Key Takeaways
It typically takes 3 to 6 months for SEO to work under perfect prerequisites.
Website authority, competition, and SEO strategy are the three biggest influences on SEO performance.
SEO is a long-term investment that needs continual nurturing, but is radically worthwhile when it succeeds.
‘Know your audience’ is a common phrase every marketer has heard when writing content. The truth is, it’s a priority in marketing, especially if you want web users to find your content relevant to their needs. But have you ever considered that one of those users is the search engine itself?
Appealing to the search engine is the first step to increasing organic traffic. If your SEO efforts are successful, you’ll likely achieve whatever business goal you intend to reach for your web traffic. But, how long does SEO take to do this?
The short, general answer is 3 to 6 months. It’s a long-term investment, but one that will make a profound impact on your business if done right. However, predicting how long it takes to see results is more complicated than you might think. The best answer is ‘it depends’, and factors like your website’s authority, competition, and so much more all play vital roles in the success of your SEO efforts.
This article will talk about what makes up the backbone of good SEO performance and how you can rank higher faster by implementing a few essential tricks.
Factors That SEO Results Depend On
Domain History
Naturally, Google’s algorithm will rank older domains above newer domains. Age is highly influential because a newer domain hasn’t had time to prove its website authority, making the first 12 months an experiment while Google figures out where it should be ranked.
An established website (older than 12 months) is more likely to have developed an authoritative history, acquired potential backlinks, have more content and pages, and rank for more keywords. However, this doesn’t work if an older domain has SEO mistakes or harmful backlinks. In this case, a newer domain has the potential to rank higher.
Competition
If you’re trying to rank over your competitors, then it's best to assume your competitors are trying to do the same thing. Likewise, if you’re writing web content for a keyword with high keyword difficulty, you’re competing against a higher volume of search results. Highly competitive industries might require more time and SEO strategy to rank higher sooner.
You can read more about how keyword difficulty and search volume influence SERPs below.
Strategy
SEO is not something you can work on and off. In fact, over time, that could do the complete opposite for your website authority. How you prioritise your SEO retainer and the tactics you or your SEO agency experts invest in will significantly impact how quickly your website ranks.
Zimple’s SEO experts tailor your SEO strategy to your brand and business objectives. You can find out more about our SEO processes here.
SEO Resources
Without good resources or tools to implement highly effective SEO strategies, how will you truly know that your SEO efforts are aligned with your industry?
An SEO Specialist, SEO agency, or even industry-standard SEO platforms (like Semrush or Ahrefs) can guide and inform the action plan needed for your website.
How To Rank Faster
Indexability
For a page to appear in the SERPs, Google must be able to crawl and index the content. This means that Google can store data of that web content and rank it accordingly.
Ensure you remove any noindex tags from all pages on your website that you want to rank in search engines.
Boost Internal Linking
Linking high-performing pages from the same domain can be highly beneficial for the website as a whole. Alternatively, if you have low-performing pages on your domain, prune the content to suit the needs of the industry using internal linking, improved content relevance, and stronger primary keywords.
Increase Credible External Linking
As an addition to your internal linking, using links to external sources that are considered highly credible and authoritative can improve the authority of your page significantly. Some examples of high authority links include government websites, industry leaders, major news outlets, and major social media platforms.
This also works vice versa: Google loves a high backlink profile. Credible sources that endorse your content show Google that it’s probably going to be relevant for similar audiences, therefore ranking that page higher in the SERPs.
Target Low-Competition Keywords
Keyword Difficulty is a common term you might see when conducting keyword research. It refers to the competitiveness of the primary keyword, depending on whether you research ‘terms match’ or ‘phrase match’. For instance, a competitive keyword will have more pages to rank, making it harder to rank on the first page of the SERPs.
When writing your web content for a primary keyword, use low-competition keywords to improve your chances of ranking higher and faster.
Target High Search Volume
The Search Volume is the other priority metric of keyword ranking, referring to the number of people who use said keyword in the search results. A high search volume means your audience is interested in this topic. When you pair this with low keyword difficulty, you are more likely to rank higher and faster.
Do You Need SEO Services?
SEO is a long-term investment, but one that makes a profound impact on your organic website traffic. Depending on your business goals, mastering your website’s SEO can improve your brand’s discoverability, conversions, and ultimately, sales.
If you’re looking to take a step in this direction, see how Zimple takes on clients for SEO services. Talk to us today about increasing your organic web traffic.
