That’s a question that we often hear. There is no general answer to this question. It depends on many different factors. This article helps you to get a realistic timeline for your SEO goals.
What’s the current state of your website?
The time that it takes to get results depends on the current state of your website. Has your website been penalized by Google? Has your website been optimized before? Have you used spammy SEO methods in the past?
Fixing problems is as important as improving your content. Before you do anything else, fix the problems on your web pages.This will take some time but it is absolutely necessary if you want to improve your rankings. The website audit tool in SEOprofiler helps you to locate problems on your site.
It’s not Karma, it’s the way SEO works
The things that you do today will influence your rankings tomorrow. If you used spammy SEO methods in the past, it’s very likely that your web pages will be penalized today. If you used white-hat SEO methods, it is likely that your website will have better rankings today.
Only use white-hat methods to promote your web pages. SEO is a continuous process.
Be patient, do the right things and you will get sustainable high rankings. It takes some time to get these rankings but the results are worth the time and effort.
So how long will it take to get high rankings?
- If your website is brand new, or if your website
has many issues, it can take up to 12 months until you see sustainable
results. Tactics that can help you to get short term results can have a
negative effect on your rankings in the long term.
- To get a better idea of the time that it takes to
get high rankings, segment your goals into actions. For example: Fixing
errors on your web page (2-4 weeks), revamping website content (4-6
weeks), link building (4 weeks), etc.
- Don’t just focus on rankings. High rankings for a
particular keyword aren’t necessarily what you want to achieve. Better
focus on the overall number of visitors that you get from search
engines, the number of sales that you get through search engine
visitors, etc.
- Start with small, achievable goals. Try to get high
rankings for very targeted keywords first. In general, it is much
better to have high rankings for “where to buy high quality hiking
shoes” than for “shoes”.
By focusing on small, achievable goals, you can steadily create something great while making one step at a time.
Search engine optimization takes some time if you want to get sustainable results. If you continually work on your web pages, you will get high rankings that last.
Fixing critical errors on your website will often have an immediate effect on your rankings, i.e. it can happen that your rankings improve dramatically after fixing technical errors, remove bad links, etc.
What you should take from this article is that before beginning any SEO efforts, you should take time to assess the situation, plan both short- and long term-strategies, approach SEO as an ongoing process, and communicate realistic goals and timelines for improvement to the larger team and executives.
The tools in SEOprofiler help you to work as efficiently as possible with your website. If you haven’t done it yet, try SEOprofiler now:
