What’s the Average Time it Takes to See SEO Results?

Deciding to invest in SEO is already a great move for your company. But like many smart business owners, you’re wondering when you will see the results of that investment. Unlike pay-per-click (PPC) advertising that can give you web visits and leads right away, SEO (or search engine optimization) efforts take time to prove their ROI.

Asking us to give you an average amount of time for you to see SEO results would be like asking me whether I prefer regular or white cheddar Cheez-Its—there is no correct or universal answer. (Blog post coming soon, breaking down the benefits of each flavor of Cheez-Its).

When you invest in SEO, the average time it takes to see results depends on a number of different factors, primarily:

• The local and national search competition
• The quality of your SEO efforts
• The quantity of your SEO efforts

We’ve broken down these top three factors and have explained why they each impact how long it takes for your company to see SEO results. If you have concerns about your current SEO efforts or want to see what our team can do for you, go ahead and contact us for a free SEO analysis:

Search Competition

The search competition in your field will depend on both local and national markets. Are most of your local competitors investing in SEO? Do you live in a highly populated metropolitan area?

It can be easier to rank and see SEO results if you’re the first of your competitors to invest in growing your online presence and even easier if you’re not from a huge market, like DC or Chicago (although that also might cause your search volume—how many people are looking for your services—to decrease).

You’ll also want to consider any national brands, big-box stores, industry organizations, etc. that may be your search competitors. Just because you don’t see their service trucks on house calls in your service area, doesn’t mean they aren’t your online competitors.

Get a free competitor analysis »

Quality of Your SEO Efforts

If you’re investing in SEO already—great job! Staying ahead of competitors to maximize your online real estate is the game to be playing right now. But if you’re only paying a few hundred dollars per month on your SEO, you might not be getting the quality outputs and qualified results as a return on your investment. When you look at SEO, there are three factors to consider: (1) site code and structure, (2) onsite content, and (3) offsite authority.

At Blue Corona, we consider (2) onsite content to be one of the most important factors (and one of the easiest to influence from an agency standpoint. Is the quality of your current onsite SEO good enough to get you good results?

Each page on your site that you are trying to rank for should:

• Be 500-750 words, minimum
• Have varied calls to action throughout page
• Not have keyword stuffing
• Have correct coding of H1, H2, and other header tags
• Have optimized meta data (title tag, description, keywords, etc.)

Quantity of Your SEO Efforts

Assuming you are investing in a high quality and ethical SEO campaign, the time it takes to see your SEO results also depends on the amount of investment. Are you putting up five new pages on your site each month? Ten? Twenty? In theory, each page is a new opportunity to rank for a different keyword. The more pages you have and are continuing to produce, the better the opportunities to rank and see better results.

Even if you have 300 pages on your company’s site already, you should continue to optimize those pages and add more for the search engine crawlers to find, index, and rank. If Google sees that your site is dormant and hasn’t been touched for over a year, the search God might take that as an indicator that you’ve gone out of business or aren’t putting your customers’ search needs first by continually updating the content of your site.

Get a Free SEO Analysis!

When you work with Blue Corona to improve your company’s online presence, you will get a dedicated Account Manager that will set realistic (and achievable) goals for your company based on your new online marketing efforts. We don’t promise X number of leads by Y date, but we promise to help your company grow by ensuring that you’re found online by qualified search users (that means potential leads) in your industry and region.

Call us today for a free SEO analysis to begin having a data-driven approach to your online marketing efforts