The question “How long does SEO take?” may be one of the most frustrating questions it is an FAQ most of the clients come up with. Understandably, there is no definitive answer to this question because of the varying factors involved. These factors are mostly related to the optimization of your site.
While you need to evaluate several variables that play a role in your site’s optimization, you also have to do the same for your competitors’ websites. With so much assessment to do, it becomes even tougher to answer the question we are talking about.
That said, we are now going to talk about the key variables assessing which can help you determine how long your SEO is going to take. Those factors are:
- Competition
- Inbound links
- Content
What’s more essential to note here is that even if you have the data related to these variables, you wouldn’t have any formula to get a quick answer.
Role of competition
You won’t face any competition if you are selling something that nobody sells and nobody buys. You are going to get ranked the moment Google indexes your site. But the problem is you are ranking against a query nobody is interested in. On the other hand, if you are selling a product that is popular among a considerably larger audience, and other companies or brands are also selling the same kind of product, you have got a competition to overcome.
It means that the more competition you face, the more time it is going to take for your SEO to make its impact. Unfortunately, there is no way other than making investments to bring your business into the spotlight. You are going to have to invest your time and money to make sure that your SEO procedure is robust and effective enough to deal with the ranking challenges in the best possible manner. If you are an SEO agency, you will have to have the best professionals to rely on. And if you are a company needing to your business website to rank well in Google SERPs, you will have to outsource the SEO task to a highly professional SEO agency with the right expertise.
Role of inbound links
The role of inbound links is far simpler to understand. They bring in the traffic that can help your website rank in Google SERPs. However, there are several deeper factors that you need to evaluate to know how long the inbounds links you built will take to prompt Google to make necessary ranking changes.
Generally, a good number of links can help you achieve SEO success more quickly. However, it is not all about numbers. Fewer high-quality links from relevant websites can leave a greater impact as compared to a greater volume of low-quality links from the websites that are irrelevant. This is also because high-quality links are not easy to acquire. If you have been successful in securing links from high-quality sites, chances are you have done enough to make the competition tougher for your competitors.
Role of content
How quickly you may see results also depends on the content that you post on your website. And the first thing that you are going to have to pay attention to is the quality of your content.
Gone are the days when you could see a positive change in rankings by churning out hundreds of short articles. It won’t work now. But this doesn’t mean either that you should deploy your workforce to generate a piece of a few thousand words every time you plan on posting content on your website. There is no ideal word-length that you should focus on. What you need to pay attention to is how valuable your content for your audience is.
That said, every piece of content that you post on your site must provide value to your audience if you want your SEO to make an impact quickly.
