The SEO Timeline: How Long It Takes for Results to Show

One of the most common questions that digital marketing agencies receive is how long it takes for results to show when purchasing SEO services. While it’s totally understandable that you want to know exactly when your website will rank better, the answer is not an accurate one as it can take anywhere from 4-6 months. Why? There are tons of factors that determine when and how results show. To give you a better understanding of what a plausible timeline looks like, we’ve outlined a 6-month scenario below.

TimeLine Chart

• The First Month. You are unlikely to see any results in the first month, regardless of whether you are using on-page local SEO, technical SEO, or off-page SEO. This is because the first month involves an extensive and comprehensive audit of your entire website and all associated content. With this audit, a keyword strategy is built and a plan is set up for website redesign. This can take longer than a month to complete.
• The Second Month. During the second month of work, all technical SEO services begin. If your website is not going through an entire redesign, all webpages will be optimized for keywords, existing content will be updated, and descriptive meta tags will be added in. If your website does need a complete redesign, the technical SEO will take much longer.
• The Third Month. Once the redesign is complete and all of your web pages and existing content is optimized, content curation will begin. This includes creating blogs, articles, guest posts, whitepapers, product descriptions, and FAQ sections. Your website may start rising in the ranks at this point but it won’t generate a lot of qualified leads as of yet.
• The Fourth Month. During the fourth month, content creation will continue and a link profile will begin to develop. This should lead to some more traffic and lead generation and thus, an improvement in your page rank. This is where results will begin to show.
• The Fifth Month. In the fifth month, social media , SEO services will begin and links and advertisements will be incorporated into your website. It is at this point that you will want to begin to build credibility for your business through public relations activities and social media engagement.
• The Sixth Month. Once you hit month six, all of the technical SEO services should be up to date and the focus can then shift towards promoting your website and generating new content. This is where your brand identity will begin to determine which type of content is put out on both your website and on your social media accounts. By this point, results should definitely be showing.

It is important to note that while you will begin seeing results in months four to six, SEO services are needed on an ongoing basis to maintain the improvement you are seeing. The results you see will grow with more time and effort, so continued efforts should be made toward meaningful, impactful, and authoritative content, links, and public relations engagement.