Best SEO Companies
This is one of the most common questions regarding SEO. But also one of the most challenging to answer. Because so many factors go into SEO, including a wide range of strategies, the time to results varies widely based on situation. By understanding all the aspects of SEO and how they affect time to results, you can set more realistic expectations with your team and stakeholders.
Factors influencing SEO timeline
When a search engine indexes websites, it uses a complex and often changing algorithm to rank sites for specific keywords. The algorithm considers many factors when ranking websites, which in turn affects the timeline for SEO results. By understanding the different components, you can more accurately estimate the time to results for your specific situation.
Website history and age
Many of the components of the algorithm — especially authority — are only possible to achieve with an established website, making it challenging for new sites to rank quickly. An established site that adds a new page to its website or wants to rank for a specific keyword typically sees results much faster than a brand-new website. Companies with an established and high-performing site should think carefully before launching microsites instead of adding pages to the main website.
When a search engine quickly ranks a brand-new site high, it takes a risk on the site performing as expected. The odds are higher that an older site will continue in its past pattern of maintenance, strategy, and performance. Because search engines can review the performance of an established site over time, they can use its track record of loading speeds and practice of not using unethical practices. Additionally, a high-quality backlink profile typically takes time to build up, giving older sites a leg up in achieving a higher ranking.
Business goals and objectives
Each business website serves a unique market and has different goals than competitors’ sites. These factors create a unique business profile that significantly affects the SEO timeline. One of the biggest factors is the target audience. Organizations that want to attract a broad audience typically target higher competition keywords. For example, a company selling women’s brown pants is going to be looking at keywords that are much harder to rank for than a company selling women’s Chicago Bears workout pants. Local businesses also have an easier time ranking with local SEO than worldwide or nationwide businesses do, due to having less local competition.
Another key component of SEO is the priority placed on SEO by the company. Organizations that invest in SEO, such as by hiring an agency in the industry and using resources to create high-quality content, typically see faster results. Businesses that are more focused on SEO also tend to implement their chosen tactics and strategies more quickly and more consistently, often resulting in movement in rankings more quickly.
Resource availability
Because there are many specialized skills and tools required to implement SEO strategies, companies must devote a significant portion of their marketing budget to SEO in order to see results. Organizations with more financial resources devoted to SEO typically see results more quickly. However, businesses with a limited budget that make smart investments based on their goals achieve SEO success even if it takes a few months longer.
Budgeting for SEO is just the first step. Businesses with a healthy SEO budget must make smart decisions on how to spend that money on SEO resources. For example, a company that relies on free tools instead of specialized SEO tools will struggle to rank high regardless of its budget.
Additionally, having human resources with the right skill set play a large role in the timeline. For example, an organization with a single marketing employee attempting to improve SEO as one of their many projects will likely have a much longer SEO timeline than a business that hires a full-service agency with years of experience in the industry. This is even more important when it comes to technical SEO, which typically requires specialized skill sets outside the typical SEO or marketing wheelhouse.
Competitive landscape
With SEO, because businesses are competing against other companies that are looking to rank for the same keywords, the industry and market are major factors in the time required for results. Organizations looking to rank in the finance, healthcare, or legal industries often find that it takes longer to see results because many businesses in these industries have long-established sites with high-quality content and backlinks.
When a business is seeking to determine the competition level for SEO in its industry, both volume and SEO strength are key factors to consider. In a field that has less competition, such as compliance software for small dental practices, ranking is much easier than in a highly saturated field, such as weight loss strategies. However, it’s also easier to rank in a field with many companies that aren’t effectively using SEO strategies, as opposed to industries where SEO is often a top priority, such as technology and health.
As part of the SEO process, organizations must understand their specific competitive landscape. By conducting an in-depth competitor analysis, companies can have a clear picture of their competitors’ efforts as well as begin identifying opportunities. While many organizations focus on identifying what keywords their competition currently rank for, it’s also important to evaluate content, backlinks, and technical SEO.
SEO tools that offer competitive analysis features, such as SEMrush, provide detailed information that can include keyword gaps, backlink gaps, domain overview, traffic analytics, and content analysis. Manual competitor analysis is exceptionally time consuming and error prone, so companies use these tools to shorten the process and make it easier to quickly identify opportunities. For example, the keyword gap analysis may uncover a niche keyword that has a relatively high search volume for the industry and is low competition.
Chosen SEO strategies and approaches
While the other factors in SEO are largely out of the marketing department’s control, their actions can still make a significant difference in the SEO timeline. Organizations that start with an SEO audit to determine their current successes and areas for improvement can use that information to create a comprehensive strategy to increase website traffic and rankings.
The specific strategies that are chosen make a big difference, especially when it comes to ethical SEO. If an organization hires an agency that uses black hat SEO, such as low-quality backlinks and keyword stuffing, the site will likely be penalized for these tactics, making it longer to recover and rank higher, even once the right SEO tactics are used.
Even with ethical SEO tactics, organizations must identify the areas that are holding them back from ranking high and address those areas. If a website has slow page loading speed and the organization doesn’t fix the issue, SEO results will come much slower than if they hire a technical SEO expert at the beginning of the project.
