How long does SEO Take to Work
How Long Does SEO Take?
SEO Timescales, How long does SEO Take to Work? This is always one of the first questions you will get asked by someone who has not done SEO before or someone who has a limited knowledge of SEO who wouldn’t really know what to expect.
From the outset with any client, it is vital that you give them a realistic timescale for SEO to work. There is no point in telling them it takes 1 month and then after that month you have a client on your case asking why things are not happening. It can take Google weeks to pick up Onsite SEO changes and links that you have built to those pages. There are many SEO companies out there telling people they can rank them in 30 days which of course would be great if it really happened. I would consider outsourcing all of my work to them if it was that easy.
The ranking in 30 days scenario, this can happen however it is likely to be for a bunch of low-quality keywords or search terms that don’t get searched at all. There are tools available online to show you how often keywords get searched for, so ensure that your SEO campaign starts of properly by targeting keywords that will bring in more traffic to your website.
Any keyword that is getting a decent amount of traffic isn’t going to come easy, as well as getting Google to pick up on the SEO work that’s been done, you have competition some of which have probably been doing SEO for some time so you have that to contend with too.
There is not an answer that will suit everyone as different niches have different competition but you should expect SEO to take at least 3 to 4 months to start showing decent progress and possibly 6 to 9 months if not a little longer in some competitive niches, to get up alongside the big boys in your niche.
If you are a Sawmill or something like that which has little or no competition in many areas things can happen so much quicker but in general, you should give your SEO 3 or 4 months to see any real progress, as by that time someones being able to do a reasonable amount of work and have that picked up by the search engines.
I’ve also done SEO campaigns, I’ve had clients come to me for SEO and 4 weeks later because they didn’t rank for 100 keywords on page 1, they asked me to stop my services. This is the type of SEO client you want to try and avoid where possible, client education is a big part of any SEO campaign, keeping them up to date with a realistic expectation is always important.
In my experience, the clients who stick it out and get over that initial hurdle at the start will be the ones who are successful online.
Although the problem from a client’s side is that there are many SEO‘s out there who you could give years worth of time to and will still never produce the goods so it is important that if you are a client that you have a good look into your SEO and see if they have a proven track record.
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Clients have to invest and believe in their project, penny-pinching and all of that stuff just isn’t going to get you anywhere fast, the chances are your client is way behind the competition and have to give you enough resources to catch them, not just rank for a bunch of long-tail keywords that don’t convert.
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Craig Campbell
I am a Glasgow based SEO expert who has been doing SEO for 22 years.
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