Many businesses understand the importance of SEO. What most don’t understand, though, is the timeline that surrounds the SEO process. Some believe that hiring an SEO firm, waiting a month to get results, then admiring their new page rank really is possible. The reality of understanding just how long it takes a UK SEO agency to get results, though, is quite different.
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A Non-Committal Shrug
Ask any UK SEO agency how long it takes to get results, and you’re likely to get a bit of a shrug. At best, you’re going to get a range of times. Anything from four months to a year are among the most common answers. Wondering why you might see such a range of results for a process that is often called the best way to market your business online? It’s not that UK SEO companies just want to keep you on the line to make a bit more money from you. It’s that the answer truly depends on a number of different factors.
Understanding the Factors That Play Into SEO Rankings
The reason behind the date range is the wide variety of factors that can affect your SEO ranking. There are about five things that really change how long the SEO process takes.
- The Condition of Your Site
- Your Industry
- Your Competition
- Links
- Your Content
One of the biggest factors in the rank of your site is the site itself. It should have an SEO friendly design and structure. Without that, you may never achieve the rankings you want, and any SEO company is going to look at how your site is structured before they begin to do anything else. Sites that are built well, easy to navigate, and mobile friendly are already in great shape for marketing purposes. Sites, though, that are a bit of a mess may have to be restructured and redesigned to see better SEO results.
The industry in which you work may be a factor as well. Some industries are more highly regulated than others. The finance industry, for example, has rules around digital marketing practices that you cannot ignore. On the other hand, the pizza delivery market has no rules or requirements you must adhere to as you market your company. The more rules and regulations that must be obeyed in terms of marketing, the longer your SEO work is likely to take.
What does your competition have to do anything? The more demand for your services and products, the more likely it is to be crowded with competitors who are doing some of the same things you are in terms of marketing. For example, a real estate company in a fairly big area like London is likely to face quite a bit of competition. A plumber in a much smaller area, though, is likely to face less competition, thus they can rise to the top of a Google search results page faster than the real estate company might.
Links have long played a role in the SEO process, but these days, it’s not just the number of the links you get. Instead, it’s the quality of the links pointing to your site, too. If you already have lots of links from previous SEO efforts, but they’re relatively low-quality links, you may be hurting your site’s overall profile. If, on the other hand, you have absolutely no links, you’re certainly damaging your site’s profile. Either way, you can bet your SEO work is going to take a bit longer. The key for any SEO agency is to get lots of high quality links from industry-relevant websites that will help improve your company’s image in the eye’s of the search engines, and that can take time.
Your content is the final factor in the SEO timeline. Content these days needs to solve potential problems customers have. As a result, if you have hundreds of short articles on your website, but none of them are really solving a potential customer’s problem, you may not have what it takes to get a solid ranking. You may have to begin adding articles that actually address customer problems. On the whole, longer content is better, but short content can be fine as long as you’re aiming it at customers facing possible issues.
It Will Take As Long As It Takes
How long does SEO take? As long as it needs to. When you hire a UK SEO agency to meet your needs, plan to spend at least a year with them addressing every aspect of SEO if you really want to make a serious dent in your digital marketing efforts. SEO is not a once and done step. Instead, it’s something that will need to be continually addressed even after you begin to see progress.
