SEO works in a completely different way— it’s the slow-food movement in an environment of fast food. A better question might be: how long does one have to wait?
What are SEO Results?
SEO results are described as an outcome or achievement observable owing to the action of implementing SEO strategies on a website. The results, in this case, are geared at changing the visibility of a website, ranking, and performance improvement in search engine results pages or SERPs.
Some common SEO results include:
- Organic Traffic: Better SEO techniques can help one to enjoy more organic visitors who would visit your website through search results.
- Higher Search Engine Rankings: Good SEO would raise the rank of a website in the search list of a search engine to make the website noticeable for potential users.
- Better User Experience: SEO covers the improvement in design and structure of the website and content creation that will promote a better user experience.
- Improved Keyword Ranking: Targeted keywords related to the content of the website and business goals may rank higher, thereby making the website accessible to users typing those particular terms.
- More Click-Through: Optimized meta tags and snippets might tempt users to click on the links of the website showing up in the search results, thus increasing click-through.
- More Conversions: Effective SEO will drive more targeted and relevant traffic, so there’s a higher chance the visitors would convert to customers or achieve other intended activities on the website.
- Better Local Visibility: For a local business, the efforts toward SEO will lead to better visibility in local search results.
Note, however, that specific SEO results will vary with the different objectives of each website and its own industry and competition to which it targets. It is important to monitor, analyze, and continuously adapt SEO strategies in order to improve and ensure consistently favorable SEO results.
When you start with your SEO strategy, you should determine well what you want to reach by taking it. In this list of goals, revenue increase can be a major objective.
Indeed, SEO can bring in several returns or outcomes; revenue is one of the big areas. But for the purpose of this article, there is one key metric that stands out over the rest as the most important indicator of SEO performance.
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Increase Organic Traffic
When discussing the timeframe to witness SEO results, I am specifically referring to a noticeable increase in organic traffic since that has been my traditional measure of SEO success. Undoubtedly, the ultimate goal is to observe organic traffic translating into revenue generation.
The good news is that SEO-driven targeted traffic can make a serious difference in the revenue of a website and turn it into one of the major revenue drivers.
But let me remind you that there are so many different factors that determine whether a conversion will happen: everything from pricing to landing pages, to the entire sales process in and of itself. In this regard, I feel that traffic is ultimately the best way to measure your SEO program’s success.
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Higher Search Engine Rankings
In SEO, higher search engine rankings mean better positioning of the pages of a website in organic or non-paid search results for search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. The higher the website’s rank in SERPs, the closer it will be to the top when users insert certain keywords or phrases that match the content of the website or its business in the search box.
Higher search engine rankings are considered one of the core goals of SEO, since they directly influence a website’s visibility and organic traffic. Websites that rank higher are more likely to attract clicks and visits from users because they have been perceived to be more relevant and authoritative by the algorithm of the search engine.
To improve some aspects of the SEO strategy, one needs to consider SEO best practices, which is how websites can improve their search engine rankings and see better visibility to start driving more organic traffic towards higher conversion potential or any other action. Keep in mind that higher search engine rankings are an ongoing process since the algorithms keep evolving to keep pace with the dynamic competition in space.
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Enhanced User Experience
Enhanced user experience is an approach to optimizing a website where the aim is to make visitors’ experiences with the website much easier, more pleasant, and satisfactory. In other words, the main goal here is impressiveness and creating brand identity through the users’ experience on the website.
Now, with the focus being on user experience in SEO today, it is also making sure that these websites leave a long-lasting impression on their visitor’s minds, thereby creating a better and more enduring brand presence in the minds of their audience.
How Long Does SEO Take to Show Results?
It normally takes a few months to a year or so before the results of SEO become tangible. Of course, this may vary depending on the situation. This observation tends to be general in many cases and is a pattern that has been consistently observed with clients.
Here are a few real-world examples of such improvements:
E-commerce Website
After re-launching a new website design, this e-commerce company saw a startling drop in their search rankings and traffic to their website. After working with them, we found out what had gone wrong was inflated indexing.
Next, we were able to apply our suggested solutions, and here is how the results played out:
- Within 2 months, we recovered 50 key priority phrases to Page 1 rankings.
