How long does SEO take?

Everyone wants their sites to appear in the top positions of Google searches, but how long can an accurate SEO positioning process really take?

There is a classic phrase associated with American yuppies of the late ’80s and early ‘90s: “Time is money”. “How long does SEO take?“, meanwhile, is the standard question posed by any client looking to improve their organic positioning.

This question does not always have a precise answer. As a result, the client can end up demanding more than they can hope to receive. That’s why, in this article, we consider the time it takes to carry out SEO positioning, and how to reduce it.

It is important to be clear that you cannot position any old thing from scratch. “Picking one’s battles” is another common saying which applies here – specifically, picking them according to your possibilities and budget.

Those of us who specialize in and work with SEO know this well, and must be able to transmit it very clearly to our clients. Let’s look at some examples.

“The budget is perfect, but when is my company going to appear high up in the Google rankings when someone searches for running clothes?”, a client may reasonably ask.

Most likely the appropriate answer is “not tomorrow, not the day after, not this month or the next”. It all depends on the starting point. For example, the time you have spent competing for the right keyword, the authority of your domain, the external link, the internal link, etc …

In such ambitious searches as “buying running clothes”, the competition is fierce. The presence of SEM ads that appear on Google above organically-obtained results should also be taken into account.

Let’s look at another, recurring example of an anxious customer. “We have been working on SEO for a month and my website still does not appear among the first pages on Google” – a common complaint!

This statement, which clearly betrays a lack of SEO know-how, can be answered with simple questions such as:

1. Which keywords?
2. What exactly have you been searching for on Google?

For instance, if you’ve been searching for sportswear factories, then this absence is to be expected. The company could appear depending on the location from which the search was carried out. The goal is to look for very specific audiences, so as to deal with less competition.

Faced with these kinds of customer demands, the most normal response is “it depends”. Especially when they ask you when the first results will appear.
In order to be a little more precise when explaining how long SEO positioning takes, it’s worth reading this statistical study carried out by Ahrefs in 2020 based on a sample of over 2 million websites!

Let’s look at how old the websites that appear in Google’s Top 10 are. In the graph below, this is expressed in days.

One glance is enough to realize that the top sites have all been online for over two years. Looking closer, you can see that the sites in the top positions have all been online for more than three years.

The graph below shows that 22% of the Top 10 websites are less than one year old. Again: the vast majority of websites within Google’s Top 10 have been operational for more than 3 years. Patience and hard work!

You may wonder what happens to newly launched websites, and ones that are less than a year old. Are they not listed at all? They are, but to a lesser extent.

This graph highlights that the percentage of fledgeling sites that show up in the top 10 results on Google provides little grounds for encouragement.

In fact, according to Ahrefs, less than 2% of the sites in the first two places are under a year old, and just over 4% reach the last positions of the Top 10.

What can we conclude? That when it comes to SEO you have to work, persevere and be consistent, and that Google favors “old” websites.

Talking about pages is not the same as talking about a website in its entirety. It is essential to be clear about this when it comes to SEO positioning. Each of the pages that make up a website will have its main keyword determined.

When we determine the keywords which we intend to “attack” with each page, it is important to carry out keyword research beforehand, to guide our strategy. As we will see, some keywords are better than others.

For example, positioning “sports activities” is different to positioning “sports activities in Buenos Aires”. One keyword does not have the same volume as the other, nor is it searched for a similar amount.

An important factor in the delay of the positioning of the keywords is the competition for them, and whether the latter is high, medium or low.

The graph above clearly shows that it is much faster to position keywords with a comparatively lower search volume or less competition.

But be careful: this data only applies to the 5.7% of the websites which were able to take pole position for a certain keyword in less than a year. Most sites fall short.

Companies should hire SEO services if they wish to rank competitively on Google and other search engines. Failure to do so could mean remaining invisible to audiences and potential customers on the web.

You are likely to come across SEO positioning offers that promise to deliver results within a couple of months. Is this possible? No, sadly not.

Google moves at its own pace, so there are no magic tricks or formulas for speeding up SEO. Google’s algorithms, Penguin and Panda, can detect malpractices and penalize websites which engage in them.

Among these possible penalties are a decrease in your position in search results or, more drastically, the disappearance of your site. If fast, non-organic positioning is what you’re after, you need SEM (Search Engine Marketing) – a different practice entirely.

Unlike SEO, SEM is an internet marketing tool which promotes digital content to increase the positioning of sites in search engines, through the payment for ads on different platforms. These can be social networks, banners, other websites, etc.

In summary, let’s recap some data that will help us to answer this question with something more precise than “it depends”.

We have seen that it is normal for the owner of a brand to question how long the SEO positioning of their website takes. Some anxiety over the results, and looking good at the top of Google searches, is par for the course.

Let’s highlight some numbers that may help to calm those frayed nerves:

• Medium competition keywords take between six months and a year, for established websites.
• It takes an average of one year to position medium-competition keywords for brand new sites.
• When it comes to highly competitive keywords, it takes at least a year to see any results, assuming the website has a certain consideration from Google. If not, this timeline may be extended.

We at Sherlock Communications fully understand the importance of this context surrounding the question of how long SEO takes. Among our services, we offer Off-Page SEO, On-Page SEO, Automated SEO and Technical SEO, providing cutting-edge solutions to brand and company demands.