Why does SEO take time? / ep142
When you run a business, understanding the timing for different marketing channels is crucial. When it comes to SEO, it is definitely more of a marathon than a sprint. And this is one of the reasons I love it.
Want to get started on your own SEO process? Check out my easy to follow SEO Audit Checklist and get the foundational setup ready for your site to rank correctly.
This question comes up again and again in a lot the convesations I have and now my answer is “What’s the rush?”
If you want your business to succeed, I think a minimum of trying something for 3- 6-months will help you continue to experiment and pivot.
Listen to ep 142 below:
My favourite analogy for this is what it is like to grow a garden. When you plant your first seeds, you don’t expect to see a flower the next day. Just like plants, it takes Google a bit of time to recognize the keywords and good content you have on your site.
I think the worry for many people is what happens if my business changes in a couple of months and I want to pivot. Will it have made sense to invest in SEO if my business is going to change constantly. You can pivot your keywords without damaging your SEO too much, but it also depends on how big of a pivot you want to do. If you are looking to make drastic changes every few months and are looking for quick results yesterday, then maybe SEO isn’t for you.
If you want something stable and dependable, SEO is definitely a way to go. Over time, good keywords create a snowball effect and generate warm leads coming to your site every single day. My A.I.M. process is all about creating a Keyword Strategy that works directly in line with your courses, services and products.
From a technical perspective, there are a couple reasons SEO can take time:
Good content takes time t0 create, including revisions, working with your team, creating infographics, getting the formatting. This is part of the Implementation process of my A.I.M. process.
Google has gotten much more intelligent at understand the overall theme and content on a site. For example, my site has content around SEO, Google Analytic, Business Planning, and Digital Marketing. Although different, all these themes have a relationship with each other, and Google sees that. If I were to suddenly write a recipe post for blueberry pancakes, this would be very confusing and my ranking might be impacted. Building a body of work that is cohesive takes time. This came with the 2013 Google Hummingbird update that enabled the algorithm to understand the relationship between several keywords and builds a relationship across several themes of content.
It takes time for Google to recognize your website’s authority and how it relates to other sites (a.k.a. backlinks). It takes time for it to see that changes have been made, compare the quality of your website and your content to your competition.
When someone searches for something, Google looks at the how they behave in the search results. Do they click on Website #1 and then to #3? Collecting this data traffic around bounce rate and linger time can take time to be processed and impact your search rankings.
Competition is another factor to consider. If you are in a more competitive industry, making progress with your rankings may take more time.
Domain Age, Registration and History. Although minor factors in comparison to content quality, these are things that Google looks like. So if you’re website has been online for longer and has more history, it is slightly easier to rank.
Linking Domain Age. Similar to the above point, backlinks from aged domains may be more powerful than new domains.
At the end of the day, creating an awesome website can take some time not because Google wants to make things difficult, but because something of quality isn’t built overnight.
Thinking of our websites like our online home can help you see that building an amazing space can take some time to craft and experience.
What I like to tell my clients, is it takes a minimum of 6 months to see results from doing intentional SEO. If you are looking for more 1:1 SEO support, fill out this discovery form.
But how can you feel confident about your investment in SEO? Here are some things to keep in mind for the short term:
Build content that your existing audience will love. In this way, you can start targeting keywords AND already share it with your existing audience. This is an SEO best practice anyway!
Let SEO function inside the rest of your marketing ecosystem. One of the biggest mistakes I see with SEO is when it gets treated as an isolated thing. Instead, I recommend integrating it as part of your existing marketing. Align your marketing calendar to make sure the content you publish is promoting the same products/services/courses as the rest of your social media and digital marketing. This doesn’t have to happen all the time, but it can help motivate you in the short term to take action on your SEO.
Recycle and Reuse content for SEO. Creating a whole new blog post from scratch can feel daunting and tiring. Instead think about how you can make a blog post from something that already exists. Maybe it’s a podcast episode (hello!), video, or email series. This is something I assist my clients when it comes to A.I.M. process. I know we are all super busy so we are looking at ways to make this process easy.
Excited to start on your SEO journey? Here are some other episode I recommend listening to as part of this process:
Where are you at with your SEO journey? Let me know in the comments!
In this conversation, branding and design coach Calvina Nguyen and SEO expert Cinthia Pacheco discuss the pros and cons of DIY vs. done-for-you approaches in branding and SEO.