SEO is a Marathon Approach Rather Than A Sprint!

SEO is a marathon approach rather than a sprint!

While it is true that SEO can help your business climb up the search ladder with minimal expense, you should not have unrealistic expectations from your SEO campaign. Reaching the coveted 1st-page status in Google search engine result pages (or “SERPs”) in a matter of days or weeks just isn’t very realistic.

SEO is not a sprint — it is not a short-term process that delivers results within days or weeks. Instead, it is like a marathon that requires persistence, planning, and, most importantly, time.

Just how much time are we talking here? 

Well, there really is no “one-size-fits-all” answer to how long it will take for your SEO efforts to pay off. That being said, you can take a look at the following SEO timelines to get a basic idea of how long the different steps in your typical SEO process can take:

Site audit

A site audit refers to a comprehensive and detailed website analysis that looks at all aspects of your site to ensure everything functions optimally. A site audit can help you analyze your site’s:

• Load time
• Domain authority ranking
• Robots.txt file 
• Onsite content
• Header tags
• Sitemap
• Meta content 

Depending on the current state of your website, a thorough site audit can take anywhere from two to four weeks.

Technical changes

Using the findings of your site audit, you can create a plan of action that includes technical changes to your website. Some of the key changes you may want to focus on after your site audit include:

• Eliminating duplicate content
• Fixing or removing broken links and pages
• Decreasing site load time
• Applying SSL (secure sockets layer)
• Identifying and disavowing toxic backlinks
• Creating and submitting an XML sitemap
• Making pages accessible to crawlers
• Optimizing for mobile
• Making your site secure with HTTPS

Depending on how many technical changes you need to make, expect this step in the SEO process to take about two to three months.

Keyword research

Keyword research is arguably the most critical step in the SEO process. Without the right keywords, how do you expect your customers to find you online?

Researching the right keywords for your SEO campaign involves brainstorming a list of topics relevant to your products and services and then thinking of popular words associated with the topics you chose (i.e., words your customers search for most frequently.) Alternatively, you can use online keyword research tools such as Soovle, Jaaxy, Google Search Console, Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, etc.  

Finding the top keywords for your SEO campaign can take anywhere between one and three weeks. Other important steps of the SEO process — such as content revamp and link acquisition campaign — can each take anywhere from 2-4 months. 

Conclusion

While these steps can take more or less time than we mentioned, you should aim to meet the timelines above when building your SEO strategy.

Have plenty of other things on your plate to be able to develop a stellar SEO strategy? We can help! At Tommy House Studios, we offer small businesses leading-edge SEO solutions to boost their online visibility and drive traffic to their site. If you want to harness the full power of SEO, call us at (334) 310-2915 or fill an online contact form.