033 - How Many Hours Does SEO Take?

The long hours it takes to implement an SEO campaign will determine the success of your business. SEO involves many roles working in sync, so if you attempt to do it alone, you are wasting time that you could be using to focus on your expertise and further develop your business. 

In this episode of SEO Leverage, you will learn about the importance of time to build a successful SEO campaign and why you are better off delegating the key roles to an overseer or hiring an SEO company. 

Podcast Highlights:

00:00 Prologue

00:36 Introduction of the topic

01:45 The important roles an SEO team should have in order to run a successful SEO campaign:

• The role of a tech person or a tech service
• Content writing and research
• The Virtual Assistant and/or the Webmaster

03:27 Why is it necessary to have someone to manage the SEO team to optimize the process and results?

04:48 Gert Mellak's recommendation for the overseer role and why it is important to delegate that role instead of doing it yourself?

05:58 End

Resources:

004 - 11 Years of Content Marketing - with James Schramko

How Many Hours Does SEO Take?

If you’re new to SEO, you can surely ask “how many hours or months it takes to see results” or even “how long will it take me to rank for my keywords”? The question stems from a perception of SEO that was formerly true but is no longer so. 

SEO is a long-term marketing tactic that should not be viewed as a quick solution to produce sales. It needs a thorough data analysis and research. However, keep in mind that you will begin to see results, and SEO results will improve over time. Whatever outcomes you get after six months should be far less than what you get after a year.

In this article, you’ll learn the SEO process, factors that affect SEO, and why it takes more months to see the result. So, continue reading.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

SEO refers to the process of taking action by optimizing a website for search rankings. In simple terms, it upgrades your website to boost its exposure when consumers use Google, Bing, and other search engines.

Because individuals do several searches every year, often to find data about products and services, it is a critical component of digital marketing. 

How does SEO strategy work?

For most SEO services, the length of time it takes for SEO to break ground is always a popular issue. Brands’ major source of internet traffic is frequent search, which is supplemented by other marketing channels. Therefore, higher possibilities in search results than your competitors can have a significant influence on your bottom line. 

How much do SEO projects cost?

You might think of how much does SEO cost to have monthly SEO services? It depends on the SEO services pricing of the SEO firm package.

In so many circumstances, paying for only a few months of SEO is akin to wasting money. But, on the other hand, SEO is a marketing approach with one of the finest ROIs if you make the necessary commitment and plan on doing it for the longer term.  You can look for an hourly rate SEO pricing model that is beneficial for small business owners. As such, if you have your monthly budget, go for what's good for your company.

The Search Engine Basics

Rankings are an easy sell for SEO services since they’re emotionally pleasant, but they’re worthless unless they create leads or sales, which is the desired objective. As a result, you need to understand the three basic forms of search traffic that businesses receive. 

Organic

Organic SEO, also known as “organic search engine optimization,” refers to the natural methods and strategies utilized to get high search rankings on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. This could be a game-changer method for you. The term organic is used to distinguish between non-paid SEO approaches and paid SEO strategies, such as PPC.

When it comes to organic SEO, there is a slew of tactics and strategies to consider. Still, it all boils down to optimizing the website’s structure, creating fresh content, and disseminating that material around the web.

Pay Per Click

PPC, or the search engine marketing campaign, refers to the ads that appear at the top and sides of Google, Bing, and Yahoo! Searches, among other search engines or social media networks. There are strategies to combine SEO and paid search to improve your entire marketing strategy. Although PPC advertising does not provide SEO benefits, they provide other perks that can indirectly impact your website’s effectiveness. 

Map Listings

When it comes to Local SEO, this kind of marketing is the quickest, simplest, and most successful way to promote your business online and ensure that your target keywords or company brand are found easily by your local audience. There are a plethora of online marketing options available to small businesses nowadays. However, most of your potential consumers still utilize Google to locate local companies in their area where they may spend their hard-earned money.

How each SEO pillar affects the time it takes for SEO to work

Although SEO is complex and requires long-term thinking, there are main pillars for achieving SEO success. Let’s look at each of them and how they affect the time it takes for SEO to work. 

