5 reasons why SEO strategies take time to give results

Most content marketers may believe that applying the right SEO tactics and strategies will lead to instant results and the highest of Google rankings. Of course, this belief would be wrong. As with most things in life, patience is a virtue and necessary when it comes to applying SEO to your website and seeing the results. Obviously, we want the fruits of our labour to provide as soon as possible, so why does it take so long?

SEO is vital to making sure your content gets the recognition it deserves. There’s no doubt that you’re curious where investing time and energy will lead. There are plenty of different ways to look at the relationship between time and SEO strategies, so we’re going to go over some of the reasons why it’ll take time to reach your desired results.

5 reasons why SEO strategies take time to offer results!

What is SEO?

If you’re working in content marketing, you should know a thing or two about SEO by now. You’ll need to master the SEO basics before you’re able to move on to more complicated SEO processes.  

For a quick rundown, SEO stands for search engine optimization and is the process of getting traffic to your website in an organic fashion. All major search engines rank content including blog posts, web pages and videos based on their relevance in relation to a specific topic. For a more detailed description of SEO specifics, you can read our article SEO in 2018.

As mentioned, there are plenty of variables that play into how well your SEO strategies work as well as how quickly you’ll see results. Some of these factors include baseline traffic, website design, and speed, geographical location, keyword ranking, meta descriptions, target market as well as your online competition. For most, results from your SEO will operate like a slow burn and grow over time. The traction your site will experience at 4 months will be different from 6 months, 12 months and so forth.

How to measure SEO success

Now, as a business owner, the SEO results you’re looking for will come down to the type of company you’re running. Are you working with local, national or global SEO? This will influence the type of SEO tactics you’ll employ as well as how quickly results will show. Obviously, if you’re in charge of a small, local business with only a few hundred pages, you should have different expectations from a global eCommerce company.

Another note is that if you’re starting a website from scratch, including a completely new domain and content, it’s going to take significantly more time to see concrete results. Typically, a new website requires at least 6 months before any visible results occur.

As you may have already guessed, there are plenty of ways to measure SEO success. Total traffic is an important factor as well as visits that find their way to your site from other links and pages. However, analyzing engaging content on important pages is one of the best ways to measure SEO result success. Naturally, the other is website conversions. An increase in traffic is only really important when this traffic results in a higher conversion rate.

As a business owner, your main concern should be having customers both returning and prospective completing the actions you’re hoping for, whether that means purchasing something, filling out forms, signing up for newsletters and so forth. If your website is well designed, and you're offering engaging or useful information, products or services, then naturally good SEO will mean more traffic as well as more conversions.

Now that we know a little bit more about SEO and how to measure success, let's go over 5 specific reasons why SEO will take time to offer results! 

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Factors that most affect SEO

1- Website upgrade

If you’re updating or upgrading your website in any way, these technical changes could have a huge impact on your SEO results and how long it takes for them to have an effect. This includes changes to your website platform, web page redesigns, domain moves, CMS updates and so forth. Both front and backend technical changes can definitely mean that things in the SEO department can be a bit slower as this can affect the visibility of your site.

2- Budget

The amount of money you have set aside to spend on SEO strategies will affect how quickly results begin to take effect. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the more money you have to invest in this venture, the faster you’ll see concrete results.

3- Competition

If you’re working within a busy market where there is plenty of competition, chances are your SEO strategies will need to be much more specialized in order for you to see results. Take stock of how competitive the queries you’re trying to rank for are. If the area you’re working within is dominated by a large number of well-established sites, then you might need to consider some ways to stand out.

4- Development

As we mentioned, if you’re building a completely new website, it’s going to take much more time for SEO results to set in than for an actively-established website. How much work still needs to be done so that your website is operating at its full technical ability? If there is still plenty of set-up work to be done or your site is completely brand new, expect some time before it gains momentum.

5- Design

Now above all, a user-friendly experience will have a great impact on the traffic, bounce and conversion rates of your website. A poorly designed site isn’t going to get much attention, no matter how well implemented your SEO tactics are.

Again, although these are the top 5 things to be conscious of when working with SEO strategies or strategists, there are so many factors that play into how your site ranks on search engines. Bear in mind that every single website on the internet is completely different from the next, and thus a strategy that works with one may not be right for another.