Can you tell me why SEO takes so long?
Can you tell me why SEO takes so long?
Author: John Lang
Date: 05/04/2025
Table of contents:
- Why does SEO take so long?
- Why the process cannot be rushed
- Why quality is the name of the game
- How Google fights spam
- Why you need good quality content marketing
- Why you need good quality backlinks
- How our winning SEO agency can help
So, we get it.
Businesses will want to see results, well, pretty much straight away. And we, of course, understand that rent, wages, and stock typically need to be paid every 30 days. However, with SEO, particularly in the context of local search engine optimisation, you are often will be left waiting well over six months to start seeing results.
SEO requires a massive amount of persistence.
The reason is simple: your competitors will have set the bar high. When we say ‘high, ‘ we mean they may have been chipping away at improving on-page and off-page SEO for, well, sometimes over a decade.
Thinking you can rock up and expect to beat established businesses that have been investing for an eternity. Well, this is often unrealistic.
Therefore, the competition sets the standard to beat in terms of content marketing quality, backlinks, and hundreds of other ranking factors.
This, in short, is why SEO takes so long.
Inside Google’s mind
So, Google is like a giant digital library.
This means that millions of businesses have their websites indexed.
These websites keep getting crawled and indexed by something called “Googlebot”/
This bot’s job is to look for changes and alterations to a business’s website.
Therefore, Google is continually seeking improvements. As you can imagine, your competitors also recognise the value of the top spot on Google, so they are constantly working hard to secure one for themselves.
In short, it’s a constant struggle to reach the top of Google—however, the hard work is worth it.
It requires a lot of work, but it also needs constant attention because as soon as you take your foot off the pedal, the competition will start to overtake you.
How does Google’s algorithm work?
Well, in short, no one knows.
No one outside of Google is aware of that.
So, for SEO agencies, we are left to speculate; however, since SEO has been around for a long time, agencies have a good understanding of how it works.
From Google’s PageRank to the Google Helpful Content Update, SEOs globally have worked hard to figure out how it works. Therefore, companies such as Moz and Search Engine Land consistently publish helpful advice.
This is how SEOs like us at our agency learn. We also know by experimenting with our test websites. And we think that the best way to learn
SEO is simply by doing, testing, and measuring the results. This is the only way to figure out what works and what doesn’t.
We now have a winning formula, thanks to one of our most senior SEO consultants, who has been in the field since 2014.
Ranking factors- what are they?
Ranking factors are simply the elements that Google reads to decipher how strong your company’s SEO is. There are backlinks and content marketing; these are the well-known ones, but there’s also page speed, for example.
A good marketing company must optimise as many of these as possible to achieve the best and strongest ranking factors, and this is how you get your business to the top of Google. However, as we mentioned earlier, some companies in Bristol have been improving their SEO for well over 10 years. Therefore, you often don’t just have to improve your ranking factors; you must usually improve them significantly. That’s to overtake the competition.
What does on-page SEO mean?
On-page SEO refers to optimising the SEO elements on your website. This could include adding content marketing, internal links, or improving page speed, for example.
Google EEAT and content marketing quality
What would differentiate a business on page one of Google from one on page 10?
Well, we would say the quality of the content marketing. If a business has top-quality content marketing, it will then have a high Google EEAT score. As a result, the page may also have incoming do-follow backlinks, which can help it rank higher on Google.
On the other hand, a page with “content-thin” pages, well, these businesses won’t be anywhere near page 1 of Google.
Therefore, the quality of the content marketing is key, and you should aim for each page to be well-written. When writing content marketing for each page, ensure that each page has a high Google EEAT score.
What is off-page SEO
So, off-page SEO can include mentions of your business on another company’s website, as well as NAP citations and backlinks.
Yet, if you were to ask us which of the off-page ranking factors can help a business get onto page one, it is good quality backlinks. In short, if your company has a lot of high-quality backlinks, which are a mix of good and bad quality, and the link builder understands link velocity and white-hat SEO, then this can significantly strengthen a business’s SEO.
In short, businesses that occupy the number one position on Google are typically there because they have the best backlinks.
Social signals
What can also help improve your company’s SEO is having a large social media following. These businesses may mention your business and regularly link to it via social media accounts, then direct users to your company website. This means you may have a large flow of shoppers from social media accounts such as Facebook.
The genuinely effective SEO agencies understand that you want shoppers to arrive via a combination of channels. For example, you should aim to get as many shoppers to your site from Google’s organic results, Google Ads, direct traffic, and social media.
You have to have a plan.
Regarding improving a business’s organic SEO, you must be careful with your time.
That’s because if your plan is ineffective, or let’s say, you don’t have a plan of how you are going to optimise the many different ranking signals, well, you could get burnt out, you could also be overly concentrating on one area, while neglecting another part, such as building links.
Therefore, you do need a plan. Indeed, the best SEO consultants usually have a fixed approach, yet they adapt it based on the business sector they are working in.
Additionally, good SEO consultants recognise that a set of businesses typically has a strong backlink profile within their respective business sectors. Therefore, more excellent time will need to be spent building backlinks if your competitors all have strong backlinks leading to their sites.
Google algorithm updates
You can implement the best search engine optimisation in the world, yet sometimes, due to Google algorithm updates, you can be caught up in “ranking flux.” This means that the positions on Google where businesses rank can change dramatically. Often, you will revert to your previous position after a few weeks if white-hat SEO methods have been adhered to.
However, if the site has, for example, thin content pages or weak links, then after a Google algorithm update, a business can move down Google’s rankings.
Now, if a business has not used white-hat methods but instead employed black-hat methods, it is often during a Google algorithm update that the company can incur a penalty. When it incurs a penalty, the business can be “de-indexed,” which means it is entirely removed from Google’s search results. This is why it is always worth working harder and only implementing white-hat methods.
Spam
This is closely linked to our last point: if a business uses black-hat methods, the website can incur a Google penalty.
Now, this could be due to spam, such as building spam links. This is why you will always have a sheer mass of SEO agencies out there who all want your business, but what you want is the best: consultants or agencies that do a good job, follow the guidance of white-hat SEO, Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, and Google’s EEAT principles.
In short, you want a company that will do a good job. White hat SEO is more complex; it requires significantly more work, but it’s the only way to maintain your business’s presence on Google. Because companies that build spam links get de-indexed, which means they are removed from Google due to a link penalty. This link penalty is commonly referred to as the Google Penguin penalty; however, there are many more penalties as well.
Partner with one of the best Bristol SEO agencies in the business
We have been working with businesses for over 10 years to improve their organic search engine optimisation. We are therefore one of the best in the business. We also have experience working with a wide range of companies, from those in the legal sector to well-known construction businesses.
Therefore, if you want to get your business on the first page of Google, Digital Tailors is the business to call. We can take care of every aspect of SEO, from content marketing to building backlinks and improving technical SEO. Therefore, come to the experts in Bristol and Bath, who can offer you high-quality SEO services.
