In general, the earlier or higher ranked on the search results page, and more frequently a website appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users; these visitors can then be converted into customers.

SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, video search or even education search, news search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

SEO differs from local search engine optimization in that the latter is focused on optimizing a business’ online presence so that its web pages will be displayed by search engines when a user enters a local search for its products or services.

In an internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work; the computer programmed algorithms which dictate search engine behaviour, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines, and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content, adding content, doing HTML, and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Promoting a site to increase the number of backlinks or inbound links is another SEO tactic.

Now in the perspective of how long SEO will actually take to start working will depend on how long your website has been around, how much SEO has been done on it previously, what shape the website is in, how much content is on it, its link profile and many other SEO factors.

And in this case, we will take an example of two websites that are beginning and starting to grow from the same place, even if they are in the same industry and competing for the same customers.

You Need to Allow Time to do the Audit

Before you start seeing these results you will have to be patient in that you need to allow and give much time to get the work implemented, you need to allow time for Google to recrawl everything and above all give and allow time to do the audit.

When you are aiming for a better performing and higher ranking website, it is best to think long-term, even if you’ll have to wait a while to see the results you want.

Try not to make mistakes; this may be impossible because man is to error, so when you make a mistake in the process, and still you want to achieve a better ranking, try fixing the damage that has already been done, such as SEO errors, unreliable website hosting, and Google penalties.

Depending on the number of 404 errors, broken links, 301 redirects, and inconstant optimization, you may see positive results in about two weeks after resolving all these factors. However, be aware Google doesn’t index all of the changes at once, so you may see an increase quickly in some aspects, but not in all.

A large component to website traffic and ranking also involves your website’s design. If you want to ensure your website’s architecture and URL structure supports proper optimization for a high ranking, choose the right CMS that is search engine friendly and offers increased SEO capabilities.

Responsive Design for Mobile Optimization

Choosing the correct responsive design for mobile optimization is critical as more than half of internet searches originate from mobile devices; therefore, you must spend time ensuring both mobile and desktop optimization requirements are met. By having a responsive design, you’ll ensure your website works properly on all devices, no matter the screen size.

However, here is a plausible scenario for what you’re SEO efforts might look like during the initial months, and the results you might expect.

When you create your web page, during the first month if you do your research and discovery faster or quickly, then technical changes may start being made to the website within the first month. In other cases, a thorough research and discovery phase can last more than one month.

Begin technical SEO work, that is, making a modification to the website based on site audit results though in some cases, the website needs to be overhauled, and this of itself can take months.

Other SEO activities such as working on the link profile and building content can be done at the same time the overhaul is happening. If you find yourself in this overhaul situation, you’ll be doing SEO, but you still won’t be seeing any results at all, since the changes being made will only start to have an impact once they’re finished.

When your web reaches three months old, start focusing on content creation. Blogging, FAQs, whitepapers, articles, expanded product and company information and some other activities. Ideally, you would have started on this right after the strategy and planning, but often budgets restrict what can be done at once, and so a technical overhaul needs to come first.

This being the case, you might start seeing some improvements in rankings by the end of the third month. If those rankings are translating into leads or sales then even better, but you wouldn’t necessarily expect them yet.

Just keep Continuing with the content creation, technical optimization of the website, and development of a healthy link profile. When you reach this stage, you could expect to see a marked increase in rankings, traffic, and lead generation. It won’t be anywhere close to the improvements you should 12 months into your SEO efforts, but it should be significant enough that you know SEO is working.

When you now reach this step or even perhaps earlier in the process, you may have started incorporating social media management into your plan to amplify your content and increase direct traffic to your website for you to be able to get or to lead your website to a healthy, natural link profile, and of course, generate leads in and of itself. You would continue with content creation and perhaps engage in some Public Relation or media outreach. You should be seeing more and more traffic coming in from SEO at this point; hence your leads should be growing as a result.

If your traffic has reached 5,000 visitors per month or more by this point, you could benefit from adding conversion rate optimization to your efforts to improve how the traffic you’re receiving converts into leads and/or sales. From this point on, your activities may be consistently focused on content creation and promoting that content, or you may be doing things that are more creative. The specific activities can vary greatly depending on what type of company you are and what kind of website you have.

It takes like 4 to 6 months to start seeing results. That’s generally accurate, but bear in mind this is when you start seeing results, and SEO results grow over time.

Also, note that whatever results you’re getting at six months should be considerably less than what you’re getting at 12 months.

At some point, you may see your results taper off, and then it may be a matter of maintaining results rather than growing them.

As a blogger or website owner, you are also advised not to stop any time sooner by underestimating how much time and money it takes to be successful with SEO.