Often Asked Question - How Long For SEO To Work?

I see this asked a lot and Ahrefs posted about it on FB.


We ran a few polls on LinkedIn and Twitter to find out how long it takes for SEO to work—and why you can’t expect instant results.

According to a poll of ~4,300 people, SEO takes 3-6 months to show results. But it all depends on several factors.

Seems to depend on what keywords I'm targeting and in what niche. Sometimes I see movement almost right away then sometimes it takes months if rankings move at all.

JackRabbitSlim said:

Seems to depend on what keywords I'm targeting and in what niche. Sometimes I see movement almost right away then sometimes it takes months if rankings move at all.

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It also depends on your on page as well as what previous off page you have done previously. Crawl budget might be another factor to consider too.

But it's not as straightforward as some people think that they get 2 links today, by tomorrow they are indexed and then 24 hours later rankings are improving.

MisterF said:

According to a poll of ~4,300 people, SEO takes 3-6 months to show results. But it all depends on several factors.

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From your very own experience, has this been your case?

Did you start seeing results from between the 3rd and the 6th month?

Also, what kind of results exactly? Is it major traffic bump or one or two pages begin to pick up?

MisterF said:

But it all depends

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Most used quote when we talk about SEO!

HenryObi said:

From your very own experience, has this been your case?

Did you start seeing results from between the 3rd and the 6th month?

Also, what kind of results exactly? Is it major traffic bump or one or two pages begin to pick up?

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There's no definitive answer to this, due to numerous reasons. I'd prefer to advise new clients that expect 3-6 months, that way we often get results quicker, thus we under promise and over deliver.

Quite often I'll walk away from possible clients, who tell me " I need to be top 3 of page 1 in a month and I have $250 as a budget ", this follows on from my thread https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/fastest-way-to-kill-your-business-taking-on-the-wrong-clients.1420630/post-15418165 and it's number 6 on the list.



I've recently been working with 3 or 4 new clients, who came onboard in June / July and we started getting results after a couple of weeks. These were in the main aged sites, just not been touched SEO wise, minimal content , fast loading, good UX etc.

I have another client who joined us in July, an expired domain, repurposed but in a totally different niche and this is a struggle to get what I'd like in terms of results. His new niche is quite competitive.

The issues with Google and their indexing rates don't help matters, so that is a big contributing factor for sure.

Just started working with someone in a difficult health niche, small budget of $500 but I informed this client before we started working, that their links they had were going to be the big issue as they were toxic spammy junk. 17k links to a site across a 24 hour period, all using the same anchor is not going to end well.

https://gyazo.com/ef41555261298105788b37026bf8afc8
They'd bought links and basically what they got was toxic PBN crap. So instead of us working from a clean slate, we are having to undo the crap already been done, before the results from our efforts kick in.


I also do think adding new content is important to help a site either brand new articles on new pages, or updating existing pages. I sometimes see clients in affiliate niches ranking for best XYZ 2022 keyword, but their page is still looking at 2022.

MisterF said:

Quite often I'll walk away from possible clients, who tell me " I need to be top 3 of page 1 in a month and I have $250 as a budget ", this follows on from my thread here and it's number 6 on the list.

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Let's assume this guy has a budget of $2k+ per month, would you take him knowing he wants results in 1 month?

MisterF said:

They'd bought links and basically what they got was toxic PBN crap. So instead of us working from a clean slate, we are having to undo the crap already been done, before the results from our efforts kick in.

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That's a lot of work and would slow progress for a while.

MisterF said:

But it's not as straightforward as some people think that they get 2 links today, by tomorrow they are indexed and then 24 hours later rankings are improving.

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then my sir, you have not come across $arkar magical seo packages. You are behind!!!

MisterF said:

I see this asked a lot and Ahrefs posted about it on FB.


We ran a few polls on LinkedIn and Twitter to find out how long it takes for SEO to work—and why you can’t expect instant results.

According to a poll of ~4,300 people, SEO takes 3-6 months to show results. But it all depends on several factors.

Click to expand...

It depends on the niche and the competition of keywords I choose. we can't tell blindly.

HenryObi said:

Let's assume this guy has a budget of $2k+ per month, would you take him knowing he wants results in 1 month?

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Honestly, no one can guarantee the exact results without analyzing the client's website and the competition. We all know that results are unpredictable. As we keep hearing, SEO results are based on several factors as @MisterF said above.

As for the "Let's assume this guy has a budget of $2k+ per month, would you take him knowing he wants results in 1 month?" question, this also depends on the niche and the target keywords.

f0rest00 said:

Honestly, no one can guarantee the exact results without analyzing the client's website and the competition. We all know that results are unpredictable. As we keep hearing, SEO results are based on several factors as @MisterF said above.

As for the "Let's assume this guy has a budget of $2k+ per month, would you take him knowing he wants results in 1 month?" question, this also depends on the niche and the target keywords.

