Why Does SEO Take So Long?

Do you own a website? If you do, you may be disheartened by the fact that you are not getting as much traffic as you had hoped. Though this is not a cause for panic, you may want to consider hiring an SEO agency.

What is an SEO? How long does it take? And why does SEO take so long? Continue reading to find out the answers to these important questions. 

What is SEO?

SEO is an acronym that stands for “search engine optimization.” SEO is a process in which a website owner or SEO company will attempt to improve the site’s traffic from search engines. SEO refers to this process, but the acronym often applies to the person or agency performing optimization. When SEO efforts are completed, a website will be enhanced to get more people clicking on their websites and appearing higher on search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing. 

Top or high results on a search engine are more likely to be clicked on. A higher SEO ranking for your pages will almost always lead to the websites making more money or generating more leads. A good SEO strategy and reliable SEO services help websites to achieve this by taking into consideration the algorithms that a search engine uses and the keywords or phrases used on a search engine. 

Why does SEO take so long?

Search engine optimization can take a long time for several reasons. Firstly, many different considerations need to be made when working out how to improve a website’s visibility. These include keywords and a website’s competition. For example, a website may have a rival that will write about similar content.

The competitive dynamic is a factor that can complicate and lengthen the SEO process. Ranking well in search results is far more like playing chess against several opponents simultaneously than solving a puzzle. Your competitors for higher rankings are taking steps to improve their rankings too. 

Next, this process can be slow because SEO implementations might not be immediately recognized and registered by a search engine. Since it can take months for search engines to identify site changes, the optimization won’t positively impact rankings until Google has reevaluated the site.

Why do keywords affect the speed of SEO?

As mentioned, keywords can impact how fast an SEO campaign yields results. When performing SEO, the selected keywords are an essential factor.

Keywords are the phrases that make it easy for your website to appear on a search engine. Your website will appear on a search engine if the terms searched are present in the title of an article or the article itself. 

Specific keywords will be more popular than others. Meaning they will be used more as a search term.

If a keyword is popular, the competing websites with relevant content will get varying traffic from the keyword. It all depends on hundreds of factors that factor into SEO.

Why does competition affect the speed of SEO?

Nowadays, there are billions of websites. Many (millions) websites will overlap in terms of their content. Because of the sheer quantity of websites, there will be a lot of competition. 

If your website is not very niche regarding its content and has a lot of competitors, it will take much longer to perform SEO. The reason for this is that it will mean an analyst needs to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the competition.

For a website to improve its rankings, an analyst must figure out why the site’s competitors are performing better. If a website has numerous rivals, this will inevitably take a very long time. The broader your content, the more likely you are to have competition. 

If you have recently started your website, you shouldn’t panic. After all, it is natural to have competition. There are simply a lot of websites out there that are also competing for the same keywords. As long as your website has a unique selling point, it will likely find a market in which it can succeed. 

How long will SEO take?

As mentioned, SEO can be a slow process. However, it is worth the wait. In fact, when you see fast SEO gains, that doesn’t mean the optimization was high quality or effective. Quick ranking gains often lead to rapid decreases in ranking down the road.

Sustainable ranking gains come from doing the right things over time and building a more reputable site in the eyes of a search engine. Like any reputation improvement, that takes time. 

There is no exact length of time that search engine optimization will take. There are countless factors at play, and they vary for every site and even by keyword. These factors include the competition a website is facing and the keyword difficulty.

Another variable is the amount of content a website has. More content (strategically created) can give Google a larger body of work to consider when evaluating your site’s authority. Sites that regularly produce new content will tend to outperform other sites.

Sites producing more content also see gains more quickly because Google will take notice of the site improvements more quickly.

Furthermore, it can also be impacted by the age of the domain, whether it is old or new. 

Roughly, an SEO campaign will take between 4 and 12 months to produce solid results. Some people will be shocked by this.

It is worth getting an SEO if you are worried about your website’s performance. In truth, SEO is work performed in light of an extraordinarily complicated algorithm in the face of many competitive sites actively trying to rank higher too.

SEO is perhaps the most complicated yet essential marketing strategy you can use to grow your business. Unlike social media, every person uses search engines, and it almost always leads to long-term success once you start seeing results.

Just remember, there will be winners and losers for every search term, and winning takes a lot of time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I do my own SEO?

Technically yes, you can carry out your own SEO. However, you should remember that this will be a complicated task.

SEO success takes a lot of research and technical expertise to optimize your website’s search engine traffic. You’ll also need to be an expert at link building so that you can secure links from other websites to your site. All this work will a fair amount of person-hours even if you know what you’re doing. 

This is why most website owners will hire an agency to carry out their SEO. 

However, an advantage of conducting your own SEO is that you will not have to spend money to hire someone. But in our experience, putting the digital marketers who work for an agency on your SEO campaign, is money well spent!  

How is SEO done?

An SEO will make your website more visible and popular through several methods. This can include:

• Finding areas to create more content, strategically defined and expertly written. Increased content will tend to improve your website’s traffic.
• Creating internal hyperlinks. These internal hyperlinks will create connections between relevant pages on the same website. This will keep users on your website and help Google understand how your site is organized. 
• Improving the website’s design to be more user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing.
• Generating awareness of the brand behind a website and the content on the site. Doing so will lead to more brand mentions by and on other sites and hyperlinks back to the site being optimized. This further boosts visibility, increases the frequency of the search engines crawling the site, and adds to the site’s reputation.

Conclusion – Why Does SEO Take So Long?

Even though SEO takes time and can be a slow process, it is crucial to many websites’ success. In the long run, when you’re reaping the benefits from pages ranked on page one, you’ll be glad you stayed the course.