This article does an in-depth analysis of SEO campaign expectorations so that business owners understand the timeline and know when to expect results. Search engine optimization campaign is a tried-and-tested method to increase visibility and consequently revenue.
A well-planned and implemented campaign ensures consistent performance on search engine rankings pages on relevant search queries. The right approach will ensure that your website is bringing in more traffic, generating leads, seeing more conversions, and improving the sales of your service or product.
All this sounds fine, but do you know what it really entails? Moreover, how do you achieve it? Well, the best solution would be to enlist the help of an efficient and expert digital marketing agency that helps you improve your overall search engine rankings.
But what is an SEO campaign? How long do you need to wait to see results? When can you top the first page of Google? When will your audience notice you? These are questions that must be running through your mind – and rightly so.
Starting an SEO campaign is one thing – understanding it completely is something entirely different. This article is an attempt to explain the nuances of search engine optimization and what you must do to achieve success. We will also be talking about the things that lead you towards success. Primarily, we shall be talking about two things – SEO expectations and SEO results. Let’s get started!
When to Expect SEO Results?
It is natural to want to understand the timeline of SEO and when to expect results. This is natural inquisitiveness. Unfortunately, there is no straight-forward answer to such queries. Ask any well-meaning digital marketing expert and they will tell you why the answer isn’t simple.
According to Google, “SEOs need four months to a year to help your business first implement improvements and then see potential benefit.” For any search engine to trust your website, you must show consistent performance. Unless Google or any other search engine trusts your credibility, they will not rank you on the top.
To do is, you must build authority, and this is what takes time. If an SEO agency is telling you otherwise, they are purportedly misleading you. Beware of such information!
The correct answer to how long it takes to see SEO results is this. It will typically take you 6 months to 12 months to see any marked improvement in rankings. Generally, by the end of the third month, you should notice certain positive indicators related to organic positioning, traffic, and the general visibility of your site. But for more specific results, you must wait at least a complete year.
To understand the timeline of an SEO campaign, let’s now dig deeper into the search engine optimization world.
What Do SEO Results Look Like and Why?
In most cases, the first time any business thinks of SEO is when no optimization has been done for their website. They basically start from scratch. At this point, the website doesn’t meet any optimization requirements. The content is sloppy and irrelevant, the site is still considered untrustworthy and there is no authority that it commands.
In the initial days of the campaign, the idea is to simply lay the groundwork. Necessary adjustments are made to the website that ensures that Google starts noticing your site and crawls it regularly. It is the time when your site is built to be ideal to meet ideal search queries requirements.
Since this is the first time any kind of optimization is taking place, the changes will be powerful and quite drastic. Within two to three months, you can see the changes. This then powers the website to continuously rank better on Google.
But for this to work, you will need to keep two things in mind.
First, during the first three months, you will need to collaborate intensely with your SEO agency. Communication must be frequent, and discussions must be regularly held about campaign goals, target keywords, and business priorities. For best results, you must always be responsive. Being receptive (to new ideas) is also important. You must trust the SEO experts to guide you through all the technical aspects of SEO audits, keyword research, site optimization decisions, etc. If you want your site to perform, you must prioritize their request and recommendations.
For your SEO campaign to be successful, you must participate. You will not be able to enjoy the success of any SEO campaign unless recommendations are made by the SEO team are implemented. Unless you push through the initial months with force and fervor, you will not be able to enjoy successive milestones in a timely manner.
Secondly, there will be an initial surge – in search result placements as well as through increased organic traffic. However, the initial figures can be deceiving. After the first couple of times of intensive campaigning, you will notice a slump. Things will slow down after the first two-three months.
This must be expected and shouldn’t really surprise you. What’s important at this point is to understand why this happens and to mold your expectations accordingly for the future.
Why You Must Not Trust the Initial Thrust
During the initial months of your SEO campaign, your website undergoes drastic changes. These changes get reflected since Google notices the signals you are sending across. But once the initial optimization is complete, there are no major changes on the website which means that Google doesn’t receive new signals.
Since the initial surge is no longer there, the rate of improvement ceases or slows down. Hence you might see the dip in your rankings.
Once the progress starts to fade, it’s time to enter the next phase of your campaign. It is time to focus on link building and on making your website more authoritative.
As you focus on link building, it will improve your website’s trustworthiness and authority. If this happens naturally, Google will notice you. However, if there is any foul play from your end, Google will notice that too and will immediately penalize you. Your SEO will be badly hit and it will take you extra time to rebuild confidence.
Backlink building is undoubtedly a time-taking affair and it won’t be immediately reflected in your optimization efforts. However, obtaining powerful links consistently will show its effects soon. This time, the growth trajectory will be long-lasting.
Once your web pages start to consistently feature on search engines, both your visibility and organic traffic will improve. Basically, your target audience will reach you faster.
Overcoming The Disappointment Gap
In the initial days of your first SEO campaign, everything will look promising. A lot of activity will be underway to improve your website and its content. These efforts will also show immediate results in the form of improved organic visibility, traffic, and rankings. You would be intensely collaborating with your SEO expert who will make recommendations for further improvement.
It is understandable to look at this promising start with a lot of hope, to expect things to improve in the future. But by now, you should understand that this isn’t how SEO works – at least not in the long run.
