How long does it take for SEO to deliver first results?

How long does it take to see the results of an SEO optimization?

I often hear this question from entrepreneurs and professionals who want to improve business visibility on the Internet.

It typically takes between three and six months to see the results of an SEO optimization on a website.

For a client this may seem like an excessive time frame, and consequently, an excessive cost.

But SEO is not advertising; you don’t just pay as you do with Google ADS to get the attention, and relative visibility, of Google.

If you want to get the first page on the world’s most popular search engine, you have to show it that you are among the best possible results for a given search query.

And as you can understand, this is by no means simple.

So many factors need to be considered.

If you want to get a better idea of how complex the task of optimizing a website can be, I recommend you take a look at Google’s introductory guide to SEO.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Table of Contents hide
Site seniority
Your target market
Resources to invest
SEO strategy
Consistency
Existing mistakes

Site seniority

A website with greater ‘seniority’ tends to have significant authority on the Internet.

The reasons?

More pages, more content and most importantly, more backlinks.

As is normal, a website that is born today will need major efforts and resources to get off the ground.

If yours is a new project, the effects of SEO optimization will take longer to show results.

Your target market

Whatever product or service you sell, there are many other companies that are your competitors, selling the same thing.

On the Internet it means that many of your competitors, are investing in SEO to optimize their business site.

If you want to rank for a very competitive keyword, it will take longer to rank on Google.

If you want to rank for the keyword ‘baby sweatshirts’ with your children’s clothing ecommerce, you will be up against dozens of other sites that have probably been online for quite a while and have been investing in SEO optimization for longer than you.

The greater the difficulty in ranking for a keyword, the more resources and time it will take to get it right.

Resources to invest

The more you invest in SEO, the faster the results will materialize.

Some examples.

• Hire copywriters, people who create quality content for your site.
• Invest in quality SEO tools, such as Ahrefs or SEMrush, to simplify your work and optimize your time.
• Invest in building relationships with other sites in your niche in order to create links, backlinks, to your site.

SEO Strategy.

To win a battle, you need a good strategy.

If you want to know if yours is good, I recommend reading this article of mine on how to evaluate the effectiveness of an SEO strategy.

If you are clear about how your target market is moving, you know which keywords are most cost-effective to invest in and how to organize your SEO optimization work.

If you know your niche, you are more likely to get quick results.

Imagine this scenario.

You want to position your website for several keywords, all very competitive.

It may take many months before you see results.

If, on the other hand, you focus your attention on keywords with less competition but still have good business value, you can generate traffic, increasing backlinks and site authority.

In the future, you can tackle keywords with more competition.

Consistency

There is no point in having a good strategy if it is not implemented consistently or worse, if it is abandoned when the first difficulties arise.

Another downside is deviating from the predetermined plan.

Have you studied an SEO strategy?

Give yourself time to check whether it is effective or not.

If it is effective improve it, otherwise cut the aspects that do not bring results.

But set definite time frames and only make improvements at the end of the predetermined period.

Existing mistakes

A separate discussion deserves the SEO intervention required to repair already existing damages such as.

• Broken links, 404 error.
• Slow and/or unreliable hosting.
• Google sanctions.
• Website structure.

Aside from the timing needed to fix the problem, there is always the timing with which Google visits our website to be taken into consideration.

In fact, Google does not index all the changes we make instantly but according to its precise and regular timelines.

It may take only a few weeks to see broken link problems resolved, but a few months for penalties to be resolved.