Why Your Business Needs a Long-Term SEO Plan

 “How long does it take for SEO to start working?”

 

 

This is one of the most common questions clients
ask us about SEO. As frustrating as it sounds, there’s never a tried and true answer for this question.
It truly all depends! But that doesn’t mean you can’t measure progress and track how your SEO
campaign is doing. But SEO can happen quickly if you have a very niche business or live in a more
rural area. SEO can take a long time in more competitive industries. And while there may not be a
definitive answer, we want to walk you through a scalable timeline of where you can find SEO results
over time.

 

 

Over 50% of marketers say keyword rankings and organic traffic are the top ways they measure the
success of their SEO strategies. Over the course of an SEO campaign, you will likely spend an
abundant amount of time, effort, and resources into building an SEO strategy. But in the thick of it,
you might not be able to see the results of that time and effort. It’s important to view an SEO
campaign as a whole, looking back to see its progress and the success of your efforts.
This paper goes over an SEO timeline and what you can expect, plus how to measure the success
and the milestones you should achieve throughout your campaign.

 

Timeline Breakdown

First Month (30 Days)

 

As with any project, it’s important to lay a strong foundation for your SEO
campaign’s success. That’s what happens in the first 30 days of an SEO
campaign. SEO gets started by adding optimized and strong keywords
into your website. Performing keyword research helps you get started by
narrowing down the strongest keywords and best primed keywords that
will help grow your online presence. Sometimes it’s not the most obvious
keywords either. But keyword research includes options that you might
not have thought of that are easy to rank for with little competition, and
help get the ball rolling for your campaign.
Once you have found the keywords you want to use, look at taking action
towards onsite efforts. Implementing onsite efforts helps optimize your
code and help keywords appear in prominent areas on your site. It is also
instrumental in helping search engines such as Google get their
attention and further increase rankings. The faster you implement
certain efforts, the faster you’ll see your rankings improve.

2-5 Months

 

In the next two to five months, you’ll begin to notice a keyword
fluctuation as Google starts to recognize your website. It’s very normal
to see keywords ebbs and flows. Google is just trying to see where your
site fits in on SERPs for certain keywords. So, it’s actually a good thing to
have ebbs and flows.

The onsite optimizations implemented in the first month come more into
play starting around month three. It’s important to make sure elements
like updating current content, website pages, titles, meta descriptions,
and tags are optimized for your target keywords. And during this time,

you continue to work on improving your campaign both on and off your
website through efforts like content implementation and link building.

 

Building E-A-T

During this time, it’s also important to focus on building
your E-A-T with search engines. E-A-T stands for
expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness
. Expertise: Google looks at the expertise of your site
based on having a high level of skill and knowledge in
a field or on a subject matter. For your site and its
pages, it’s important for the content to resonate with
its intended purpose and come from a reliable
source. It’s important for the content on your site to
be credible and accurate
. Authoritativeness: Authority represents your
reputation and brand within your industry. The best
way for search engines to have assurance of your site
as industry leaders is through other sites referencing
your own through link building practices. The more
other authoritative sites mention your site, the more
search engines will believe and see your authority.
Building your expertise also helps build your
authoritativeness over time
. Trustworthiness: It’s important for Google and users
to identify your site as trustworthy. Without search
engine’s and user’s trust, your site could depreciate in
more ways than one. Some of the best ways to
improve your trustworthiness is through review
management, having up-to-date information, having
easy navigation, fast site speeds, etc

Building your E-A-T helps Google recognize that user
experience is important to your site just as much as it is
to them. The more expertise, authority, and trust your
site has, the higher you’ll rank over time. And an SEO
campaign works to build these elements during months
2-5 after its start. Building on the strong foundation
referenced earlier, months 2-5 are the framing of your
structure. You need to make sure it’s in place, sturdy, and
strong, or the efforts you’re putting in to improve your
website won’t hold up.

6-9 Months

Great news, you’ve made it 6 months into your SEO campaign! While it
could have happened earlier depending on your industry, vertical,
location, or various other reasons, around the six month mark, you should
see some of your keywords start to break into the top 10 of the Google
SERPs. All of that effort you’ve put in during the last six months should
start to pay off. But that doesn’t mean your work is done. More than 67%
of all clicks on SERPs go to the top five listings. So while you might have
some keywords that reach the first 10 listings, it’s important to work at
keeping them there.

In the six to nine month period, continuing onsite efforts is crucial in
keeping first page rankings. This can also include nurturing and elevating
keywords to further help your site rise above competitors. You need to
continue to improve and create new content. Continue to build quality
links. And knowing how to target the right keywords for your site is the
key to success in getting optimal results.

9+ Months

Like building a house, good SEO takes time. At this stage, it’s time to
decorate and make it a home. Once you’ve built a strong foundation in
the first six to nine months, you can move forward with expanding your
reach and optimizations. While also continuing to monitor your previous
keywords so they dont drop off the first page.

This is the time to expand on your success. Now that you have Google’s
attention and your online presence is growing, continue leveraging this
momentum and optimize for additional keywords. The more quality
keywords you have on the first page, the more visibility you’ll continue to
have online. This can also lead to the potential of customers finding your
site. There’s always room for improvement and additional growth. It’s
likely that your competitors are working to stay relevant too. Use your
SEO efforts to stay ahead of the pack.

What Happens When You Cancel Your SEO?

SEO is like going to the gym or practicing an instrument. If you miss a few days of practice, you will
start to see a difference or drop. But over time, as muscle strength and memory decline, you lose
your ability. You always need to be consistent with your practice to help keep your place or to stay
in the rankings.

For SEO, stopping a campaign won’t make a difference right away. However, typically after six
months of ending an SEO campaign, a website’s keywords drop out of those coveted top 10
rankings you worked so hard to achieve. Sometimes even out of the top 100 results. Stopping
SEO is a slow slide back to the bottom of the rankings that takes about the same amount of time
to disappear as it did to build it up

Succeeding Over Time with SEO

Though SEO can take time to build up, it’s well worth the time and effort that goes into it. All the
steps to build it turn into a beautiful house. Investing in SEO is investing in your business. It’s
contributing to the success of your website, which is how people search today to help them know
they’re spending their money wisely. Unlike other forms of digital marketing where you spend
money on an ad, one click and that contribution is done. With SEO, your investment keeps
growing over time. The more you supply to SEO, the more exposure your site can gain. Like most
expenditures, you don’t make money instantly overnight. SEO doesn’t happen all at once either.
It’s the investment that keeps on growing.