- It also ensured a complete recovery in three months, returning to the same level of website traffic as before the decline.
B2B site
This manufacturer’s website was going down in terms of search ranking and organic search traffic-something that had been a puzzle to them. We recommended an improvement in the user experience, internal linking enhancement, and enhancing the quality of the content.
After implementing changes per our recommendations, the following timeline refers to achieved results:
- In 4 months, the client found some positive changes coming to the traffic of their website.
- As a result, in nine months, the website witnessed record organic traffic.
- That means it increased its organic traffic in two years by 100%, showing great increase and improvement.
B2C site
A national drug-screening company came to us because its website was not performing well. Our recommendations included on-page optimization, technical improvements to better their SEO, enhancement of user experience, and refinement of their content.
Our Result:
In six months’ time, the website realized a cumulative 166% increase in traffic compared to the equivalent six-month period from two years ago. The big leap proved that our strategies resulted in increasing the company’s online visibility and engagement.
Which factors influence the timeframe to achieve SEO results?
The positioning of any specific website within the timeframe is significantly influenced by several crucial factors. Among these, three stand out as particularly vital:
- Your actions: The strategies and actions you undertake to optimize the website’s SEO play a major role in determining its progress.
- The website itself: The inherent characteristics, structure, and content quality of the website directly impact how quickly it can achieve SEO results.
- The competition: The level of competition within the industry or niche also affects the timeline as websites vie for visibility and search rankings.
Now, let’s delve into the specifics of these factors that determine the timeline to achieve SEO results.
Your Actions
The countdown to “SEO results” starts when you actually do or execute the SEO program, not when you hire someone or when strategies are being developed.
Many businesses have experienced SEO failures despite hiring SEO experts. Most of these instances often occur due to their failure in implementing changes which were suggested to them. This is one of the main reasons for SEO failure.
These delays can come from any number of issues, including getting SEO “buy-in” or waiting on IT to make technical updates to a site.
Regardless of what the root cause may be, each month wasted without implementing SEO tactics condemns one to another month’s wait for the actual results to come in. The longer the wait, the longer it will take.
The Website
It may also take more time to overcome challenges on a highly complex site in order for it to reach a competitive position in the search results. This may be due to several reasons such as:
- There are many different technical issues that need to be resolved.
- A manual action by Google in the past, because of bad SEO practices done in the past.
- Negative impact due to a Google core update.
- Working with a new domain, as it takes longer to produce results when compared with older, already-established sites.
These are some of the factors that increase the time required to achieve considerable results. Of course, in some instances, which are few and far between, quick fixes can be materialized. For example, an accidentally blocking robots.txt file that prevents the search engines from crawling can be resolved very easily and may result in fast SEO improvements.
The Competition
According to me, the ultimate goal of SEO should always be outperforming your competitors and not just tricking the algorithm. But once more, that may be very aggressive according to the industry one operates in.
Sometimes, those competitors will have better resources and be able to move faster. Of course, such is not the lost situation either, because in such scenarios, flexibility and creativity could still pay dividends. Or, if you’re operating in a “your-money-or-your-life” vertical, where Google holds sites to a higher standard, it may take extra work to compete.
Besides, getting the first positions for million-dollar keywords can be a problem in itself. To show just how much time and effort this can take, my company had to work for two years to finally place a short-tail keyword for one of our clients. The work and dedication were surely worth it since the results for the client were just priceless.
How to achieve improved SEO results in a quicker timeframe
Although it’s unlikely to do better than the timeline in this article, there’s a means of hastening it. Conduct a deep technical SEO audit for your website. This will point you directly to what exactly needs to be fixed and will list recommendations in order of priority to help you outrank the competition.
This may involve hiring the services of an SEO professional or SEO agency to help one get through the execution process of an SEO program. Their expertise will prove extremely useful and can often become the deciding factor in one’s conquest of the competitive search landscape.
Initial results from SEO might be good, but the long run and steady results are even more encouraging
The SEO results that you achieve in some months or even a year might not be the very peak your website can experience.
Since SEO is an ongoing process, one can achieve even better results with time if only the SEO strategy is strong enough and adaptive to changes.
