that guarantees instant results. That is a red flag because quality SEO requires an investment of time. It is harder than ever to boost rankings online with ever-increasing competition with more and more websites trying to attract attention to their website every day. This is a problem for businesses that are looking for ways to improve their SEO and grow their online presence. That is why it is so important to have an effective, meaningful SEO campaign that results in quality growth.
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What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization and is an important aspect of growing a website in this day and age. The purpose of SEO is to help boost your website rankings on search engines so that it is seen by more users. It involves taking steps to increase website visibility and promote organic, unpaid traffic. SEO aims to improve the quality and quantity of website visitors.
To do this, companies have a choice between choosing white hat and black hat SEO techniques. The former takes time and helps with long-term improvement, while the latter uses shortcuts for quick results that will ultimately be harmful to the website at hand. Black hat SEO is often associated with cheap SEO which has more dangers than benefits. Some black hat SEO strategies include keyword stuffing and low-quality links that can lead to penalties from Google that harm your website for months to years. White-hat SEO comes from reputable marketing agencies that have the client’s long-term interest in mind rather than a quick buck. SEO is a necessary tool for any business that wants to increase rankings and reach more potential customers.
What is an SEO Campaign?
An SEO campaign is a planned coordination to improve a website’s search engine rankings in order to garner more visibility. It is a long-term effort that involves a variety of elements such as keyword research, link building, SEO analysis, a web audit, on-page optimization, and more. The campaign your business launches is dependent on your industry and geographic location. Every individual SEO campaign is unique and has different requirements in terms of time, complexity, and planning. Essentially, an SEO campaign boils down to trying to get your website more attention and noticed on the internet.
SEO Campaign Timeline
As previously mentioned, it typically takes 6-12 months before you see the full results of an SEO campaign. Here we will lay out what you can expect during that time, breaking it up into different steps.
Planning Your SEO Strategy (0 to 2 months)
The first step of your SEO campaign is planning out your approach, which is dependent on the complexity of your business and the amount of resources available to you. This process of planning generally takes a couple of weeks to up to two months. A large international company will take longer to develop a strategy than a small local business since there are more factors to consider.
During the planning process, you will conduct keyword research and a web audit to assess your target audience and how your web pages could be improved. It is best to determine your website’s most effective keywords at this stage since this is where you can get a good return on investment for long-term gain.
An SEO website audit will go through your website and fix broken links and pages that lead to nowhere. This is important because technical errors and redirects frustrate users and lead to potential customers going elsewhere. A web audit can also assess your sitemap and improve upon it to create a more seamless website. The reason this is necessary is that your sitemap is the foundation for your website’s navigation, which is important to user experience. Sometimes it makes more sense to completely redesign your website and fix the errors as you go along.
The first few weeks and months will provide negligible SEO improvements because these take time. Truly valuable changes that allow for the biggest impact on visibility and rankings also take the most amount of time to implement. Google will not notice these right away, so patience is a virtue.
SEO Tactic Implementation (2 to 6 months)
The timing of SEO implementation is more relaxed because it varies based on your strategy. SEO is not just one task you complete then sit back and are done with. In order to get the full benefits of SEO, quality content creation and competition analysis is necessary to stay ahead of the curve. It requires an ongoing commitment and research in case of search engine algorithm changes. The most effective SEO agencies constantly report and analyze their performance and make changes to follow suit.
Content Creation
The first thing you want to do before diving into content creation is to make sure your website is running smoothly, without technical errors. If you want your SEO strategy to work correctly, it is important to have a solid foundation. The amount of time it takes to correct technical mistakes depends on how complicated the website is and the content itself.
After the technical issues are solved, the fun part begins – content creation. This involves creating a long-term marketing content strategy that will revolve around keyword research from the first step above. One could argue that your content strategy is the most significant factor in SEO performance because quality content is the backbone to boost rankings. Once again, the content creation timeline depends on the type of work you produce and how much you edit it. These factors alter the timeline and impact your SEO because better work with a higher quality assurance looks better to search engines like Google. Your company’s content strategy should be targeted to the wants and needs of your audience and the keywords discovered during research. High-quality content is rewarded with more links back to your website which means improved SEO.
Even if your website generates more traffic after producing quality content within a few weeks, it is important to remember that consistency is valuable for long-term results. If you see these positive changes and think it is okay to revert to lower-quality content, you will most likely lose traction. For SEO to work, the content needs to be valuable, trustworthy, and reliable to see the maximum amount of benefits.
SEO Results (6 to 12+ months)
You might be thinking, six to twelve or more months is a huge range of time. It is important to remember that every SEO campaign is different. Ideally, each campaign should be tailored to the individual needs of each business and its website. The keywords you research should show some improvement to your traffic before the six-month mark. But you most likely will not see a huge change beforehand. Any SEO company that promises instant results is likely too good to be true and could hurt your business in the long run rather than help it. These cheap SEO agencies are looking to make fast money and generate low-quality traffic.
Google and other search engines have updated and curated their algorithms so it is difficult to outsmart them with shortcuts. They reward websites that publish good content on a consistent basis and have high-quality links they have earned over time. The reputation and trustworthiness of a website have become more important to search engines. These factors take time to improve upon so there are no shortcuts for this.
Create Long-Lasting SEO Results
In order for SEO results to be sustainable and long-lasting, you need to invest time and effort into your website. It is worth it in the end when you gain high-quality traffic and increase your customer base. There is no specific date when SEO will begin working. That’s why it is important to establish a strategy and keep maintaining it so you do not get left behind.
If you hire a legitimate SEO company, they can help expedite your SEO results with the time, experience, and resources they can dedicate to the improvement of your website. A quality SEO agency will not use black hat SEO methods that could cost your business in the long run. Since an SEO company has worked with a variety of businesses and SEO campaigns, they can also properly manage your expectations on the timeline. Finally, quality SEO agencies can stay ahead of the curve with constantly evolving algorithms.
FAQ:
- How long does it take to implement SEO?
- How long does SEO take to work?
- Should I hire an SEO agency for it to work faster?
- What does an SEO campaign consist of?
- Is a long SEO campaign worth it?
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