How Long Does SEO Take?

SEO is hard. Whaa, whaa, right? I can almost hear you saying it now. “Everyone’s job is hard.” Well I’m not sure if I agree with that. The guy who works at the movie theater looks like he has a pretty easy job to me. I mean he looks hungover half the time. But that is neither here nor there.

What I’m here to address today is a common theme in SEO, that being, the length of time it takes to rank for certain keywords. I’m bringing up this issue because there is a common misconception that SEO can happen overnight when in fact it definitely cannot.

First Month
During the first month period of any SEO campaign you’re going to want to determine your keywords, build or rebuild your sites keyword structure, and add keywords to those corresponding sections. The goal here is to create a keyword funnel with support long and short-tail keywords based on what you are already ranking for and deem important to conversions. You’ll also want to start developing your content strategy during this time.

Second Month
Remember that content strategy I just mentioned one sentence ago? During the second month period you’ll want to refine that strategy based on your budget. Do you have $$ to spend on press releases? Do you have $$ to spend on specialty software to help you promote content? Think of this first.

Once you know what you are working with you can to begin to formulate content ideas. Make sure you get someone who knows what they are doing involved here, as it can be frustrating to develop huge amounts of content with no benefit. But when it’s all said and done you’ll need 15 to 30 blog ideas to start. Some should be for your own blog and some should be intended for guest blog posts. Here are some secrets to blogging in case you’re interested.

Third Month
Everything you did in the first and second month you need to continue to do in the third month. You need to keep adding keywords, you need to pump out massive quantities of quality content, you need to attract quality visits and stay current in Google news, social media, etc. But you also have to take on one more task, link building.

Link building is the most difficult part of SEO, but it is also the most important. The good news is that if your content is good people will automatically link to it; the bad news is that it works vise versa, so if your content is not good you’ll know.

Forth Month
Towards the forth month of your optimization you should start to see significant improvement from where you were at the beginning of your campaign. Make sure your SEO expert is giving you regular updates on conversions just from SEO and the rankings for your keywords. During this month you need to keep optimizing.

One of the beautiful things for SEO experts is they always have a job, because if you quite optimizing you will fall in the rankings. With so much competition online you can bet your competitors are optimizing just as much as you are for those really good keywords. And if they are not your know it by the significant boost in your sales.

Summary
SEO is an ever evolving process. Make sure you choose someone you trust and have a solid individual dedicated to campaigns that will better your site. If you have not seen significant improvements after employing an SEO expert for 4 to 6 months, it is time to look for someone else. That is of course unless you are optimizing for an incredibly competitive keyword, like “phone service” or something of that nature.

Have an SEO experience or SEO question? Please comment below!