How Long Does SEO Take?

Wednesday, March 20, 2024
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Blog by Lucy
Lucy Benson
How long does SEO take to work

‘How long does SEO take to work?’ is the million dollar question all brands and businesses want the answer to. Whether you’re a small business or entrepreneur who’s just starting out and you’re spending £500 a month, or you’re a large company spending in the region of £8K a month, you’re only doing that because at some point your efforts are going to reap rewards. But when? In this article we’ll dig deeper into those all-important SEO stats. Let’s go.

How Long Does it Take for SEO to Take Effect?

According to Maile Ohye, who worked for 12 years on the Google search team,

“In most cases, SEOs need four months to a year to help your business first implement improvements and then see potential benefit.”

The length it takes to work for your particular brand depends on certain factors. These include -

  • How much you’re willing to invest in your SEO strategy. When you have a bigger budget you’re able to employ the best people for the job, use the very best in SEO tools, and as a result you’re SEO changes will be able to be implemented relatively quickly
  • The competition. If your brand exists in a super-competitive arena it will be more of an uphill struggle for you to see SEO results as there will be big name brands hogging much of the space
  • How old your website is. In general, older websites are far better placed to gain results from SEO than fresh-out-of-the-pack websites. This is because established websites will (hopefully) have built up authority in their space, rankings, and links from external sites (backlinks). All of these factors help support SEO. New websites won’t have these in place, and the algorithms will still be spending time assessing where your website belongs in search results

How Long Does SEO Take to Show Results?

There’s no denying SEO is a long game. Sure, it’s possible to see results come in relatively quickly, but the best way to look at SEO is an investment in the future of your brand or business. In terms of cold hard statistics though, SEO has shown to deliver the following results:

  • An increase in website traffic by 11.4% in the first six months
  • In months 9-12, another increase of traffic to your website by 9.58%
  • When you reach Year 2, you can expect a 49.4% increase from Year 1
  • In Year 3, traffic is up by 30.7% compared to Year 2
  • Year 4 sees further growth of 13.5%

These results have been taken from over 100 million sites.

How Long Do SEO Changes Take?

As you can see from the above figures, when you decide to play the long game and persevere with your SEO strategy you will continue to see growth well into years three and four. With that in mind, SEO really is a strategy for your business that’s not just about now, but - possibly more importantly - about the future.

How Do I Implement an SEO Strategy?

When you’re running a business, there are so many elements to manage that finding time to get your head around the intricacies of SEO work can sometimes fall by the wayside. However, if SEO isn’t on your radar, you’re setting yourself up for a seriously lengthy game in getting your brand or business out there. Without a decent SEO strategy it’s more than likely that any potential customers simply won’t be able to find you. SEO improves your website visibility and helps you rank in SERPs.

You can’t ignore SEO. If you can’t do it, someone else needs to. Let that ‘someone’ be the team at Creative Ideaz. We’ve got years of experience helping build brands, boosting their prospects, and making sure they’re seen by as many people as possible.

Take our client, Este Medical, for example. With our help, Sam Cinkir, the CEO of Este Medical, created a multinational brand from one clinic in just five years. Este Medical now achieves 100K organic traffic each month, is ranked for 70K keywords, and has enjoyed a x1600 increase in monthly leads. So, ‘how long does it take to see results from SEO?’ For Este Medical it was a gradual process over five years. For your brand, depending on the competition within your niche, it could be sooner, or may take a little longer to achieve your ultimate goal. Either way, one thing’s for sure: SEO will only elevate your business.

Easy Tips for How Long Does SEO Take to Rank

With these handy tips you’ll be able to stop asking, ‘How long do SEO results take?’ because you should start seeing results quickly. Here are our top quick tips for getting your SEO game out there…

  1. Sort out any technical glitches - Google needs to be able to trawl your website nice and easily. If it encounters a SEO tech error it will find it hard to fulfil its task. Carry out a technical audit on your SEO and fix any problems you encounter - you’ll be doing Google - and yourselves - a favour
  2. Check your content - we all know content is key but if your content isn’t actually adding any value to your website then it needs to go. If you think it does offer helpful info but it’s written badly, and could just use a touch more detail, it’s time to fix it
  3. Target low difficulty keywords. You can do this by using the Google Keyword Planner. Just copy and paste your main keyword terms into it and you’ll see related metrics on keyword competition, cost per click, and search volume. If you can target low difficulty keywords, you’ll draw in visitors who will hopefully stay and look around the rest of your site

Get Your SEO Sorted and See Results

No one ever achieved SEO results by sitting there wondering, ‘how long do seo results take?’ They got results by setting the wheels in motion and getting busy on an SEO strategy. Let us help you take your business to the next level with an SEO strategy that delivers. Fill in this online form and book a consultation with our friendly team. We can’t wait to work with you and share your business with the world!

Lucy Benson

SEO Executive @ Creative Ideaz