Why does SEO take so long?
When used right, SEO can be a hugely beneficial tool for all online businesses. Reviewing each stage of SEO is something that you may have thought about, but you may have wondered why SEO takes so long. This is because we have to get through several different factors when doing effective SEO. In this article, we will go into greater depth on each factor and how it might be important to your business.
source: brickmarketing.com
At this point, you have probably heard and researched about SEO. You may have come across some of its key terms and the overall process of an SEO audit. However, you may have tried using it on your website, only to be frustrated with the results and the time taken to get the results.
To put matters into perspective, here is a picture that displays all the working elements of SEO. Take a look below.
source: reliablesoft.net
We need to look at all of these factors when working on SEO. It has been said that the factor that is most influential to time on the audit is content. Now, this still depends on your website. For websites that have little content, then an SEO audit should not be too time-consuming.
On the discussion of content, take a look at the stat below
source: adstriangle.com
The above shows the word count for content that gets ranked. What can we gain from this?
The content needs to be at least over 2400 words for it to be noteworthy on Google. Let’s say, you have an established website. However, your word count for your blogs hasn’t been optimized in years. Maybe, some of your posts have reached the 4000-word count.
This could be a big indicator of why the audit is taking so long on your content. Content plays a huge part in the audit because it encompasses meta titles, descriptions, URLs,s, and your keyword relevancy. It’s the driving factor behind traffic.
What else should you know about your website?
One of the reasons why the speed of an SEO audit is variant is because you may have one or more goals in using SEO. This is one of the most important factors that will influence the speed of service. That is Goal setting. Understanding the goal of your website is your first point of action when you want to know about the speed because you can work and build your strategy around the goal, which will increase your SEO speed.
Other factors to note are how well established your website is. The more established your website is then the quicker the audit will be.
However, one of the reasons why SEO takes so long is because we don’t always know what works and what doesn’t. Keyword trends can change constantly and we have to always be aware of these changes.
Based on goal setting, a lot of SEO service providers emphasize a page 1 ranking. Although this is true, your goal may be to enhance the user experience. You can do this by increasing your page speed.
Remember, that the page speed needs to be over 80 to be considered satisfactory.
You can use google page speed to check your page’s speed.
However, whatever your goal, it has been reported that the average time taken to see results from SEO is between 4 to 6 months. You can visit the link here. It is important to note that this is to see results and not an overnight success. Achieving any SEO goal takes time, but you need to have a goal. By not having a goal, it will impact the pace of your results.
For websites that want a high ranking, then the chances of you having a lot of content on your site is quite likely. The more content you have, the more work the audit has to cover, which means you have to work through each section of that content and make necessary changes. Here are the factors that an SEO audit covers.
- Content-including meta title’s, URL, and descriptions
- Keyword optimization
- Crawl accessibility
- Social media links
- User experience
- Page speed
When you visit a top SEO provider, they put these factors into 3 categories. These categories are off-page, on-page, and technical SEO.
The SEO audit
Before, we get a clearer understanding of your SEO. We must first go back to our first point, which is to discuss SEO goals. Factors that come under your goals could be:
- Industry
- Competitor analysis
- Content
- Social media marketing
There could be several more, but in most cases, industry analysis will give a clear picture of the aims of your SEO audit.
For a new website, it is very likely that you haven’t met the criteria for the audit. A thorough SEO audit is ideal for websites that have been around for a bit of time. As a newcomer, you may be concerned with establishing your brand and your content first then the SEO comes second.
Conclusion
The best answer to the question is that it all depends. I have narrowed down the three factors that affect the speed of SEO.
- How long your website has been functioning
- Content
- Goal setting
Now, here are my top 3 tips that will help you get going and gather pace with your SEO
- Find ways to increase your page speed,
- Research more into your keywords. Relevancy is the most important.
- Update your content.
These are 3 points that will give you a foundation when it comes to using your audit and implementing those changes on your website. Each website and SEO strategy is different, therefore set a time to analyze your website before and after the audit.
