If you have been working with a digital marketing agency for any length of time, you have likely been using an SEO (search engine optimisation) strategy. And while this strategy does seem to be in-depth and carefully thought-out, you are probably wondering how long it takes for SEO to work. There is no simple answer to this, but SEO marketing is not an instant fix by any means.
When you are working with a digital marketing agency they will perform research into the best search engine optimisation strategies for your brand, business, or company. In order to answer the question of how long SEO takes to work, we must first look at both old and new SEO tactics, as these use different methods for ranking on search engines.
For those who have been watching the clock and wondering how long it takes for SEO to work, we break it down below to make it easier to understand.
Out With The Old And In With The New
Before you find out how long search engine optimisation in a digital marketing strategy takes to work, you first need to understand old SEO and new SEO tactics. Old SEO tactics are not used by many marketing companies today, but this does not mean that it has lost its merits.
Old SEO strategies involved identifying keywords that were most relevant to your business and which were receiving the most traffic, and choosing at least five to ten fo these keywords in order to bring in the majority of your website traffic. Often this would mean that you would rank highly for these keywords, which is not the correct thinking any more.
There is no one keyword, or even set of keywords, which will drive a significant amount of traffic to your website. You should rather be focusing on long-tail keywords or phrases that people use when searching for your business or for related businesses.
New SEO is becoming increasingly focused on natural language search, which means that focusing on one keyword or one set of keywords will no longer bring in the same results. Rather, you should be using phrases or questions that people will use when searching for goods or services, such as “what brands are eco-friendly?”
These long-tail keywords or phrases are better choices than single keywords due to the fact that people are now using voice search to search, and use natural language when they do so. These keywords are ideal to rank for because they are not as competitive and are much more relevant, helping to drive more traffic to your website. These long-tail keywords are often searched for far more often than a single keyword.
A Step-By-Step Plan To Follow
Now that you understand the difference between old and new SEO, it is time to break down the digital marketing strategy that goes into achieving your SEO results. These different phases might each take some time to complete, depending on what your specific goals are. Any successful SEO campaign has several overlapping phases involved, which we outline below:
- Research, research, research: The first phase of any SEO or digital marketing campaign is to perform research. This means that your website history will be looked into and analysed, your keyword choices will be examined, your competition will be assessed in-depth and analysed, and your industry trends will also be looked into.
- Make That Marketing Work: After this research has been completed, the digital marketing company will put together a marketing plan that ties all of the information together. This can include anything from building optimised landing pages to improving your social media campaigns. SEO tactics will be used during this marketing campaign setup.
- Optimisation: Once the campaign has been set up and the research is complete, the optimisation period will begin, which might take some time depending on what it involves. The code and text on your website will be optimised according to the long-tail keywords that were chosen during the research. Images will also be optimised to ensure that your website does not load too slowly.
- Building Links And Creating Content: Modern online reputation building is one of the most important parts of new SEO, and this is done by building backlinks to your website from other authoritative websites as well as creating relevant and valuable content for your own website and for sharing on others. This is a vital component of modern SEO as it allows for natural language keywords to easily be used.
- Magical Monitoring: Digital marketing agencies will monitor every step of a search engine optimisation campaign, ensuring that everything works together like a well-oiled machine. Tracking your conversion and click-through-rate on advertising campaigns will show which keywords are performing well and which could be changed. The monitoring and research steps will often overlap in digital marketing campaigns.
Final Verdict
When you consider all the effort that is inherent in an SEO strategy and campaign, you will soon find that the answer to “how long does it take for SEO to work?” is, in fact, several months to a year. You can never accurately foretell when you will achieve a top ranking for a keyword or long-tail keyword you have chosen, but despite SEO being a long game, the results are well worth the effort.
For those who are interested in improving their online visibility and search engine rankings, contact the NetMechanic team today to find out how we can help you be found on page one.