How Long Does It Take for Website SEO to Show Results?

"Reaching the top rankings within a month" is an utopia. Such results may be "guaranteed" by unethical specialists aiming to attract clients. There exist "black hat" methods that manipulate behavioral factors. However, this is an illegal approach to boost a website's rankings, and it can result in penalties from search engines. The site may be penalized and experience a sudden loss of traffic. Recovering from such a penalty can take about a year, or in some cases, it may be impossible to recover at all, resulting in the demise of the website.

"White hat" SEO is a long process that accumulates results over time. Quick results are possible in rare cases.

1. Fixing technical errors: Let's say there is a large website with great content that is trying to improve its rankings but has incorrect technical settings that affect its indexation. Without addressing these technical optimization issues (such as speeding up the site, optimizing images, creating a sitemap, or ensuring proper indexing), SEO efforts won't yield results. However, once these issues are resolved, the initial results won't take long to show.
2. Narrow niche with low competition: In such cases, fast results are sometimes achievable even with basic optimization techniques, such as well-crafted headings, meta tags, and structured data markup. We had a similar case with an online store specializing in healthy food. They managed to reach the top rankings for low-frequency queries in the vegan products segment without much effort within 1-2 months. These were commercial target queries like "buy tofu online" or "purchase vegetarian pate" and others.
3. Established businesses with significant SEO authority: We had a case where a company approached us with the goal of moving their website from the top 30 to the top 10 for a specific query. Considering their starting point, it was a reasonable and achievable task.

It is advisable to expect a minimum of six months for SEO progress, although this is an average estimation. The speed of achieving results depends on various factors.

• Business sector: High competition makes the task more challenging, while narrower niches are easier to penetrate.
• Region: Promoting a website in the capital city versus a smaller city with the same theme requires different time resources.
• Domain age: Starting from scratch is more difficult, as search engines prefer websites that already have authority. New domains are often subjected to filters and probationary periods, making it harder to achieve rapid success. This limitation is sometimes bypassed by placing the website on an appropriate domain with a good reputation and age recognized by search engines.
• Initial state of the website: A comprehensive SEO audit helps diagnose the website's condition. Every case is unique, as some websites may require minimal improvements to start seeing results, while others may need significant overhauls.
• Unpredictable external factors: Changes in search algorithms can occur, leading to unforeseen impacts or filter triggers. Issues with the website's functionality, such as domain expiration, hosting problems, or security breaches, can also affect progress.

The scope and timeline of the work depend on the specific results that need to be achieved. Clients often come with specific goals in mind, such as:

• Needing to achieve a specific increase in website traffic.
• Wanting to attain specific positions for relevant search queries.
• Seeking to maintain current rankings and positions.
• Looking to identify new areas for growth and opportunities.

Different goals can be pursued, but regardless of the objective, it is crucial to begin with a website diagnosis and competitive analysis. To achieve this, we conduct a comprehensive SEO audit consisting of four stages:

1. Technical optimization: Is the website correctly configured? If there are technical errors, further SEO efforts may not yield the desired results.
2. On-page optimization: Does the website meet search engine requirements in terms of structure and content quality? How optimized and high-quality is the content? This stage focuses on user experience (UX/UI) as it is an important ranking factor.
3. Off-page optimization: This involves auditing the dynamics and quality of the website's backlink profile, both for clients and competitors.
4. SEO traffic audit: The analysis focuses on traffic dynamics, such as identifying any significant drops in traffic, determining the organic traffic sources, assessing the conversion rate of different traffic segments, and identifying the sections or pages that generate the most leads.

The frequency of strategy adjustments depends on the specific website we are working with. For example, if the website is new and has never been optimized before, the initial focus may be on low-frequency keywords. In this case, the strategy is adjusted once this segment of keywords has been effectively targeted, allowing us to progress towards medium and high-frequency keywords.

There are projects where the strategy may remain unchanged for years, with the emphasis placed on regular SEO maintenance to maintain existing positions. For instance, a website may require a redesign to improve user experience and enhance its search engine rankings. However, the business may lack the resources for such changes and we cannot significantly alter the strategy as it is limited by the need for a redesign.

On average, websites are indexed within one to three weeks. However, individual pages can be indexed faster. Search engines prioritize pages with user interactions, so if there are visits to new pages, they are scanned earlier.

Indexing can be accelerated by manually submitting pages for re-crawling, with a range of 30 to 300 pages per day depending on the website. In Google, this can be done using the Indexing API.

The crawling budget refers to the limited resources allocated by the search engine for reindexing a site. It can be managed through Sitemap file settings to ensure that the search robot visits the desired pages first. The last modification date of a page can be specified using the "<lastmod>" attribute.

Technical issues and the relative newness of a site can slow down indexing speed. The simplest way to speed it up is through external links and frequent content updates (search engines favor dynamic websites). For instance, pages on news websites can be indexed within an hour.

The business has a significant influence. When working with an agency, it can determine many processes:

• the speed of approval for technical website improvements,
• the pace of text approval (especially in fields like medicine where extensive fact-checking is necessary),
• the timely provision of feedback.

SEO is a tool that allows us to explore demand. For instance, if we observe a surge in requests for a particular service or product, we can capitalize on that demand and drive conversions by making changes to the website or creating a new landing page. If the business is prepared to provide information promptly, we can quickly leverage these opportunities.

SEO has a cumulative effect. It may not produce immediate results, but it will provide a stable and noticeable impact over time. Moreover, the results won't disappear if you suddenly stop actively working on SEO. There will be a long-lasting benefit.

In SEO, the focus is not on speed but on the goal itself. What does your business specifically need? Increased traffic, revenue growth, improved rankings for specific keywords? Based on this, a plan of action is formed, with a timeline of tasks and results to be achieved.

We specialize in SEO optimization and are ready to help you achieve your goals.