How Long Do SEO Campaigns Take To Return Results?

‘Why is my SEO campaign taking so long to rank my site?’ This is a common concern our clients voice out here at SEO Agency Melbourne.

While agencies like SEO Melbourne do want to show real progress as soon as possible, the nature of SEO requires them to approach it with consistency. Ignoring them would invite dire consequences (i.e. getting hit by Google penalties) on a client’s website.

In this article, we’ll talk about why your chosen SEO agency takes time to grow your SEO profile – and why you should manage your expectations when it comes to your SEO timeline.

How long does SEO take?

Fundamentally, SEO plays the long game – in no small part because of Google’s lengthy indexation process, gradual establishment of site authority on subject matter, and careful monitoring of user reception to content strategy, seeing an increase in traffic to the site will often take much longer than the short-term returns you’ll see with paid advertising. According to a poll conducted by Ahrefs, it typically takes around three to six months for SEO campaigns to show results.

Why does it take so long?

SEO takes so long to pay off because there are several factors involved:

• Thanks to an ever-growing digital landscape that requires a speed in production to match its rabid consumption, Google requires a given amount of time in finding, crawling, evaluating, and indexing each site. The time it takes to accomplish each of these steps is incredibly complex, and dependent on a variety of factors that determine the crawl budget of each site. Appropriate indexation essentially serves as the gatekeeper to begin optimising general online visibility, making it easier for your site to appear as a viable search result, and hence draw in relevant traffic.

• On-page optimisations can be a time-consuming process – and depending on the size of your site, the need to implement particular strategy changes can be days to weeks long, with an additional maintenance effort to upkeep. Implementation of changes like metadata updates (meta description, site title, meta tags etc.), optimisation of copy, sourcing of media, sound linking structure and more are intensive at the granular level – and their direction, from a top-down perspective, also relies on a strategy that suits your brand needs as well.
• Moreover, Google has two types of search engine results: paid and organic results. 

While you can pay Google to get you to the paid results, It’s hard to get into the top organic results without convincing Google that your content is the most relevant and helpful result to the search query.

4 Factors That Impact Your SEO Timeline – SEO Agency Melbourne

Goals and Strategies with Your SEO Agency Melbourne

How long it takes to achieve SEO results depends on the specific outcome your campaign is aiming for. If your goal is to rank for keywords with low to minimal competition – its often the case that with the right deployment of content, mapping and site structure, your SEO agency can meet that goal faster than phrases with a more generic background.

Conversely, if you want to rank for very competitive keywords (which may mean going toe-to-toe with larger, more reputable brands), it may take months or even years of consistent effort to climb to a decent spot in the SERPs.

However, your SEO agency can circumnavigate tackling those keywords directly by implementing a strategy tailored to your goals. 

Take our case study on Hera Bathware for example:
Instead of changing how new and existing users perceive the value of their brand, we focused on optimising their site structure and metadata, and then applying best content implementation practices.

Thanks to our campaign, their total incoming traffic doubled, and the average session duration increased by 295.12%, which in turn drove their revenue in organic channels by 84.66%.

Website Age

While Google itself has said that domain age doesn’t matter to their search algorithm, older websites typically have a hold on higher authority, thanks to the trustworthiness of established content built over the course of time.

On the other side of the spectrum, new sites need more time for Google to index them and enough resources to properly rank keywords.

Overall Budget

The more resources you invest in your SEO campaign, the more manpower (writers, SEO specialists, web developers, link-building teams, and account managers) your agency can afford to achieve results faster and increase the chances of ranking you higher.

However, strategic investment is key here – because reputable SEO agencies are not cheap, and take a long time to produce real results since they have a ‘quality, not quantity’ approach.

Competitors

The more competitive your niche, the longer your SEO timeline will take since your competition has a greater share of visibility in your overall rankings. 

If the keywords you’re ranking for are highly competitive like ‘lawyers in melbourne’, it’s going to take you longer to rank than gunning for a smaller, niche space like ‘lawyers in collingwood’ since you’re going toe-to-toe with already-established competitors that have thousands of backlinks.

Take the keyword ‘seo melbourne’ for example, it took us 18 years of cumulative effort to stay #1 and be on top of the competition. Try Googling us!

Final Thoughts – SEO Agency Melbourne

If you feel like your agency is taking its sweet time with your SEO campaign, chances are they’re meticulously working to deliver you tangible and sustainable results.

However, why bet on uncertainty when SEO Melbourne has been consistently delivering these outcomes for 18 years?  With us at the helm of your campaign, running one has never been easier thanks to our high-quality SEO services. 

Contact us today to get a complimentary business review and consultation and see how your site can rank #1, too.