Results for SEO in Melbourne, FL often take three to six months to manifest.

4,300 people replied to our polls on LinkedIn and Twitter, and that is what they said.

However, the truth is that there is no set period of time. It varies.

Why is SEO so time-consuming?

Advertising is not SEO. You cannot purchase a ticket there. Therefore, you must convince Google that you are the greatest result if you want to rank #1 for a search. 

Google provides paid and organic results.

This means that a variety of things affect how long SEO “works.” Here are some things to think about:

1. An old versus new website

Older websites typically contain more pages, more content, and rank for more keywords because they have been online for a longer period of time and have accumulated more backlinks. 

On the other side, it takes more time and money to launch newer websites. Some SEOs even hold the opinion that Google has a “sandbox” that keeps new websites from ranking. 

As a result, it could take longer for SEO to provide benefits if you’re developing a new website. 

2. The Competition

SEO is not a niche industry. Probably, your rivals are also using SEO. It will take you longer to rank if the keywords you’re targeting are really competitive. 

For instance, we would want to be found for the term “seo.” However, the web pages that are ranked for this term have thousands of backlinks:

The SERP overview for the keyword “seo,” as displayed by Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer

In fact, this keyword has a staggering Keyword Difficulty (KD) score of 97:

The keyword “seo” has a difficulty rating of “keyword”

It will take a lot of time and work on our part if we want to compete. Contrarily, it is considerably simpler to compete for “seo for startups.” As a result, we are currently ranked first.

3. Resources you have

Your results will come in “faster” if you can devote more efforts to SEO. 

You may, for instance, employ more content writers to produce excellent material for you. Or you may spend money on SEO tools to make your task simpler, quicker, and more productive. You might even be able to assemble a crew to work on link building for you. There are countless options.

4. Your approach

A sound strategy can win you the war in half. 

You’ll have a better chance of seeing results more quickly if you have a clear plan for how you’ll approach your target keywords. 

For instance, you might want to rank for a number of significant keywords. They are all fiercely competitive, though. Therefore, it could take months or even years before you start seeing any returns if you’re putting all of your resources into trying to rank for these keywords. 

As an alternative, you can gradually work your way up to your most critical keywords by first focusing on low-competition themes with practical application. In this manner, you can continue to drive some organic traffic to your website while building links, website authority, and more. 

5. Your performance

You must carry out your plan in order to win the second half of the conflict. 

Even the best SEO plan in the world will be useless if nothing is done. Additionally, if you always need to convince internal stakeholders that SEO is worthwhile, this may interfere with your execution. 

Therefore, you’ll probably see benefits “faster” the more consistently you execute.