Businesses that want to use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as a roadway to success, whether new startups or established businesses that want to grow through the benefits of SEO, all want to know how long is the SEO time frame?
How Does SEO Work?
SEO is a long game digital marketing strategy in which your business website aligns with search engine software practices to increase the relevance, usefulness, positive ratings and dependability of information on your site. Using AI bots that constantly search all registered websites for specific information and markers, Google and other search engines rank your site based on search results made on relevant keywords that users frequently type into their computers and phones when seeking information.
For example, if you have taken your family into the city for the day and you want some great pizza for dinner, you would type, “Best pizza near me” into Google on your phone and get a list of potential candidates near your present location. Great! How does Google know which pizza spots to recommend to you? They want to steer you in the right direction because they want to be a reliable source of information. For this reason, they rank business websites on a number of priorities. Do they function well, have they received overall star ratings on Google, Yelp, Tripadviser, etc. in the 4-5 star range, does the site connect content with other reliable sources? An overall rating is given that determines where these pizza places appear in the list of recommendations following a local search for “Best Pizza near me”.
Why Is SEO So Important for Marketing Today?
The importance of SEO for business marketing should not be underestimated since recent research reveals that 81% of customers and 94% of B2B purchasers make online searches before they decide to purchase. SEO also provides organizations with a worldwide visual platform for attracting customers in a growing digital marketplace. Brands without a strong online presence increasingly see themselves falling behind their competitors.
By developing a strong SEO strategy your brand can position your website, products, services and content higher on the SERPs for relevant keywords. When this happens your business will position itself to attract many more prospective customers and bring them into your sales funnel.
What Are the Key Factors to Success?
Developing your SEO workflow process for success requires that your brand incorporate both on-page and off-page SEO. Basically this means first, strategize to identify the most important keywords, second, create content on your website that is keyword rich, relevant, useful and third, link your content to other excellent content both on other websites and on your own.
On-page SEO success begins with strategic and high-value keywords. Identifying these keywords and then creating quality content that is relevant to these high-value keywords in blog articles on your website will help to optimize your content. This will support search engine spiders as they identify the pertinent content they are programmed to reward. It also requires that SEO managers pay attention to details like title tags, meta descriptions, alt tags, URL and keyword placement.
In addition it is vital that off-page SEO is continually optimized. Business website content needs to link to relevant content from other websites as well as other content on your own website. Brands must develop strategies to help them attract backlinks from other sources which helps to increase traffic and raise rankings. This can be accomplished by promoting your website content across a variety of platforms, like on social media, through guest postings and through content syndication. With all of these factors in play, how long does SEO take to see results for your business?
How Soon Will My Business See Results from SEO?
Given the competitive nature of SEO and the many steps involved in implementing an effective SEO workflow process, your business should not expect to see fast SEO results. Although there are SEO marketing firms that may promise fast SEO results, they usually rely on Blackhat SEO methods that shortcut the system. These shortcuts are not worth it because when they are discovered your site will get slapped with significant penalties that hurt you for a long time. So how long does it take for SEO to see results?
The best answer is that it will take at least six months to see quality results from SEO. Many businesses get frustrated by the long term investment and the costs and quit their efforts before they can get an appropriate assessment of SEO’s effectiveness. A helpful breakdown for planning out your SEO workflow process might be to understand it on a monthly basis.
Month 1
The first month’s efforts will center on research and analysis. This will include a complete audit of your website, research for optimal keywords and SEO strategy. Moving quickly on the research and analysis part may enable you to begin fixing technical issues with the website. However, the larger your website the more time and effort this research and analysis part will require.
Month 2
Based on the results of your website audit you will get a better idea of your SEO time frame. Sometimes businesses need a complete overhaul of their website, which can require months of work. Whether preparing your website will take shorter or longer, your business can work on other aspects of SEO in the meantime. Writing and creating quality content, evaluating backlink profiles and implementing keywords. For those wondering, why does SEO take so long, it is important to highlight that the process has huge upside for the long term.
Month 3
If your business has not started creating high-quality content for your site, now is the time. Writing original articles, whitepapers, product descriptions, FAQs, etc., can be time consuming but is essential to raise your search engine ratings for reliability and quality content. Working on technical fixes and content creation at the same time may stretch your budget, but these two pieces will definitely jumpstart a rise in your rankings and traffic.
Month 4
By this time you will undoubtedly be wondering how long does it take for SEO to work? Stay patient and start building your links to other websites’ content and to your own content. You will likely see significant changes in rankings and organic traffic as you near the end of this month. But it will pale in comparison to what you will see by pushing through a full SEO time frame for 12 months.
Month 5
By the 5th month you should be fully promoting your content on social media networks and/or forums. Adding social media marketing will also help build social media presence and increase direct traffic. These efforts are cost effective and help your site acquire natural links rather than paying to build them. Maintain your content creation process and, if your budget allows, begin some media outreach. By this time you should see a noticeable bump in traffic, leads and sales.
Month 6
At this point your next steps will include tweaking your landing pages and content to optimize your conversions from the growth in overall traffic and continuing to produce high quality content. You should continue to build links naturally through your content marketing and consider acquiring links if your efforts have not produced the results you seek. It is also wise to work on a strategic SEO plan for the next 6-12 months determining an ongoing plan to increase your organic search traffic.
How Do I Get Started or Take the Next Step?
As you can tell the SEO time frame is not quick and easy. SEO requires an intensive process and at least 6 months of concerted effort to begin to see quality long term results. If you are looking for fast SEO results the process outlined above will get you where you want to be as fast as is safely and legally possible. Since it is very likely that you need to be able to focus on building your own business, seeking expert help from a full-service marketing agency that has years of experience in SEO can be a cost effective way to get started with SEO or to take your next step with SEO.
This is where zo agency partners with your business to create an SEO friendly website and build your SEO results. Our team of experts will optimize your website and behind-the-scenes data so your website will get listed at the top of search engines. This process will lead to many more visitors from potential clients and customers of course. If you are really serious about maximizing or boosting your online presence, take a look at how our professional SEO services will help your business grow, shine and thrive! Visit us at zo.agency!
