How long does SEO take to work?

How long does SEO take to work? It can take a few months to see results from search engine optimization.

How long before you’ll see results from your seo strategy? You can improve your search ranking through search engine optimization and start seeing results within a few months.

Being outranked by competitors on local keywords can be a killer for small businesses. If your website doesn’t show up when customers search for topics relating to your business in Google, you might have missed your one and only opportunity to get their attention before they spend their money elsewhere.

If you want people to find your business, search is the name of the game. An astounding 72 per cent of consumers visit a store within eight kilometres after performing a local search.

Optimizing your website to ensure that your content appears in searches is one of the most important things you can do to drive meaningful traffic to your website.

You can improve your search ranking through search engine optimization (SEO) and, all things considered, it really doesn’t take too much time to see results.

So how long does it take for SEO to work? Generally, you can see a tremendous lift in your local search results for top keywords in one to four months but it takes anywhere from one to three months to plan and execute your strategy first.

Here’s what you need to do:


1. Analyze your website’s traffic

Are customers finding your website? If so, are they arriving via Google search, social media or direct links? The first step to any successful SEO campaign is setting up analytics and monitoring traffic to your website.

Once you have collected and analyzed some data, you’ll get a sense of your website’s strengths and weaknesses. You might discover that your blog post about your recent summer sale is driving more traffic to your website via Google search than your homepage or that your About Us page isn’t being found in search at all.

Understanding your current traffic is an important first step to increasing it.


2. Figure out how local customers are finding businesses like yours

Now that you know where you stand, you need to check out the competitors and do some keyword research. How are businesses like yours attracting customers via search?

You might discover that many other businesses are competing for a few top keywords but aren’t ranking at all for other less popular searches.

It will take time to work your way up the rank in the middle of a battleground but low-competition keywords can be an easy way to see quick results.


3. Implement keywords across your website

Now that you know the keywords you’d like to use on your website, you now need to implement those terms across your website. In some cases, your content will need to be re-written, in other cases simply edited. You’ll also need to start producing content (like blog posts) that allows you to use keywords on a regular basis.

Blog posts are important for two reasons:

1. Google prioritizes websites that are updated frequently and offer high-quality, in-depth info.

2. The more content you have that uses top keywords, the more chances you have to appear in people’s Google searches.


4. increase backlinks and complete directory listings

While keyword usage on your website is obviously a huge part of what helps determine your overall rank, there are a number of other things you should also do to prove to Google’s algorithms that your business is better than the one across the street:

  • Claim and complete your Google My Business Profile: if you are offering services or selling products to a local audience, your listing couldn’t be more important. It helps ensure that your page appears in local queries specific to your products or services.

  • Generate more backlinks: when high-quality websites link to your website and content, they’re basically vouching for you. This vote of confidence goes a long way in helping Google prioritize your website over others.


5. Give your website a tune-up

To give your website the best possible chance at crushing competitors in search, you’ll need to fix all those little technical issues you’ve been ignoring.

Do you have any crawl errors? Is your website mobile-friendly? How quickly does your website load?

Addressing all of your lingering technical issues makes Google prioritize your website over other similar websites offering similar content.


Conclusion

Whether you run an NEMT company or a dental clinic, optimizing your website for search is a process that involves an analysis of the situation, development and implementation of an SEO strategy and a waiting period to see results.

In the age of texting and drive-thru banking, two to seven months probably seems like a long time to wait for results. The good news is that the long wait could benefit your business for years to come.

While you could pay thousands of dollars to market your business to a new audience who may or may not be interested in what you have to offer or put up a sign in your store window hoping a random person in your target audience happens to see it, search traffic is a way to guarantee that your website will be found by people who want to find it.

If you need a little help boosting your rank in Google, get in touch with us. We can set up tracking on your website and put together an effective search engine optimization plan that is right for your business and budget.