Beverly Sills said it right, “There are no shortcuts to places worth going.”
And so we’ll begin this article with the truth; mentioning how there are no timesavers to getting better and quicker results with SEO. It is a constant effort.
When talking about SEO, everyone gives you quick fixes to rank your business to the top of the search engine. That of course, involves playing around with a plethora of keywords. But did you ever wonder why the question,
“When will my website rank?” never left you?
The question and the inquisitiveness are not at all surprising. Because of the following reasons
- SEO implementation isn’t everyone’s piece of a cake.
- It isn’t a one-time thing. It is continuous work.
- It is like a hobby you get addicted to.
- It is an investment that requires constant efforts and attention to sustain the results, long term.
Now, What is Search Engine Optimization? REALLY!
SEO (Search Engine Optimization,) is a process that most businesses, websites, blogs, and companies use as a constant habit to enhance their visibility in the virtual world.
Search Engine Optimization helps the sites to rank amongst the best, attracting more customers. It ensures that your site is shown to the right people, at the right time and increase the amount of traffic to your website from the search engine.
But, How Long Does SEO Take To Start Working?
“Not forever, not tomorrow, maybe in 20 days. It may even take 6 months.”
That one and the only question which worries an online retailer’s mind, whether they run a content company, or retail marketers, or someone who own online business is,
“When will we see the results of all the SEO implementation we have done?”
The answer is, slowly!
It can vary depending on a number of factors. We will discuss all it in the next segment of this article. But for now, 6 months or somewhere close to 5 months.
The ranking and the results of all the SEO implementation you broke your head to, depends on a number of factors. Count in,
- Your website’s age
- The website’s past history with Google,
- Whether or not your website has received google penalties before!
There are some more factors as well.
Hold your pen and paper, let’s discuss them!
What Factors Effect The SEO Timeline?
SEO is a long term strategy. You can think of it as a wine that gets better with time. There are some times when the tricks work overnight, while the other times, it takes a lot of your patience to even see a minor impact.
Let’s examine the factors.
1. Website’s structure, and design:
One thing you might have noticed while implementing a theme to your website or creating one is the usage of SEO in it. Because the architecture and design of your website play a vital role in building the rank of the website in the search engine.
When building or editing your website, you need to make sure that the website you have is responsive and has a URL structure that supports proper SEO optimization for better ranking. In simple words, you need to pick on the right CMS system that is search engine friendly and use a URL structure that won’t drag down your page ranking.
What to do?
- Your URL should be 100% readable. Try to use hyphens more than underscores. (In case you are thinking of using one.) Because Google does not read underscores!
- The URL is like a fingerprint for you, make sure you put the top content of your website in the root folder. (URL structure first signals the search engine to pick up content from the root folder.)
- URL’s are case sensitive. Ignore the usage of block letters.
- Googlebot loves to crawl into websites that are well organized, so make sure you pen down the hierarchy of your website on paper before you implement a structure to it.
- Categories are very useful on a website, make them logical and then feed keywords of your liking.
2. Website’s age:
Just like an individual going for an interview without previous experience, a website without followers and people to vouch for will fall back in the SEO game. Building proper ranking for the website also depends on how legitimate your website is.
Matt Cutts, a Google engineer said, “The difference between a domain that’s six months old vs. one-year-old is really not that big at all. As long as you’ve been around for at least a couple of months, you should be able to make sure that you can show up in search results.”
It’s simple, a new website will take time to settle, get noticed by Google and work its way to the top because link building takes time.
Established websites have a huge amount of backlinks and paid links. While you as a newbie might be struggling to establish your rank overnight, it is to understand that SEO optimization for a new website will take time and do constant efforts.
3. Content Strategy:
It is said and it was very well explained by Kapost that a website with good content strategy will have as much as 8% increase in their traffic than other websites who are still running in the competition.
In case your website doesn’t contain proper and reactive content that can mark your name in the content industry, the game will be harder for you. Poor quality content is known to bring down the traffic of websites by almost 50%. Hence, the term consistent comes into the debate.
Note to take back home: Consistent content with the right content marketing strategies and proper SEO management will help you rank your website in the top 10.
4. How good is your understanding about on-page SEO and off page SEO?
So, you worked on the keywords, and backlinks and you thought your work was over.
Listen up! SEO management is not about how little to do, it is about how much you can do to get that little growth in return. In case you are working on building your SEO game stronger, you need to inculcate proper habits to work on on-page and off-page SEO.
