How fast can you deliver results in SEO?

Every time I explain the benefits of SEO to anyone, they ask me this question.

“How fast can you deliver the results in SEO?”

If you also ask this question to your SEO expert, believe me, you are asking a wrong question.

SEO drives organic traffic to your website. Like any other organic marketing methods, SEO also requires consistent efforts in the right direction for a significant period to see any tangible effects from it.

But, how do we know if our SEO efforts are in the right direction or not?

For that, you need to understand how SEO works. And, this is not a technical part but a logical part.

To make it simple, I will take the example of the most used search engine i.e. Google.

Google focuses largely on 2 audience segments

1. Content Creators – all those who create content in text, video, audio or any other format and upload it on the internet
2. Content Consumers – everyone who puts queries on Google to explore the content

Every time someone puts a query on Google Search, the Search Algorithm goes through its’ database and finds the most relevant results based on different factors.

Those factors can be:

1. The relevance of the query with the content on the web page – on-page SEO plays a major role in this
2. Type of query – depending on the users’ queries, Google return news, forums, solutions, offers pages.
3. Location of the user
4. Users’ search history and/or browsing history
5. Network connection of the user – in case of weak network connection, it will try to show lighter pages first
6. Online behaviour of the user
7. How often users visit your website? What is the bounce rate? Does page load too slowly?
8. What people are talking about you on the internet?
9. And the list goes on. Google keeps adding different parameters in this

It is estimated that there are more than 180 quadrillion web pages on the internet. And, all these pages are crawled by Google periodically to understand the content and return the most relevant results to the users’ queries.

If Content Consumers are not getting the most relevant search results from Google, they will stop using it. Likewise, if Content Creators are not getting organic traffic to their content, they won’t put so many efforts in creating new content.

So, the existence of the Google Search Engine depends on the satisfaction of both of these audience segments. If one of these segments decides not to use Google, the other segment will also stop using it.

In order to achieve the highest audience satisfaction, Google has developed a neutral algorithm, that examines all the pages equally based on some predefined factors. I have mentioned some factors earlier in this post. And, there is no end to this list. But, the basic principle used for choosing these factors remains the same.

The only basic principle that is used while choosing these factors is RELEVANCE.

All you have to do is, optimize your digital presence that will help Google in establishing relevance between your web pages and the query entered by users on the internet.

Another important factor that plays a major role in this is the age of your competitors in Search Engine Page Result Pages aka SERPs.

If your competitors have their presence in SERPs for quite a long time, it will take more time for you to rank your pages higher in Search Results. This happens because Google has already recorded the pages of your competitors as “relevant pages” for the queries that you are targeting. Hence, you need to put some more efforts and have some more patience to get a higher ranking than your competitors.

How fast can I deliver the SEO results?

This is not a valid question. No one can answer this question. As it depends on too many factors many of which are not in control of your SEO expert.

The valid question is, how can I accelerate the delivery of SEO results?

By optimizing your digital assets to establish the relevance and doing it consistently for a longer period.

To help you, I am sharing some quick tips:

1. Optimize your website for On-page SEO – this is the first step for any SEO activity. If you are planning for the website revamp, then first revamp the website and then optimize it for On-page SEO. The on-page SEO factor depends on the content and coding. Changes in the entire code can nullify your on-page SEO efforts.
2. Off-page SEO – create backlinks of your website. Make sure the content of the backlinking page is relevant to your website and your website is linked properly on those pages. This establishes the relevance between your website link and the content.
3. Stop creating directory listings on random websites – I see many SEO guys creating directory listings on any random websites. This can confuse Google’s algorithm. Create directory listings on relevant websites only.
4. Create Google My Business listing and optimize it – the website link in your business listing will help Google understand the geographical area in which you do the business. This is highly recommended for those who run local businesses.
5. Ask customers to add reviews on Google My Business as well as different directory listings of your business – the nature of the reviews send positive or negative signals to Google about your business. The more positive reviews you get on the internet, the more Google will trust you over your competitors.
6. Write blogs consistently – Content creators are very much important for Google. The more content you create, the more benefits you will get from Google. Search the forums and check what your target audience is looking for, and keep writing blogs on it regularly. This way your SEO will outperform your competition.
7. Don’t take the results for granted – many people stop doing SEO activities after getting good results. If during this period your competitors start doing better than you, you will start losing organic traffic from Google. And, you will have to start doing those activities again. Keep checking the performance of SEO regularly and take the necessary actions.
8. Don’t lose hope – SEO takes time. Keep doing activities in the right direction consistently and you will surely get the desired results from it.

To summarize, the two most important factors that Google considers while returning the search results to the users’ queries are RELEVANCE and AGE. The more consistently you do the SEO activities in the right direction, the more results you will get.