How Long Does SEO Take and Can You Speed It Up?

If you’re considering investing in it, you’ll want to know how long SEO takes to pay off. It usually takes at least 6 months to see meaningful results, but there are things you can do to speed up the process. Here’s what we recommend to set your website up for success.

How Long Does SEO Take To Work?

SEO can start benefiting your site right away, but you’ll likely need to put in a few months of consistent effort before you start noticing significant changes. We recommend waiting at least three months to see how a piece of content will perform, and six months before making any major adjustments to your strategy. 

When you think of SEO, you probably start by thinking about keywords and backlinks. Those are both important factors in your website’s performance, but they are far from the only thing that can impact your website and how long your SEO takes to work.

Previous Ranking Pages

If your website has been around for a while and already ranks for a few keywords, you’re in a great place to continue that success! Because of the existing ranking pages, search engines already see your website as a trustworthy and helpful resource for searchers. As you add content and expand your website, this previous success can give your new pages a leg up.

Competitiveness

If you are operating in a tiny niche with few competitors, you will likely see results sooner than a big fish in a bigger pond. The amount of time needed to make real progress will be influenced by what other people in your industry are doing with their own strategies.We recommend starting with low-competition keywords to help speed up your results.

Content Posting Frequency

The more frequently you post, the better your chances are of gaining new rankings. While there’s no benefit to going overboard – search engines might get suspicious if you suddenly go from one post a month to 18 posts a day – posting a few blogs a week can help you rank faster than a few blogs a month.

Off-Page SEO

The work you do on your own website, also called on-page SEO, is essential in helping you to rank quickly. However, don’t ignore the power of off-page SEO (aka. link building). One of the factors that search engines use to evaluate a website’s authority is how many backlinks it has. Once you have some valuable, authoritative content on your website, link building services are a great way to quickly build credibility with search engines. 

How To Speed Up SEO Results

Wherever you are in your SEO journey, there are things you can do to reduce how long SEO takes. From strategies to partnerships, here are some of our top tips to start seeing your pages rank faster.

Become or Work With Experts

If you’re new to the SEO landscape, it can take up to a year to really learn SEO. This can play a big role in how long it takes for SEO to pay off on your website. If you have the time to study SEO, this is time well spent, but if you want to get things moving quickly, it may be worthwhile to partner with people who are already SEO experts.

Post Blogs Regularly

Posting blogs regularly provides two main benefits: first, you’re building up a regular cadence that can improve your trustworthiness, and second, you’re putting out more individual pieces of content that each have a good chance of ranking. Ideally, we recommend posting a few times each week to build a natural, reliable cadence.

Additional Strategies To Speed Up SEO

On top of the techniques above that you can use to speed up SEO results, you can also implement strategies that will help each post reach its maximum potential. Here’s what we recommend:

On-Page SEO

To make each post as effective as possible, you’ll want to implement on-page SEO strategies like title and header tags, meta descriptions, and internal links. These strategies make it easier for search engine crawlers to understand what you’re writing about and how you can help searchers.

User Experience

Your bounce rate has a huge impact on your SEO results. One of the best ways to reduce your bounce rate is to build an excellent user experience on every page. This can include aesthetically pleasing visuals, clearly labeled buttons, fast load speed, short paragraphs, and responsiveness to different types of screens.

Content Quality

No matter how good you are at appealing to search engine crawlers, if your content isn’t high-quality and relevant for searchers, any ranking you achieve will disappear quickly. Some ways to achieve high content quality include attention-grabbing introductions, engaging humor, and anecdotes people can relate to.

Social Media and SEO Integration

There are a few ways that social media can integrate with your SEO strategy. Here are some of the best ways to leverage social media:

• Citations: These are mentions of your business or website on other websites, including social media, that may or may not include a link directly to your business. This is a strategy that is especially important for local SEO but can have a positive impact on any business’s search engine rankings.

• Traffic: By sharing your new content on social media, you can drive high-quality traffic to those pages. If your social media followers like the content, them taking the time to read the post can help show search engines that your post is helpful and interesting.

• Data: When you engage with users, you can gather valuable social media data about what people are looking for and who your target audience is. You can also learn from what other businesses in your industry or area are doing.

The Best Way To Reduce How Long SEO Takes to Work

Using these strategies is a great way to speed up SEO results, but the best way will be to work with the experts. SEO can take six months to take effect, but with the right support, you may see results even sooner. At BKA Content, we’re passionate about building a holistic SEO strategy that can help your business grow. You can see the results for yourself when you get started today!