On page SEO: On page, SEO includes your
- Content (if or if not is rich in keywords,)
- Metadata
- Anchor text
- Alt text for the images
- Captions
- Titles
- Descriptions
- The word length etc
On Page SEO work faster than off page SEO and you can happily vouch on your efforts if you work more on these constraints.
Off Page SEO: Off page SEO includes linking to well-established websites that hold authority in the SEO fraternity. As you start to grow and wish to build results, these well-established websites can help you rank better by giving backlinks to your website. Count in,
- Guest blogging
- Social media mentions
- Off Page commenting
- Social media sharing;
All these come under off page SEO optimization techniques.
1. Link Building:
As easy as it might sound, it is a complicated job. It is an essential part of the Google algorithm as link building is something Google appreciates. But that doesn’t mean you can go overboard with your content and use all kinds of black hat tactics to boost your ranking.
It requires developing eye-catching quality content on a daily basis so that your readers stay hooked. Black hat tactics will give birth to Google penalties, and Google penalties are something you don’t want to meddle with.
Here are a few ways that you can use to build white hat links to your website that don’t attract Google penalties:
- Link reciprocal is not bad as long as it isn’t excessive and going haywire according to the readers.
- Google appreciates ranking you to the top when it understands that people love to write about your website and not just bragging. Link building should not look artificial but natural.
- Go for niche web directories and enroll your websites Doing so, you will be attached to other websites that share the same niche with you and you’ll get niche based readers who appreciate your work too.
- Participate in active forums or discussion platforms like Quora, Reddit, and Tumblr. Jot down your suggestions and give the links to your website, if any. Make sure the links you give are relevant to the human eye tends to click and check out.
- Don’t ever buy links. Instead, invest in promoting your website using natural ways that attract backlinks.
2. A clever domain name.
While a clever domain name might not do all the tricks but it is said that choosing a domain name with a popular keyword works wonders for a website. For example, if you run a website with articles highlighting banks and their several deals, you can use loans or bank as your keywords.
How to choose the right domain name?
- Don’t miss to choose your brand name in your domain name.
- Don’t overboard the domain name with keywords. Keep one or two but not more than that.
- Always go for a .com
- Avoid using ideas from an existent domain name. Choose your own.
- The Domain Authority of your website plays a major role.
Domain authority (DA) or the area authority of your website is the measure of how legitimate and real the website is. This measure is under between 0-100 and the number changes with the age of the website and the work that it has done. This also alters the ranking of the website in the search engine as the more legitimate the website is, the better rank it will receive.
In case there are a lot of people who vouch for you, share your content, comment and talk about you on their websites, then your website will have a better ranking.
- The keywords you are using; big tail or short tail keywords.
When it comes to your SEO ranking and making it work efficiently for you, the kinds of key phrases and keywords you use make a lot of difference. The usage of keywords can be compared to the usage of hashtags. You might very well know how every hashtag doesn’t and cannot work for your profile, as nicely as it does for your competitors who you are eyeing.
How to research keywords for your website?
- First, make a list of all the topics related to your website. Not down all the relevant topics (5-10) and come up with specific keywords.
- You can choose your specific keywords using SEO tools available online. You can even just think of yourself as a reader of your own website, and think of the things that you may search online to land on your website.
- Now that you have found out the topics and the keywords, it is important for you to stick to the SEO tools to come up with phrases and words that you can use in your content to implement SEO.
QUICK TIP: You can even go to google.com, type in your keyword and scroll down to the part at the bottom where “Related Searches” are shown. The topics given in the related searches will give you an idea of more keywords that you can use to implement SEO properly.
3. How many google penalties have you received before?
Google bot keeps a strict check on the websites that have already served penalties before. A Google penalty creates a negative impact on your website’s ranking. This happens because Google’s algorithms get the notification that your website has been faulty once. This mainly happens when you go overboard using all black hat techniques to SEO optimization. And in case your website uses a lot of intrusive pop-ups and advertisements, Google devalues the website.
Unfortunately, SEO optimization is a long term rinse and repeat process. It will tire you down but the end will be beautiful, just like the movies. So, tighten your belts, take a reality check, roll your sleeves up and get going on creating a proper SEO optimization plan with realistic expectations.
Conclusion:
Remember, there are no shortcuts in the game of SEO and forget all the hype that’s online. Work on your SEO strategy, your efforts will slowly and steadily pay off.