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is a crucial part of the whole SEO process. However, your SEO efforts will likely not yield the desired results if you have technical SEO issues. Therefore, the process of upgrading a website’s technical elements to improve its pages in a search engine is essential. The cornerstones of technical optimization are making a website faster, easier to crawl, and intelligible for search engines.

Let’s get into some specific elements of technical SEO.

Mobile-Friendliness

One of the important components of technical SEO is mobile-friendliness, which is just as crucial as website speed—since then, being mobile-friendly has been a key factor in how a website appears in mobile search, particularly for local results.

So, have you made a mobile-friendly website yet? If not, then it’s time for you to start the process.

You can begin testing your mobile website once it has been fully designed. But, first, examine all conceivable combinations, pages, and buttons on various devices and operating systems. So, if you’re not sure whether your site is mobile-friendly or not, use Google’s mobile-friendly test tool to discover how much work you still have to do. 

Website Speed

Let’s refresh your memory by going through the fundamentals. First, in our increasingly networked society, website speed has become a significant benefit. Many people focus on a site’s content, metadata, and other standard on-page SEO considerations when discussing website optimization. But there’s something else that’s been just as crucial for SEO for a while now: site speed.

How can you make your site load quickly and provide a better customer experience? This is the time it takes for your site to load and reply to a user. 

• Make your website’s components and templates as simple as possible.
• Multiple redirects harm the speed with which your page loads. So always aim to keep the number of redirects to a minimum and ensure that each page only has one. 
• You can instantly enhance your load times by replacing those images with far smaller, quicker graphics.
• Although hosting may not appear to be a major consideration, especially if this is your first website, the hosting you use significantly impacts your load times. 

Structured Data Markup

Structured data-rich snippets are another aspect of technical SEO to discuss. Naturally, Google can determine the type of your resource based on its content and on-page optimization, but rich snippets will take it to the next level and greatly assist search engines.

What are rich snippets, and how do you use them? When you enter a specific question, rich snippets appear in the search results. The search results will then appear, along with the lovely rich snippets. In addition, rich snippets show you information such as the star rating and the number of reviews.

Site Architecture

The next crucial aspect of technical SEO is creating a user-friendly site architecture that is also SEO-friendly. Make sure to consider a domain authority in your SEO campaign.

Site Architecture includes the following:

• HTTPS
• URL structure
• Internal links
• Breadcrumbs

Duplicate Content

Website errors and how to avoid them are also covered under technical SEO. Then, using Google Search Console, check your website to see if there are any issues.

Duplicate content is a severe technical SEO problem that can lead to a lot of problems. Keep it in mind!

Keep an eye out for any issues with duplicate content. Remove the same content if it is discovered. You can do this by eliminating identical information, but you can also repurpose it. This will take more work, but it’s preferable to put in the effort now than lose the content afterward. Another option is to include the canonical URL on pages containing repeated material.

Content

Content is one of the most important elements in SEO services. This is a difficult task, but it’s rewarding afterward. It includes determining the targeted keywords and fundamental tactics. The content on your website must be eye-catching and unique. It must be written for visitors to appreciate it and for Google to rank it.

Content can vary on different kinds, such as:

• Articles
• Blog posts
• Guides
• Videos
• Product pages
• Directories
• Infographics

Optimizing Your Content

Here’s a rundown of what you’ll need to do to optimize your online content: 

Keyword Research - It’s advisable to undertake keyword research before starting to increase organic traffic through search. This allows you to concentrate on keywords with a high search volume — in other words, find the niche or write about topics that people are already looking for information about.

Keyword Optimization  - For optimal searchability, understand where and how to employ keywords in your content. Most project-based SEO services include such optimization to identify better SEO results.

Content Organization - This is not only helpful for SEO services, but it also makes it easier for readers to find additional related information on your site. Therefore, keep your website content to make your traffic understand the whole intentions.

