The best things in life take time, and the rewards of search engine optimisation are no different. SEO is an incredibly effective long-term solution for capturing valuable organic traffic, but you won't always see results immediately. So, how long does SEO take to work?
On average, it takes around 2+ months for the effects of SEO to start kicking in. But, it's important to note that this depends on the extent of the changes made and how competitive your market is. For example, SEO optimisation on a completely new website will take a lot longer to impact the Google results than SEO optimisation on an existing website that's already indexed.
Is SEO a long-term process?
Yes, SEO is a continuous process that requires long-term work and dedication - which is why it can take a long time to work. You may find that some results appear within a matter of days, whereas other activities may not reap rewards for months. The thing is, that's perfectly normal - Google rankings change constantly. Patience truly is a virtue in the world of SEO!
SEO may take longer than paid advertising to get results, but your listings and pages are more likely to retain their positions for longer if they got there organically.
How long does it take to rank on Google?
How long it takes to rank on Google completely depends on what type of content you're working with and which keywords you're hoping to rank for. There are many things you can do to improve a website's SEO, from extensive link-building and blogging to on-page metadata changes. Some changes take longer than others to impact your Google rankings and organic traffic.
Here's a rough idea of how long you'll have to wait before your SEO changes affect the Google rankings:
- A few days for a SEO-optimised blog post
- A week or so for website copy changes
- Several weeks for inbound links
For example, if you publish a high-quality, informative blog post that's optimised for a particular keyword, you may find it ranking on page one the next day. Obviously, this is brilliant for a few random keywords that need a quick boost up the rankings.
But it's important to note that blogs may work for one keyword and not another. It's very common to find a few pesky keywords that will not budge up the ranks. In this case, you may need to resort to other SEO tactics - such as internal and external link building. These strategies tend to be slower-acting.
If you're after the specifics, take a look at this study from Authority Hacker where they discovered that it takes the average of 3.1 months to see the impact of a link on search ranking.
Why does SEO take so long to work?
When you begin scratching at the surface of your website's SEO, you tend to uncover more tasks by the second. This is why SEO can take so long to work! It can be very easy to get lost in a sea of improvements due to the many pillars of SEO.
SEO is an extremely unpredictable practice, too. Only Google truly know how their algorithm works and how to master it - our job is try and figure that out! There are tons of variables that can make or break your SEO efforts, which can explain why SEO lacks a 'quick-fix' option.
Although SEO takes longer to work, it's definitely a more reliable strategy than those promising to get you to the top spot of page 1 in a matter of days (if you've been told this by a digital marketer, then they're probably bluffing!)
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