How Long Does it Take to See Results from SEO?

“How long does it take for SEO to start working?” 

As frustrating as it sounds, there’s never a tried-and-tested answer for this question. SEO can happen quickly if you have a very niche business, or it can take a long time in more competitive industries. While there may not be a definitive answer, we want to walk you through a scalable timeline of what you can expect throughout your SEO campaign.

First Month

The first 30 days of an SEO campaign is where we lay the foundations for your SEO campaign. We run a technical audit and take baseline measures of your site’s health scores.

SEO really gets started by adding strong, optimised keywords into your website. Keyword research helps to narrow down the strongest and best-primed keywords. Once we’ve identified the right keywords, we start to look at how to implement them across your website. This is instrumental in helping search engines such as Google get their attention and further increase rankings. 

2-5 Months

In the next two to five months, you’ll start to notice keyword position fluctuations as Google starts to recognise your website. It’s very normal to see keywords ebb and flow. Google is just trying to see where your site fits in on SERPs for certain keywords. So, it’s actually a good thing to have ebbs and flows.

During this time, it’s important we make sure activities like updating current content, website pages, titles, meta descriptions, and tags are optimised for your target keywords. 

6-9 Months

While it may happen earlier, around the six-month mark, we should see some of your keywords start to break into the top 10 of the Google SERPs.  All the effort we’ve put in so far should start to pay off. However, more than 67% of clicks go to the top five listings. So, while we may have some keywords in the top 10, it’s important to work at keeping them there.

To keep first-page rankings, we need to continue to improve and create new content. Our knowledge of how to target and implement the right keywords for your site is the key to success in getting optimal results.

9+ Months

Once we’ve built a strong foundation in the first nine months, we can continue expanding your optimisations. The more quality keywords on the first page, the more visibility you’ll have online. This, in turn, enables potential customers to find your site. There’s always room for improvement and additional growth, and we need to stay ahead of competitors’ efforts to stay ahead of the pack.

What Happens When You Cancel Your SEO?

Stopping SEO efforts won’t make a difference straight away. However, typically after six months of ending an SEO campaign, a website’s keywords drop out of those coveted top 10 rankings you worked so hard to achieve. Stopping SEO is a slow slide back to the bottom of the rankings that takes about the same amount of time to disappear as it did to build it up.

Succeeding Over Time with SEO

Though SEO can take time to build up, it’s well worth the time and effort that goes into it. Investing in SEO is investing in your business. With SEO, your investment keeps growing over time. The more you supply to SEO, the more exposure your site can gain. Like most expenditures, you don’t make money instantly overnight. SEO doesn’t happen all at once, either. It’s the investment that keeps on growing.