How long does organic SEO take?

Introduction

Most businesses want to appear on the first page of Google. After all, it can often mean that a business can generate more sales.

As more and more businesses move away from more traditional forms of advertising, more businesses are investing in SEO.

However, even though organic SEO has been around for a great deal of time, a lot of business owners still have unrealistic goals of what they would like to achieve.

For example, they only have a few hundreds of pounds per month to spend, but they want to rank on the first page up against large businesses.

So, businesses first and foremost need to be realistic. And you may now be thinking, well that sounds rather defeatist!

I am going to vote with my feet and choose an seo agency that’s more up-beat and tells me what I want to hear.

Well! This is often where so many businesses go wrong, as most businesses are only an e-mail away or a phone call from meeting an seo that will tell you can aim for world domination on a shoe-string budget.

Yet, what can happen if the seo work is rubbish, is the website incurs a penalty. It can mean the website becomes very difficult for customers to find on Google.

Also the recovery process, from something like a Google Penguin or Google Panda update can be a long one, and if you are obtaining expert advice to remedy the problems, well this can often be costly as well.

So, this doesn’t mean that all seo companies that offer cheap seo are bad, or that the most expensive agencies are the best, it simply boils down to this, it comes down to how good in terms of quality the SEO is, and whether the seo company is being clear and honest with you as a business.

 

So, how long does it take to get a business onto the first page of Google?

Here’s the thing, it all boils down to how competitive your business sector is. How strong are your competitors?

And this is where the business states well you should be telling us, and here’s the thing, each website is ranked according to how strong over 200 signals are.

So yes an seo agency could make a rough assessment in terms of how strong your competitors are, but that is all it would be a rough estimate.

So when a business simply states it can take up to six months, or 12 months, well this is often just something they have got used to saying, sometimes without really doing much research into how strong your competitors are.

 

So what’s the most honest approach to take?

Well that’s easy, but not one businesses often want to hear as they want set dates to hold an seo agency to.

The honest approach is to evaluate each competitor that’s on the first page, state why the seo consultant believes each website is strong. Be honest and say that business 1, 2 and 3 have good quality seo that looks to implemented over a very long timeframe, perhaps many years, and state that to overtake such competitors that the business will have to exceed these efforts, and be prepared that it can take a similar timeframe.

Yet, the seo agency should state ways they believe they can implement work which may shorten the timeframe and use white hat seo methods to try and implement better marketing strategies.

This is an honest approach, and guess what? The businesses that have been hit by penalties in the past, the ones that know of businesses that have been hit with penalties, well this longer more thought-out approach suddenly becomes more appealing than the agencies which state they will make your business an overnight success.

 

Why does a business have to pay each month?

This is something that a lot of businesses simply struggle to understand when first investing in SEO, that is why do they need to pay each month for SEO?

Well the simple fact is businesses will always have competitors that also want their business to be placed on the first page of Google.

So this often means that your competitors will also be working on their SEO, so the standard that has to be exceeded in order to get a business onto the first page becomes higher and higher.

Therefore if a business was to pause their seo investment, or even stop completely, well often its only a short amount of time before the competition quickly replace their business.

 

Why is it such a slow process?

Often many businesses when they hear how long it can take to get their business onto the first page will be deterred from investing in SEO.

As often if the seo is implemented correctly, well it can take a long time. So, often this is where some businesses are automatically attracted more to the businesses that state they can get their business onto the first page in a much shorter timeframe.

However, this is where the business must ensure white hat methods are being used, as if the business doesn’t use white hat seo methods, then the business could incur a penalty.

And, this is often why some businesses can promise much shorter timeframes to get a business onto the first page because they are not using white hat methods. And its only then later that the business realises that they may have been hit by a penalty, and its then that the business realises why the marketing agency was charging low prices, and over promising on what they could deliver.

As we earlier mentioned, penalties can take a long time to recover from, so this could mean your business could lose business, and in order to correct the penalty this can be costly sometimes, that’s if you pay an seo expert to correct the issues.

The client has to be realistic

So in reality, the client has to be realistic. The reason is if a business chooses the wrong seo business, well this can result in a penalty.

So our best advice would be to partner with a white hat seo that’s honest about how long it can take to get your business onto the first page of Google. Even if the timeframes sound longer than what some other companies are stating, you have to evaluate is this because they are implementing good quality seo, and if so surely that’s better than cheap seo that could mean your business incurs a penalty?

 

How we can help

If your business requires white hat seo, then why not give us a ring?