Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most popular marketing strategies, but it can take time to see results. It may take weeks, or even months, depending on when you start, the competitiveness of your industry, how much you invest, and a few other factors, before you start climbing rankings and earning more organic traffic to your site. It can even take years in some cases.
How Long Can You Wait For An SEO Strategy To Be Created?
For a company that is eager to grow or that is having trouble making money at the moment, can you really afford to wait months for this strategy to be developed and implemented?
Why Search Engine Optimization Takes So Long
It’s important to understand why SEO takes so long before we can evaluate the costs and benefits of waiting.
Your search engine ranking improves as a result of SEO, but it takes time.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is all about improving your rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs) for terms related to your brand and business, in case you’re not familiar. If you work at it, you’ll optimise your website for specific keywords, write excellent content, build a better reputation, and eventually gain the domain-level “authority” necessary to rank higher.
Many factors contribute to the length of this process.
It takes a lot of effort to move the authority pendulum in the right direction. What would you do if a stranger gave you some advice that turned out to be helpful? It’s highly unlikely. A strong sense of trust in their judgement might develop if you received 10 or 15 pieces of good advice and none of the bad. When Google evaluates a website, it follows a similar process. In most cases, a single good article isn’t enough to establish yourself as an authority on a subject.
Too much speed can be dangerous. Imagine that it takes 50 good articles before SEO momentum begins to build (though keep in mind, there are more than 200 ranking factors, extending beyond your content). If you’re going to publish 50 articles in the first week, why not just stop? While there aren’t any explicit penalties for publishing too much content on your own site, Google is wary of spammers and those who try to manipulate search engine results pages. Trying to achieve too much, too quickly, will only backfire on you.
There is competition. Also, the competition in your industry is likely to be thriving at this point.. For those entering an existing industry, there are likely dozens, if not hundreds of competitors who will be looking to take your market share.
The Timing Conundrum and Return on Investment (ROI)
There are no shortcuts when it comes to search engine optimization, which can be intimidating to those who are just starting out. Then why bother with SEO?
A long-term investment in a brand can yield a remarkable return on investment (ROI), at least for most brands. While you will need to update your content periodically, most of the SEO assets and changes you make will be permanent. For example, the backlinks you build will remain up indefinitely.
Amounts accrued over time can be compounded. The vast majority of search engine traffic comes from the top 3 rankings of a SERP, so going from rank 6 to rank 3 is huge, and going from rank 3 to rank 1 is even bigger. Plus, as you move up the SERP rankings, your organic traffic is likely to increase.
As a result of these combined effects, this strategy outperforms almost every other marketing strategy in terms of ROI.
In order to make up for the slow start,
Unfortunately, despite the attractive ROI, the “slow start” problem still persists. While SEO can be expensive, there are ways to compensate for the ramp-up period.
PPC (pay-per-click) advertisements. Due to the fact that you only pay when people click on your PPC ads and visit your site, PPC ads can generate instant traffic. A search engine-friendly landing page is also a good practise for creating and improving landing pages.
Search engine optimization work performed in-house and on a recurring basis. An SEO veteran isn’t absolutely necessary.
Conclusion
Understanding and utilising SEO correctly can be extremely beneficial for a company’s online presence and brand recognition. In just a few months, you could be benefiting from an impressive stream of organic traffic generated by your efforts.
