How long does SEO take?

  • December 5, 2015
  • SEO
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You may well already know a bit about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), the art of increasing a web site’s visibility in search engine results pages by natural, or organic, means, as opposed to paid search advertising.

The major search engines, like Bing, Google and Yahoo, all have primary search results where web pages are displayed and ranked according to what each search engine reckons users will find most relevant.

The benefits of SEO are clear – your website, and therefore your products and services, are found before anyone else’s. But how long does SEO take to show results?

Search Engine Optimisation is not a “quick fix” solution, nor does the proverbial one size fit all. A lot will depend on how much real, relevant content can be created, the intensity of the competition for the keywords involved and the age of the website in question.

There’s certainly no such thing as overnight transformation in the search rankings, so be sceptical of anyone who claims they can do this.

After all, your competitors may be well established organisations which have spent years building up their websites and links to them, so that they are already feeling the benefits of SEO.

When you are dealing with a brand new domain in particular, it could be harder to get the right “trust” for rankings for the broader, more competitive terms for a minimum of three months, but, realistically, possibly as long as nine months.

However, if you continue putting out useful, relevant content and benefit quickly from consistent, authoritative links, good results might happen more rapidly.

Alternatively, if your infrastructure doesn’t support good crawling of your site’s pages, and easy understanding of its content, you will struggle to get anywhere.

Make no mistake, SEO is a war between competitors. The only way is win is to have a strong online marketing team, and consistent investment under pinned by a genuine search optimisation strategy.

In answer to the question how long does SEO take, here’s a rough guide:

  • About three to six months for initial SEO results
  • About six months to a year for noticeable SEO results
  • One to two years for SEO to have an impact on your business.

So, if you’re wondering “How long does SEO take to show results?” there really are no easy answers. It genuinely can take a year or two before you start to see a major impact on your business from your SEO strategy.

However, once you have broken through that “pain barrier”, the overall effect on your business will be marked and long-lasting.

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