How Long Does SEO Take to Give Results?

If you have just started to optimize your website for search engines and you wonder how long SEO takes to give results.

In this post, I will tell you the whole truth.

To get started, there are two things to keep in mind:

SEO is like going to the gym, you need perseverance and the work never ends. You must constantly work on optimizing your site, perform an analysis from time to time, and re-optimize to appear at the top of the search engine.
The time it will take to get results depends on many factors. We know that it is an unsatisfactory answer, so I will describe those aspects below in order to give you a better estimate.

Therefore, since you have just started working on it.

I advise you to take SEO as a long-term strategy and that you are encouraged to invest time and resources in this process.

With patience and effort, you will achieve fantastic results. Keep in mind that, with the boom of the Web, it is more complex to appear in the first results in the search engine.

Perhaps you will not be able to position all your content on the first page of Google.

But it will improve the SEO results of your strategy.

Table of Contents

A Bit of SEO History

Surely you have read a lot of articles with tips to get your website to appear well-positioned in the first results of Google and other search engines.

Be careful, the thing has a trick.

Everything changes constantly and Google updates its algorithms over time (and even launches completely new algorithms).

If you think that you can get positive results instantly, you are most likely wrong.

In the past, you could outrank your competition by simply getting more inbound links than they did.

Today, everything is much more complicated.

There are many more factors that influence positioning and a good SEO strategy is something that can take a lot of time.

You must strive to create unique and quality content that interests your audience.

That is, when it comes to web optimization, we must focus on the needs of our users.

And not only that, add inbound links, internal links, the participation of your audience, and social interactions to the mix.

This is how you will get search engines to take your pages into account and position them higher.

A few years ago, the basic strategy to achieve good positioning consisted of covering the most important relevant keywords in the sector and optimizing your entire website around them.

Nowadays, it is about optimizing the content of the web for very specific keywords (known as “ long-tail keywords ” or “long tail”) to help it gain authority and thus be able to compete for more generic keywords.

And with a higher search volume.

The use of specific and concise keywords will attract an audience more interested in your business

If you have a start-up company, forget about ranking your website for generic keywords like “professional hairdresser”.

Focus on appearing on the first page of search engines for phrases and questions that your customers actually enter into search engines.

For example, if you have a hairdresser in India, bet on long-tail keywords like “India hairdresser” or “India wedding hairdresser” to lead the organic search results, instead of simply “hairdresser”.

The more specific your keywords are, the more opportunities you will have to attract the audience that really interests you.

And that really wants to know more about your content and your business.

Why SMEs Should Care About Their SEO Strategy

Do you know why you should invest time in the SEO of your website?

This professional Website Builder Plan includes an SEO application that will be very useful for you.

Is it necessary even if you have a small company?

The answer is a resounding “Yes”.

Good positioning helps your customers find you online and also helps them move through the buying process.

SEO generates recognition, since people find your website on the Internet and thus become aware of the products and services you offer.
SEO positioning helps them investigate because if you provide them with information through different types of content (such as posts, infographics, videos, etc.), they will get to know you better and feel more attracted to your website.
SEO encourages them to make a final decision and make a purchase on your website because you have been gaining their trust and you have managed to convince them little by little.

In addition, there are other important reasons to worry about the SEO of your website:

SEO will never disappear, even if the rules are changed. Google can update its algorithms to make sure people find exactly what they are looking for, and SEO plays and will always play an important role in achieving this.
Your competition is already doing it, so don’t relax even when you see that you have surpassed them. They will continue to strive to improve their positioning.
Your potential customers are looking for you and most of them do it on Google. If you have a small company, you will have to give them the opportunity to find you and get to know you.

Forget Unrealistic Expectations: Set Smart Goals

If you talk to an agency that specializes in SEO and they promise one or more of the following, run away!

You will appear first in the organic search results in a short period of time.
You will get a lot of organic traffic from one day to the next.
They will take care of SEO once and it will be good for you for a lifetime.
Incredible results for a ridiculous price.

SEO, as I said above, is like going to the gym: you need time and effort to get high in search engine results.

Do not expect to achieve a big change from one day to the next, because it is impossible.

The experts and agencies that promise you the moon for 10 dollars will surely end up damaging the positioning of your website.

Because?

Because those who promise to rank you number 1 for a keyword in a very short time are surely breaking the rules.

These techniques are known as Black Hat SEO and it is risky to carry them out.

And it is that, over time, the search engines will end up realizing it and will penalize your website.

In the long run, this will hurt your SEO positioning and also your brand.

Think that all the time and resources you have invested in your website will go to waste.

Not ideal, right?

Now that you know what you can and can’t expect, I’m going to try to answer the initial question.

How to Work a Strategy to Appear with Your Website in the First Results of the Search Engines?

If you want to get good results, you have to do quality work.

That is, on the one hand, carry out an exhaustive SEO analysis and draw up an SEO positioning strategy for your website.

On the other, understand the search mechanisms of your potential customers.

Here are some of the items you should focus on:

Perform an analysis of your website traffic: are you getting quality traffic? What pages of your website are well positioned? What is the average click-through rate for each keyword you rank for? Knowing the performance of your website will be very useful to work on later.
Draw up an SEO positioning strategy to improve the performance of your website in search engines.
Establish the main objective of this specific strategy and create a series of smart objectives that you can achieve with the resources at your disposal.
Carry out an SEO analysis and a good analysis of keywords for which it is interesting for you to appear in the first results of the search engines.
Define which are the main tools that you are going to use to work on your strategy and measure the intelligent objectives previously established.
Create relevant and optimized content that is useful both now and in the near future. Work, for this, an inbound marketing strategy.
Get a website that not only looks good but runs like clockwork.
Make sure that the loading speed of your website is acceptable and that it is easy to navigate through it.
Establishing which SEO metric allows you to know how your SEO strategy is working to climb in the Google ranking. Thanks to these basic metrics, you will be able to know how the search engine optimization work is being done.