Unfortunately, the harsh reality is that the time it takes to get SEO results seems to be getting longer and longer.
It used to be the case about a decade ago that you could achieve a decent SERP ranking for a specific page or website within a month or less.
However, a study by Ahrefs, showed that only 5.7% of the pages ranked within the top 10 results of Google SERPs for at least 1 keyword within the span of 1 year.
That means that the vast majority (nearly 95%) of all pages take more than a year to reach the top 10, assuming they ever succeed.
Fine, not all pages are published with the purpose of ranking high in SERPs. But, even taking that into account, the numbers make for depressing reading.
Why? Well, the most obvious reason is that the internet is getting more and more competitive all the time. As access to the internet and self-publishing tools grow, so do the number of websites and the amount of content that’s out there.
Currently, there are nearly 1.18 billion websites in the world with roughly 252,000 new websites created every day. That’s 10,500 every hour, 175 every minute, and 3 every single second.
While the total number is declining from an all-time high of 1.8 billion in 2017, the number of active websites is still growing. Roughly 17%, or 200 million, of all websites today, are active; up from 900 million total websites and 170 million active websites in 2016.
The sheer numbers alone mean that there is a tone of competition, regardless of your niche, business type, or location. Of course, that means it’s harder to stand out from the crowd and to ensure that your pages are crawled, indexed, and ranked highly by the Google search engine.
How Long Will It Take You To Get SEO Results?
If we wanted to take the easy way out, we’d say: it depends. And just leave it at that.
However, we’ll give you a bit more to go on than that.
First of all, let’s look at the factors that will affect how long it takes you to get SEO results:
- Niche: Every industry, business type, or niche is different. Some industries are inherently more competitive than others. The more competitors you have and the more they invest in SEO, the harder it is going to be to compete. Currently, fitness and health, real estate, and financial services are some of the most competitive. However, it also depends on the business type. For example, in drop-shipping, the most competitive niche industries might be different than service providers.
- Your resources: SEO is important, but it’s not all that matters to your business. The capabilities of a solo entrepreneur are very different from a seasoned team of SEO experts and content writers. The more time and resources you have to spend on SEO, the better. However, if you’re an individual with the spare cash to invest in hiring freelance SEO assistants and writers, you could get results much faster.
- Competition vs search volume: Remember that if your goal is to reach a certain amount of organic traffic, it will naturally take longer if the search volume for your niche is lower. So, even if you choose a low-competition niche and dominate it, it might take you longer to see the same kinds of numbers as leaders in other popular niches.
Even taking all of this into account, there’s really no telling how long it will take you based on your unique circumstances.
In the Wild West of the internet, there is also a certain amount of luck involved. If you manage to get a few shares from some influencers and industry authorities early on, it could drastically accelerate your timeline.
That being said, it’s reasonable to expect to see significant results after about a year of starting your SEO campaigns. And, to keep monitoring your change in monthly organic visits year-on-year.
In the short term, you can test results from weeks or months against each other to alter your strategy or tactics. This is especially true if you’ve been going for a while.
However, if you’re just starting out, 6 months or a year is a decent timeline to start expecting results.
How to Get SEO Results Faster?
Although it’s impossible to say how long it will take you to get SEO results, the good news is that there are things you can do to cut down the time it takes to see results:
- Consistency is key: The most important thing when engaging in SEO is to shift your mindset from quick wins to long-term success. Google loves consistency, so make sure that you have the momentum to keep posting, running outreach campaigns, and engaging social channels throughout your push to the top 10 in Google SERPs.
- Execute your strategy: The best way to be consistent is to have a solid playbook and follow it through. Not only will a strategy help keep you on track, but it will give you a testable way to measure your progress and make changes if needed. It will also help ensure you get the most value out of your content and don’t miss any steps.
- Balance targeted keywords: If you want to see fast results, low-competition keywords tend to perform better. Low competition keywords tend to mean fewer competitors and a lower barrier to entry. High competition keywords will take longer to see results with but may pay off, in the long run, thanks to higher demand and a bigger overall market. However, new websites without the base traffic and DA to back it up, are unlikely to rank highly for very competitive keywords.
- Don’t neglect long-tail keywords: Long-tail keywords can really be your friend here as you can find intent-rich keywords that haven’t been overexploited but are still close enough to competitive short-tail keywords to leech of its traffic.
- Develop content in clusters: Using “clusters” is one way you can hack low-competition keywords to get more value and traffic out of them. You do this by developing groups of related content that can be published to build on each other and direct traffic between themselves. For example, you can develop a range of articles based on dog leashes, from different types of leashes to leash training techniques to the best leash products.
Bonus Tip to Get SEO Results Fast: Build Backlinks!
One of the key reasons new websites are unable to compete for high-value keywords is that they lack domain authority.
While DA is based on a number of factors, the most important is the number of high-quality backlinks to your website pages.
In fact, your link profile is the second most important factor Google takes into account when ranking your pages.
To build your DA, you need both a high number of backlinks as well as backlinks that are considered valuable by Google. This means they come from domains that already have a high DA score.
However, link building can be a challenging and time-consuming process, especially to take on your own. In fact, up to 94% of all content doesn’t have any backlinks.
In most cases, it’s more efficient and cost-effective to enlist a professional link-building service like Uprankly. With Expertise in building backlinks, they can guarantee to score a certain number of backlinks to your content from sites within a suitable DA range.
Conclusion
Like almost everything in life, the best things are the ones that are worth fighting for.
By viewing SEO as a marathon and not a sprint, you’ll stand the best chance of setting yourself up for long-term, sustainable success. At the same time, there are many actionable steps you can take to make sure you see results as fast as possible.
In the end, the only thing that guarantees success is being determined and consistent in your approach.
