How Long Does SEO Marketing Take?

Taking an SEO-forward approach to your digital marketing can help you to outrank your competitors in organic search results and attract new customers to your business. Our team conducts keyword research in order to create quality content for your website, while link building to increase traffic to your site. Depending on your competition it can be anywhere between 2 and 6 months to start seeing results.

SEO is a long term marketing plan that requires consistent work in order to maintain a top placement online for relevant search terms. When done correctly, SEO can be one of the most cost efficient and effective ways to grow your business.

What Does SEO Success Look Like?

To answer the question, we first need to determine what SEO success looks like to ensure that the measures of results are clear.

And when it comes to putting together an SEO strategy, it’s common to put together campaign goals and KPIs.

Let’s break this down.

• Goals = The end outcome that you want to achieve
• KPIs = Metrics that demonstrate progress towards your goals

These are both important measures of success and, ultimately, results from your efforts. Commonly, the reality is that these goals and KPIs look something like the below:

• Goals = To achieve an increase in revenue by a set amount over a 12-month period.
• KPIs = Growth in organic traffic, visibility, impressions, or rankings.

Of course, setting goals is all about putting in place measurable yet realistic targets. To answer this question, we’re going to focus on the length of time it typically takes to see results across core KPIs, understanding that goals are typically far more unique to a business and change significantly based on several factors.

You Should Expect to See Results From SEO Within 6 to 12 Months…

SEO should show results within a 6- to 12-month period. By results, we mean a measurable increase in traffic and associated leads or conversions. This doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have achieved your goal by this point, but any business that is investing in SEO should expect to be able to see progress within this timeframe.

It’s impossible to give a figure that applies to all websites, and the best that an SEO can do is give a best-guess estimate based on analyzing a website’s current performance and the proposed strategy.

There’s no getting away from the fact that it takes time to improve your SEO. Google (and other search engines) want to show the best result for any given search query, and it takes time to deserve to rank. You’ve got to earn top search visibility.

But with the right strategy in place, 6 to 12 months is a long enough period to be able to see the impact of SEO efforts and to be able to justify ongoing investment into growth.

The Factors That Determine How Long It Takes to See Success From SEO

To help you to further understand how long it takes to see SEO success, let’s take a look at the factors that determine this.

1. Your Website’s History

Whether or not you’re working on a new domain is one of the key factors that influences the time it takes to see results from SEO.

A new domain will almost always take longer to show success than an established one, given that it hasn’t yet built up any authority or earned any backlinks. In comparison, an established domain will usually have earned at least some level of authority and have some backlinks pointing to it.

A brand new domain should expect to see results within 9 to 12 months, rather than 6 to 12.

However, an established domain doesn’t automatically mean that you’ll see quicker results. You likely won’t see quick results if the domain has previously been affected by a penalty, a core algorithm update, or has had SEO work that goes against Google’s webmaster guidelines.

2. The Competition

Results can be seen far quicker in low competition niches and low competition search queries than competitive ones.

Trying to rank a website for competitive personal finance keywords (e.g., ‘credit cards’)? It could take 2 years or more to earn prominent page 1 visibility. On the other hand, for local or narrower lower competition keywords, it might be possible to show promising results within 3 to 6 months.

3. Your Resources

You can’t control a website’s history nor the competition.

But what you can (usually) control is the resources that are allocated toward an SEO project. It’s important to understand exactly how this plays a huge part in the length of time it takes to see results from a campaign. The more resources you’re able to allocate toward SEO, the faster you’ll usually see results.

The most important resource you need is time. Let’s give an example…

Two websites owned by small businesses are competing for the same keyword. They’re both aware that the key drivers of SEO success are technical SEO, content, and backlinks. Both employ the services of an SEO freelancer. For simplicity, we’ll assume that both of these sites start on a level playing field.

Website A engages their chosen specialist for 5 days of time per month, whereas Website B engages theirs for just 2 days.

Of course, website A should expect to see faster results.

Be aware that conversations around the time taken to see an impact must take into account the resources being allocated, understanding that the best way to reduce this (within reason) is to allocate more to the project.

It often makes sense to put together a backlog of action points at the start of a campaign (detailing all of the opportunities and actions) and then prioritize this around the allocated resources. This can help to show the opportunities that are still outstanding that could be brought forward with more investment.

Is SEO a Smart Investment?

These days, without a doubt, the most effective marketing strategy is online marketing. When you design your website with SEO principles in mind, you are able to drive traffic to your website from your specific target audience. This means, instead of casting a wide net to people who are not interested in the products and goods offered by your business, you are able to specifically market your products or services to the people who are organically interested in the things you offer.

Our team works with small business owners to build a website that is created with purpose. This means, each landing page within your site is designed so that search engines such as Google can easily locate them. This is done with content marketing. Each word and image placed on your site is done so with purpose, so that when someone does an online search, they are able to find your business easily.

SEO Marketing For Businesses in Houston, TX

Your website is more than an extension of your business, it is often your first chance to make a lasting impression on potential customers. Our team helps you to optimize your website so that you do not fall behind your competitors. As the gap increases between the amount of effort your competition puts into their online marketing and how little work you put into your website, the more difficult it will become to engage with customers online.

The Houston Small Business Marketing team works hard to help your business stay relevant in this online-focused world by tracking the latest strategies in online marketing for businesses. If you are tired of giving away potential customers to your competition, we can help you. Reach out to us today to learn how to outrank your competitors online as a new business.

We dedicate ourselves to working closely with business owners to come up with a marketing plan that helps them succeed. We provide each customer with a free consultation for your website and social media to let you know how you can improve your ranking and reach your goals.

Houston Small Business Marketing 
713-492-0025
1415 North Loop West #950 
Houston, TX 77008 
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