One of the many questions that SEO companies will often hear from their clients when discussing the work involved, packages, etc. is “how long does it take for SEO to work?”
There is nothing wrong with the question though. It’s a valid one as it’s understandable for them to want even a little assurance that they are choosing and focusing on the best marketing strategy out of all the others. After all, it’s not a small investment to make. While some providers of SEO services are a bit hesitant in answering it in fear that it would only turn any prospective client away, many understand that being truthful with the latter is the key to earning their trust in this business.
Want to know the answer to this question? Well, you should continue reading this article and find out for yourself.
Search Engine Optimization – How Long Does It Take For It To Work?
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Search engine optimization, or simply known as SEO, is the practice of improving the quality and quantity of traffic coming from search engines to websites or web pages. It involves an SEO agency in Singapore or elsewhere working on increasing the exposure your brand gets from organic or non-paid search engine results. In simpler terms, the better visibility your website or pages are having in search results for relevant searches, the more likely your brand is getting the attention from existing and potential customers.
Every year, people perform billions of searches to find valuable information on products and services. From the best restaurants worth visiting the most affordable appliances worth buying, billions of searches are made. Hence, this makes search the main source of traffic for brands online and it matches well with various other marketing channels. The greater visibility and higher ranking your website and/or brand receive online, the higher the chances are for your business to be a success.
How Long does it Take for SEO to work?
Living in a society where we like instant gratification, we don’t like it when it takes too long for someone to reply to our text or email messages. We don’t like it when we have to wait long before our food is served in the restaurant or something else. The same thing can be said with SEO campaigns. Businesses know that it’s worth it to invest in search engine optimizations right now and they want results right now too. However, it’s important to note that it can take a while for your campaign to produce results.
It normally takes 4 to 6 months.
You probably thought that you’d see quite a jump to your search rankings on the very day or week that your SEO services providers started the SEO campaign. But this is not the case because it’s possible that you’ll not see customers going to your physical or online store and not see an increase in sales or revenue. Before you can finally start seeing results, it can take around 4 to 6 months. SEO is a long-term marketing tactic and it’s possible to see results sooner than 6 months, but it can also take longer like a year for things to pick up. Don’t get frustrated though because it’s alright.
You see, it’s not good to focus on speed alone as it could only end up hurting your website’s ranking and reputation online in the long run. When a lower or zero-ranking website suddenly gets a boost in its ranking, Google has the tendency to become suspicious. It assumes that the sudden increase in ranking is due to black hat tactics implemented on the site.
These methods do not meet the guidelines set by Google’s Webmaster and any website found to be using it after a manual review can face penalties. These penalties range from your website receiving a downgrade in rankings to being delisted in the search engine. So even though it takes around that many months to see results, it’s much better than your website facing penalties due to suspicious ranking increases.
It is highly recommended to perform SEO for at least 6 months for a long-term effect.
The search engine giant’s goal is to provide people with the most relevant answers to their questions. Hence, they only display websites that deliver useful information for a search term. The quality of your content plays a role in how long SEO takes. Today, the length of your content doesn’t matter as long as it provides valuable answers to solve a visitor’s problem. Long-form content does have a tendency to earn more links in comparison to short and low-quality content.
In addition, Google will need time to establish things such as your loading speed, the number of backlinks on your page, the search intent and relevance of your pages to the searches made by users, and many more. The search engine needs to first crawl your pages and index your content before your website can rank.
The initial 6 months of doing SEO for a website will help in stabilizing the incoming site visitors and the additional on-page SEO strategies will aid in pushing relevant search terms higher in the SERPs. Site audits can provide valuable information on which areas of concern. Does the website need a major update? Are there any pages left to be optimized? Is there a need to upgrade its backlinking process?
It is also possible that business competitiveness can affect how long it takes to get results.
If you’re investing in SEO, then it means that your competitors are investing in SEO as well. One of the major concerns of most business owners is that the highly competitive the industry is, the harder and longer it takes to climb to the top of the search results. For example, 11% of global exports in Singapore come from electronics and IT services. Oil and gas generate $60 billion dollars for the Singapore economy and is dominated by large multi-national corporations, though some local mid-market firms are able to penetrate the market. The business competitiveness in these industries may make it hard for small and medium enterprises to garner customers. But if you’re working with an experienced SEO agency in Singapore or elsewhere, it is possible to compete with these other major players.
In conclusion, SEO takes that long to work because it’s a long-term marketing tactic. It’s not something that can be done overnight and there’s a whole process that your SEO services providers need to make to ensure it will work. Not all the sites are the same and it will take time to research the market industry and this includes your competitors. But if SEO is done correctly and efficiently, all of your efforts will surely pay off as you enjoy high rankings in the long run.