Unless you completely understand SEO, you will be dejected. The Disappointment Gap will continue to loom over you as search engine results may stagnate and potentially regress. If you thought that the fast-paced improvement of the first two months was an indication of such results in the future – you will be disappointed.
The SEO experts will know that the slump is a natural part of the progress, and they won’t worry about it. But if they do not apprise you of the same, your expectations and reality will never meet. This can be dangerous – both for the SEO campaign and your relationship with the SEO agency.
The only way to stop yourself from falling into this trap of disappointment is by educating yourself about SEO. You and your team must understand “SEO results” in their entirety. Understand what the normal progress rate is and when to expect regressions and/or improvements.
Since there is no way, you can know “when” you will rank 1 for specific search keywords, educating yourself about SEO will tell you how to look for signs of positive progressions. But above all, you must trust the SEO process and wait for things to unfold slowly – but surely.
How to Judge the Effectiveness of Your SEO Campaign
After you started the SEO campaign, it is time to build links for priority URLs. SEO experts do this through guest posting. This strategy should be able to improve site ranks – especially for relevant keywords. But above all, these improved rankings must be maintained. Maintaining site ranking becomes comparatively easy as your content begins matching with search intent.
Monitoring rankings is the key to success in SEO and must be done throughout the campaign. Take the help of Google Analytics and Google Search Console as they display easily discernible KPIs.
For example, if you are seeing an increase in organic traffic, it should be followed by increasing organic positioning. You can use Google Analytics to see how much your target search terms are bringing the traffic. This will help you know how well your campaign is working.
The Google Search Console is a good place to understand how your campaign is working. Here you can get the big picture of your performance. Everything – from the number of people visiting your site to your search engine rankings is displayed here. If your positioning and impressions are increasing, then you can be sure that the campaign is being successful.
However, if you notice that though impressions are more clicks are less, it means that you need to work on your title tags, meta descriptions, and quality of the blogs posted. To make your SEO campaign successful, you must work on blog content optimization and properly utilize keyword research tools. You must also improve the metadata in the ancillary pages as this can improve your impressions, clicks, and also organic traffic.
Lastly, your SEO campaign will finally be successful when you pay attention to your local SEO. Unless you focus on competing with the local businesses around, you won’t be taking many steps forward. Register with Google My Business as this helps you monitor your performance.
SEO and ROIs – What’s The Truth About Them
You are investing in SEO expecting results. That’s natural. But for this to happen, you must be willing to invest your time (and not just money). Close collaboration with your SEO team will help improve the campaign strategy and make it more feasible. When you work closely with the SEO team, the right keywords get used which improves traffic, leads, and consequently ROI.
But a word of caution – there are no quick fixes here. You cannot trick or rush the SEO process. If an agency is telling you that quick ROIs are possible – they are blatantly misleading or are involved in unethical practices. If you are clear from the beginning that it takes time to enjoy the return on investment, you won’t be disappointed.
Where Do Most SEO Agencies Fail?
Innumerable SEO agencies are promising an umbrella of benefits. But can they live up to such tall claims?
In reality, SEO agencies either –
- Ace SEO but fail to keep up with client communication,
- Know how to communicate with clients but end up doing shabby SEO.
Neither of these options sounds promising, right? At Cyrusson Inc. we have endeavored to bridge this communication gap while improving our services. Our SEO services are impeccable as we constantly rediscover ideas and stay updated on the latest technologies. We do not simply promise but offer tangible results that have a long-lasting impact on your business.
We believe in communication – constant, instant, and updated communication. We like to always keep you in the loop, encouraging feedback and suggestions all along.
We believe in reports, meetings, calls, and discussions. If your SEO is improving, you should know why – we always tell you the reason why a campaign is being successful.
We hear endless stories of clients being duped by SEO agencies who sign up with them a 6-12 month contract (with full payment) but in the end, do nothing notable in terms of SEO.
We do not practice this. Though SEO is a long-term commitment, we like to inform you every 30 days about the progress so that the decision to continue is based on results and stats. This approach has helped us successfully maintain long-term relationships with clients.
However, simply keeping up with communications is not enough. We understand that. That’s why our work speaks for itself. We have been consistently performing and helping business improve their search engine rankings, traffic, visibility, etc.
It is not uncommon for complacent marketers to rely on obsolete SEO practices without realizing that the milieu of SEO is constantly changing. Unless you adapt to the change, you can no longer be an expert. We understand this changing ecosystem and have adapted ourselves accordingly. There are no best practices that can be used for the long term and we know it.
Many agencies do not consider the implications while claiming to be SEO experts. In most cases, they are at best marketing experts and do not specialize in SEO. So, when they claim to offer the “best SEO services”, they are essentially white-labeling or outsourcing.
We do not function with such duplicity. What we say, we do. As a boutique digital marketing agency, we specialize in SEO but also cater to other marketing needs such as PPC, website development, content management, etc.
In SEO, we do not just concentrate on on-page optimization because we know that’s just half the job done. We also put our efforts into off-page optimization since link building is a crucial part of SEO. If an agency is just promising you the thin lines of SEO – be wary of associating with them. They may not live up to your expectations.
Now, that you know what to expect from an SEO agency and how optimization works, team up with a partner that meets your expectations and helps you improve your rankings and visibility. Cyrusson Inc. is just the agency you need. We have a full team of experts who know how to customize services according to client needs. Contact us today to know more about our services.