Why SEO requires time
Even when all the factors are favorable, higher SEO ranking is still not an overnight project. In the best situations, SEO can take three to six months to begin to see results. SEO is a marathon, not a sprint, for three key reasons.
Importance of in-depth research
Creating the right SEO strategy is time consuming and often evolving. You cannot schedule an afternoon for SEO research and expect success. The level and type of research required to create an accurate strategy often takes weeks or longer. Additionally, you often must revisit the research phase many times during the process, especially if the strategies are not working as expected.
When an organization first begins its SEO journey, one of the first steps is understanding its top-ranking competitors. Because the site will be ranked against each of them, success depends on understanding their strengths as well as areas where their weaknesses offer opportunities. Organizations should also fully understand their target audience before launching SEO projects. To create effective content and keywords, understand the intent behind the audience’s searches. By taking the time required to create audience personas and extensively research their needs, you can ensure that your time and money is spent on efforts that help build their trust.
Role of content creation
Consistently creating high quality content on specific topics is one of the best ways to improve SEO. A single piece of content doesn’t move the needle. Organizations need to regularly produce content that’s optimized for searcher intent. Because content can quickly go out of date, marketers must continually update the content as well as ensure that all links remain relevant and working.
Creating well-researched content that solves the target audience’s challenges takes time to create. The process starts with determining the right topics, then creating the content, promoting the content, and then getting backlinks to the content. The lag time between publishing and search engine indexing can be as short as a few weeks or as long as several months, which adds to the time to results.
Necessity of technical optimization
One of the most overlooked areas of SEO is technical SEO. Even with the world’s best content and hidden gems of keywords, your SEO rankings can only go so high if the website contains technical issues that impact ranking. Because search engines prioritize websites that provide a positive user experience, sites that have technical issues with mobile optimization, page load speed, site structure, or broken links are often penalized.
Organizations almost always need to address these issues before seeing significant improvement in SEO rankings and website traffic. If a site was built many years ago with an outdated platform and poorly written scripts, fixing technical issues can be especially complicated and time consuming. Marketing departments often must hire outside experts to address these issues, which adds to the timeline.
Key tactics to accelerate SEO results
While SEO improvement is not a quick process, there are four specific strategies that can help to shorten the timeline for results. A single strategy helps, but using all of them together typically significantly improves progress.
Here are four ways to accelerate your SEO journey:
Target low-difficulty keywords
The sweet spot for keywords is to find a higher volume keyword that has low competition. In many cases, a low-volume keyword that is often searched by your target audience works as well. Often, these golden keywords are long-tail keywords that are specific to the industry and audience. Because fewer companies are trying to rank for these keywords, you typically see results faster. As a bonus, traffic and conversions often improve more quickly, because those keywords often help find your target audience.
Optimize existing content
One of the most effective ways to increase SEO is through providing relevant, informative content that helps solve the audience’s biggest challenges. Creating new content from scratch is time consuming and expensive. However, most businesses have has existing content that they can optimize or reuse. Look at your out-of-date blog posts that can be refreshed. Review existing webinars and their transcripts, which you can create quick blog posts from. Turn an eBook chapter into an infographic. Examine your sales presentations for topics that can be transformed into blog posts. With minimal effort, organizations can optimize a significant amount of content that they can publish relatively quickly.
Fix technical errors
Websites with technical errors such as broken links and slow-loading pages are significantly limited in their ranking possibilities. By quickly addressing all technical issues, organizations can often begin to see progress relatively quickly. Businesses that want results on the quicker side of the timeline should start their SEO journey with a Technical SEO Audit and hire technical SEO help from the beginning.
Enhance backlink profiles
Organizations often overlook using backlinks as a strategy to improve rankings. By focusing effort on backlinks with reputable companies, businesses can often see results in a short timeframe. Using SEO tools with backlinks features often helps accelerate the process by providing suggestions for new backlinks. Additionally, fixing current backlinks and replacing lower authority links that may be penalizing the site can improve rankings.
Importance of consistency in SEO efforts
Many organizations focus on SEO for a short period of time and then move their efforts to other areas. Sometimes this happens due to resources, while other businesses give up when results don’t happen right away. Because authority continues to be a key foundation of SEO algorithms, organizations that continue with their SEO strategies for years are the ones that see the greatest rewards. For example, businesses must make regular on-page optimizations, such as adding new blog posts based on current industry trends. Additionally, continuous off-page SEO initiatives, such as adding to the backlink profile, make a big difference in gaining new visitors through SEO.
Conclusion: The path to sustainable SEO growth
Many organizations start SEO with ambitious goals and then totally abandon their efforts when they don’t see fast results. Other businesses — ones that have realistic expectations and understand what to expect — are more likely to stay the course. Organizations that approach SEO as an ongoing effort and journey instead of a project with an end date tend to see greater success.
By setting both short-term and long-term goals, your organization has a roadmap that sets the pace and expectations. Throughout the process, monitor your progress and chart it against your goals. If you are not achieving your goals in a reasonable manner, consider making small adjustments and then wait to see the impact. SEO can provide significant business benefits to organizations that consistently and strategically implement ethical SEO strategies.
Best SEO Companies