It’s a question almost every business asks their SEO company. Exactly how long will it take for my improved results to come flowing in? It’s not an unreasonable question, nor is it unexpected. The answer, which has to always be ‘it depends’, is invariably frustrating. Why can’t SEO professionals pin their craft down with more precision?

SEO time frames are different for every site simply because every site is different. Most search engine optimisation companies will give you a straightforward estimate, which takes many aspects of your site’s characteristics into account. A basic rule of thumb is that a site on a new domain will take three months to show results if all goes well, and six or more if the going is relatively rough. An existing domain can take anything from a few days to a month or so. This is greatly affected by the many factors that come into play:

• Age of site. An older site has a history which will usually help with its optimisation efforts. The search engines tend to trust a site more the older it is, because they have a record of its past behaviour. It should go without saying that this history should be of exemplary behaviour. A site with a bad history can be hard to optimise. New sites are notoriously hard to optimise, and many companies aim to build a new site on an existing domain. You can talk to us at SEO Consult about this technique
• Competitors. If you exist in a tough field of competition, it’s going to take a lot more work to get your pages up in the rankings. Not only will it take work in the initial optimisation period, but ongoing work will be needed as you take advantage of the multiple changes that occur over time
• Content, existing or future. The content already on your site will need to be optimised to serve each page’s SEO plan. Quality content is more likely to produce good results, and the continued addition of quality content over time is known to have a beneficial effect on a site’s rankings
• Structure. A good structure with clear paths is essential for a good relationship with the search engines. If the search engine spiders can’t get past your home page, your quality content won’t do you much good
• Code. Sites collect clunky code all the time, but search engines don’t like it. It’s vital to get things like your robots.txt in order. One of the problems existing sites have is in tripping up search engine spiders with messy code

It’s important to remember that sites usually experience a brief drop in traffic after the search engine optimisation process commences. This isn’t solely due to SEO. Your site will experience traffic drops whenever you alter your pages, as the search engines need time to re-evaluate your pages. This drop is the reason most SEO companies won’t count your optimisation as finished until well after the first results are in, in order to ensure your rankings are settled as high as they possibly can be.

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