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Nobody takes a client without analyzing their website. It's a stupid approach.

And the essence of the question is; irrespective of the niche and budget it makes no sense promising a client results in 1 month. You're setting yourself up. Unless the client is already at the top. Even at that, sometimes changes take couple of weeks to reflect on the SERP.

HenryObi said:

Nobody takes a client without analyzing their website. It's a stupid approach.

And the essence of the question is; irrespective of the niche and budget it makes no sense promising a client results in 1 month. You're setting yourself up. Unless the client is already at the top. Even at that, sometimes changes take couple of weeks to reflect on the SERP.

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I agree with what you said. Would it matter if their competitors spent $2k+ to maintain their rankings or some extra budget to outrank the client?

HenryObi said:

Let's assume this guy has a budget of $2k+ per month, would you take him knowing he wants results in 1 month?

That's a lot of work and would slow progress for a while.

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To be honest, we have a bare minimum spend for our managed clients of $5k a month, so budgets under that we suggest they just order links from our services.
But hypothetically, if we were working at a $2k a month level, we'd never guarantee to get to page 1 in a month, but if for example the main keyword was number 2 on page 2 and we thought we could manage this, we'd say we could possibly/ probably achieve this, but we'd never guarantee to do this.

No serious/real SEO could ever guarantee this, because they do now own nor control Google.

MisterF said:

To be honest, we have a bare minimum spend for our managed clients of $5k a month, so budgets under that we suggest they just order links from our services.
But hypothetically, if we were working at a $2k a month level, we'd never guarantee to get to page 1 in a month, but if for example the main keyword was number 2 on page 2 and we thought we could manage this, we'd say we could possibly/ probably achieve this, but we'd never guarantee to do this.

No serious/real SEO could ever guarantee this, because they do now own nor control Google.

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The '$2k' was just an arbitrary figure, the point I was trying to make is; say the client has a budget that is bigger than the initial $250/$500, he has a budget of $10k and wants results in one month, would you take him?

f0rest00 said:

I agree with what you said. Would it matter if their competitors spent $2k+ to maintain their rankings or some extra budget to outrank the client?

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Maintaining ranking is easier than trying to get there.

When trying to get there, you have two hurdles to scale, unlike those who are there already and are SEO conscious.

Some website owners are ranking high but are not SEO conscious.

HenryObi said:

The '$2k' was just an arbitrary figure, the point I was trying to make is; say the client has a budget that is bigger than the initial $250/$500, he has a budget of $10k and wants results in one month, would you take him?

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Same applies mate; we'd never guarantee to get to page 1 in a month, but if for example the main keyword was number 2 on page 2 and we thought we could manage this, we'd say we could possibly/ probably achieve this, but we'd never guarantee to do this.

The sad thing is unless this was a churn and burn project, some would do this and then a month later the site tanks. We come across this often, where other service say they will get you to page 1, but then fail to mention they will not be able to keep you on page 1.

MisterF said:

Same applies mate; we'd never guarantee to get to page 1 in a month, but if for example the main keyword was number 2 on page 2 and we thought we could manage this, we'd say we could possibly/ probably achieve this, but we'd never guarantee to do this.

The sad thing is unless this was a churn and burn project, some would do this and then a month later the site tanks. We come across this often, where other service say they will get you to page 1, but then fail to mention they will not be able to keep you on page 1.

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I see. Many business owners want results very quickly without understanding how things work.

I was communicating with one, he said he couldn't pay $1200 and he wants results quickly. I suggested he go for PPC as he would be guaranteed to get quick traffic.

Indeed, My understanding says the single approach never works for various niches. I had also started from the ground level; results are in my favor, somewhere they are not.

MisterF said:

It also depends on your on page as well as what previous off page you have done previously. Crawl budget might be another factor to consider too.

But it's not as straightforward as some people think that they get 2 links today, by tomorrow they are indexed and then 24 hours later rankings are improving.

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Hey Mister, thanks for the insight

I actually have a question

Bought an expired domain with a really good looking and clean backlink profile.

Created a fully optimized site and restored the articles with most links from the previous domain.

Started publishing articles almost daily for two months straight

It has been 2 months and there are barely no impressions nor clicks

Articles get indexed pretty fast, but the articles do not show up for the keywords. (Between the 50 and 100 spot when they do)

The keywords are extremely low competition.

As you said it take 3 to 6 months to see results but as I said there are barely no clicks nor impressions.

Also taking into account it is a expired domain with strong links and no penalties, shouldn't the site be ranking already?

Thanks

TooCorny said:

Also taking into account it is a expired domain with strong links and no penalties, shouldn't the site be ranking already?

Thanks

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In a word, Yes, I would have expected this, but currently I don't think Google knows or understand what they are doing.

The new content you are adding is Ai or not? using anything like Frase or Surfer? Doing interlinking on the site too?