This is a question we hear a lot from potential and new clients so we’d like to collect some thoughts here for anybody considering this.
New URLs
A new website with unique URLs can take up to two years to start ranking! Like most things, it takes some time and effort to get pages ranking. Then, climbing the rankings needs content tweaks and technical fixes throughout the year.
We often start seeing ranking improvements within the first six months after starting work but good results can be seen between a year or two after!
Established sites
For a site with lots of existing content regular SEO-focused refreshes may be needed. It’s no secret that content is the best driver of traffic to a website and good content needs to be watered like a plant to keep it performing optimally.
Page reviews might be needed and for large sites this takes time. Choosing a page a month to analyse and improve could work wonders for improving how the page ranks. This needs to be done over time.
Creating content
A good content strategy is important for your site. Spamming small quickly-written articles is not ideal. Putting thought into what you want to post and creating a regular schedule is the best plan for content. Giving ample time for research, writing, and editing is important. Your content needs to engage users and solve their problems.
At times, you may even need a content audit. This includes going through old content to repurpose, combine, or at times, delete. This is something we’ve done for many clients and seen the pages improve exponentially!
Competing
Your content needs to beat the competitors in your market. This is ongoing for businesses but online competition is a constant. Being aware of your competitors and their site content is vital. If you’re operating in a niche market, that’s great it won’t take long to start ranking. If you’re in a bigger market you’ll need to focus your SEO strategy on your own uniqueness and sell that in all your search marketing activities.
For SEO, you’re competing on keywords so tuning them to your niche is essential. A small burger restaurant will struggle to rank for “Cheeseburger” but has a chance with “local burger restaurant Arundel”. For keywords, you need to keep your niche in mind. Does your offering make you unique or your location? Segmenting your target market will support this.
Building links
One ranking factor is focused on quality inbound links. For pages to do well they need to be linked to authoritative sites. This means your content needs to be high-quality and share-worthy. Gaining links can take time and should be done naturally, sudden increases can look suspicious. This will be taken into account in a good SEO strategy.
A long-form SEO strategy
To conclude our thoughts, we’ve seen long-form SEO strategy work for multiple clients. It is the most sustainable online marketing practice. You’ll be able to spread out your time and efforts, check what’s working, and adjust along the line.
This is data from one of our clients over the past two years. As you can see, it took half a year for traffic to hit a peak and now we’re working on sustaining that higher traffic as the year closes. Our aim for next year will be to improve on these numbers again.
Are you considering SEO for your site?
If you’re considering Search Engine Optimisation for your site consider your budget for long-term SEO. If the budget is tight we could offer an initial SEO setup and regular reviews over a two-year period.
SEO contains lots of variables that affect how long SEO can take. This can be frustrating, we know. If you’d like to discuss SEO, email us at hello@fandangodigital.co.uk or call 01243 200444.