Content Promotion - Increase the visibility of fresh content you publish by sharing it on social media and establishing links. It could be an additional SEO cost, or do it without extra payment.

Link Building: Identifying the importance of both links

To have a good SEO strategy for your website, you’ll need to know the differences between an internal link and an external link, as well as how they might help you.

Internal links

On the one hand, internal links encourage visitors to spend more time on your website. They create a great user experience as a whole. These links boost the authority of your pages and entire site by making them more accessible to readers. As a call-to-action, internal links are frequently employed. They might, for example, invite a viewer to contact you or plan a visit by directing them to an internal link where they can read or learn more about a topic. 

External links

On the other hand, external links are more beneficial if they lead to popular and relevant pages that are well-ranked and relevant to the content on your website. Linking to other websites won’t affect your page rank as long as the content you’re linking to is relevant and from reputable sources. Adding high-quality, trustworthy and useful website links to your pages can increase your website’s credibility, while adding low-quality spam links will harm it.

The SEO Services timeline: What happens in 1-6 months?

Most SEO campaigns give you a result for 4 to 6 months. This could be right! However, your outcomes may drop down at some time, and then it will be a case of maintaining rather than developing your results. It’s easier to comprehend how long an SEO strategy takes by looking at it month by month using an SEO timetable. 

Month 1: Research, Audit & Keyword planning

This is your first step toward the digital marketing process. Every big research and discovery, as well as data analysis, is happening at this stage. 

As an example, SeoLeverage, an SEO company, conducts a website audit or a comprehensive SEO. Most  SEO companies will examine the structure of your website, the content you have, and your entire user experience after accepting you as a customer.

Aside from that, the above content guide might help you in this stage. In addition, you must construct pages that target keywords that your audience searches for your content to rank.

Month 2: Website Design & Modifications

In most SEO services, this month takes a lot of processes, including technical SEO. We already have mentioned technical SEO elements and guides, which of course, could help you this month.

The changes to be made by digital marketing depend on the website audit. If your website is not responsive enough, you must optimize it to have a great user experience. SEO could all be helpful to your site.

You must also remember that the whole process mentioned does not necessarily take a month to complete, but you must continue until you reach your goal. And also, it depends on the website status upon crawling it.

Month 3: Content Creation

SEO services can make your site rank on the first page of search engine ranking, that is, identify the strength and weaknesses of your content. Content is all, and it’s one of the most important to be considered when taking an SEO campaign. And there you can start to make a change on everything.

After the SEO company has a keyword plan for the first month, you need to make the keyword selection at this stage. Identify what could be your target keywords and what people want & answers to their questions. Every type of content is mentioned above, so you might also keep all the necessary information in this article.

Month 4: Link Building Process

This is one step ahead of your SEO services' success. You can now start getting website traffic and improve your site rankings. Building authoritative links are beneficial to you since it demonstrates to Google that other high-authority websites believe in your content enough to connect to it. 

Month 5: Analyzing Current Results

What will most SEO services do this month? Definitely, looping for social media connections and doing an initial report on the result. This includes the SEO cost of your specific SEO services. Every SEO company must provide you feedback every month and up to this current month to know what’s happening on your site. Your SEO will use Google Analytics to show you how well your campaign is performing. 

Month 6: Testing Your Website

If you’re not getting your expectations this month on your SEO services results, don’t let it discourage you as it’s part of the process. SEO companies also conduct trial and error, and most of which are successful. A competitive SEO campaign can lead you to it. But if not, don’t let it stop you from your goal.

There are two tests to consider after your SEO audit: Heat map and A/B testing.

The Bottom Line

How much does SEO cost to spend now that you estimate how much time it will take? Are most SEO companies have a package for the whole process?

Well, look for a great SEO consultant.

It’s all about the broad picture when it comes to SEO. Take some time to determine how essential SEO is for your local business and where your company fits into the competitive landscape. The more time you’re prepared to devote to SEO projects, as with most other methods, the results will be immensely fulfilling and stunning at the end of the day.

Connect with Gert Mellak:

Email: [email protected]