For any business trying SEO services for the first time, it’s natural to want to know how long before SEO starts working. Naturally, you want to see results as soon as possible, but when is that? Do you have to wait for a few days, weeks, months, or years?
Alas, there is no straightforward answer to this. Too many variables come into play. That said, understanding what you can expect from SEO and when you can start seeing them is still important. More importantly, you should know what to look for to ensure that the strategies you’re doing are working.
In this post, The SEO Room, a local SEO expert in Perth, shares the answers to some of the questions you might have about SEO:
What’s Included in SEO?
SEO is actually a mix of different practices and factors that all work together to deliver the results you want for your business. The factors that come into play include:
Quality of Content
The algorithms used by Google and other search engines can tell high-quality content from bad. If your content has poor grammar, lots of misspelled words, incorrect punctuation, and overall poor content, you can bet that will negatively impact your SEO score. Also, content includes images and videos, so those should be high-quality, too.
Page Reliability
This refers to how much trust and authority your page has. Is your website relevant enough? It has to be if you want to get positive results. You can tell your site is considered an authority if other sites from the industry link to your pages.
Page Load Speed
Every page in your website needs to load at an average of 1.28 seconds. Anything slower than that can pull down your SEO scores.
Safe Browsing
Your website doesn’t only need quality content. It also has to be safe for all its visitors. You don’t want any history of hacks or viruses affecting your SEO Scores.
When Can You Expect to See Results from Your SEO Strategies?
Now that you know about the factors that could affect SEO, when should you start expecting results from your efforts? The short answer is anywhere between four and twelve months. That said, be reminded that all the factors discussed above come into play. It’s possible to see results within four to six months if you’re targeting low-competition keywords, too. for high-competition keywords, it could take up to four years to get good rankings. Still, you should know that SEO is a continuous process that evolves nonstop as it needs to adapt to the changes in Google’s algorithms, too.
How Do You Know If Your Strategies Are Working?
There are tools available that can help you track your rankings and give you insight into which elements you still need to improve. These include:
- Keyword research tools
- SEO plugins
- On-page SEO tools
- SEO software platforms
- Technical SEO tools
You also need to watch these metrics to understand your SEO performance better:
- Impressions or the number of times your user has “seen” your ads or content
- Clicks or how many times users click on your links, content, or ads
- Organic traffic or traffic that reaches your website through search engines after making a search query
- Number of pages that rank high on SERPs
- Number of backlinks from other sources
- Domain authority or how relevant your website is for certain subject areas
- Page authority or how relevant your web pages are for particular subject areas
- Mentions or how many times other sources mention your company directly
- Conversions or how many times visitors take action on your site, whether to click on a link, fill out a form, make a purchase, or others.
Keeping track of these metrics can determine which areas you still need to improve on and which strategies are working for you.
Conclusion
SEO is complex. That’s why no local SEO expert can tell you exactly when you’ll start to see improvements in your website’s performance. But by knowing how it works, what factors come into play, and what metrics to watch, you can see for yourself when your strategies are starting to take effect. SEO requires patience because its results are not instant, but when it does deliver, you’ll know all the wait and the effort you put into it are all worth it.
When you’re ready to work with a trusted SEO expert in Perth to improve your business website’s performance, The SEO Room is here for you. Contact us today and book a consultation with our experts!
