How long does SEO take?

One of the most frequently asked questions we get asked as a business is ‘how long does SEO take?’

Usually, this is a question proposed by potential new clients wanting to know how long it will be until they see results. Looking into the answer to this question, Google suggests approximately 4-6 months. However, this is a generalised answer and does not take into consideration your current situation. For some companies, it may take between the advised times but for others, it could take longer.

There are many factors which need to be considered and therefore it is a much more complicated process than people make it out to be. It isn’t a ‘do once kind of thing’ and it’s done. It requires you to be able to continually work on the optimisation of your website because like everything in the technological world we live in, things are changing daily.

The Google search engine is constantly working to make improvements to the way the information is gathered and the SERP results delivered back to users. This means as an SEO company we are constantly following the guidelines being set out by search engines like Google and ensuring our client’s websites are following these requirements and more.

The result from working consistently on a websites search engine is optimisation in continued growth.

Defining organic results

An improvement in organic results can look different between an agency such as Chameleon and a business. To an SEO agency, an increase in rankings could be an indicator of success. On the other hand, to a business, results might mean receiving conversations from their organic traffic. Due to this, it is imperative to understand that SEO is a process and therefore until your website appears within the top half of page one within the Google’s search results, it’s not likely to drive the results business owners require. However, every step taken to achieve these results is positive progress.

How long will SEO take for your website?

There are many elements you need to consider in order to get your website ranking in search engine results and therefore to determine how long it will take for SEO to take effect, you will need to know where you are currently. Some general questions which you may ask yourself are, what keywords do you rank for and what position do you rank currently? As well as knowing where you are now, you may also want to consider where you want to be and the budget you are willing to put into search engine optimisation to achieve online success.

To further complicate things, it is a moving target. By this we mean, there are frequent SERP algorithm changes which have an effect on your rankings, competitors SEO campaigns and other variables which all contribute towards your end goal. All of these have to be taken into consideration when estimating how long SEO will take for your website.

To summarise, in selected cases we have found SEO to start working virtually instantly. However, for the majority, it can be months, even years to reach your goal depending on the keywords you are targeting.

Our SEO consultants are happy to have a chat regarding your current organic ranking positions, where you want to be and the required budget involved to achieve success.

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