How Long Does SEO Take In Australia?

If you have asked the question, how long does SEO take? You definitely aren't alone! This one of the most commonly asked questions we get here at Australian Web Experts. In this post, we cover how long SEO takes.
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how long does seo take 1

This is the most frequently asked question we get here at Australian Web Experts, how long does SEO take? The short answer is that it depends. However there are a number of key metrics that show your SEO campaign is progressing at various intervals throughout the campaign. There are also some milestones that show the strength and progress of your SEO project, which we highly recommend monitoring.

We know you’re here for an answer and you are wondering “how long does SEO take?”. In short, a SEO campaign should begin to show upward signs of keyword movement within around 3 months. Within a 3 month period, the SEO being completed on your website will be generating an upward swing of keyword movement, some new content should be produced within 3 months and some quality backlinks should be acquired within 3 months.

Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that your phone will be ringing off the hook within 3 months. We use the 3 month rule to give each client a general understanding that keywords are moving in the right direction, and within 3 months we are building a quality foundation for your overall SEO campaign.

In our 10+ years of experience in the Australian SEO space, we have seen clients get SEO results much faster, and we have also had client SEO projects that take a little bit longer. We will always give our clients a clearer time frame once we have completed their SEO audit as part of their SEO package with Australian Web Experts.

SEO Is A Long Term Process

For businesses that need immediate revenue, we typically recommend ensuring you are marketing in a variety of other ways; such as social media and PPC advertising. These methods can produce results within a couple of weeks, however SEO is a long-term process that takes time, energy and effort. You should still be conducting a SEO campaign at the same time, to allow you to turn off the other marketing avenues as your website begins to rank organically for your keyword search terms.

Since SEO is a long-term process that takes time, it is also one of the most valuable ways to increase your website traffic, revenue and profit in a sustainable way. As the saying goes, most good things take time. This rings incredibly true when it comes to SEO in Australia.

While the “3 month rule” is a great metric to get some proof of concept from your SEO agency, it can often take 9-12 months to receive page 1 rankings across all of your keyword search terms; particularly if you are in a competitive industry. In SEO, the longer you are completing ongoing optimisations, the better your SEO results will be.

Why Does SEO Take So Long?

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Organic traffic upward trend to 4,423 visits per month.

There are a large number of metrics that go into ensuring your website is ranking properly in the Google algorithm and Google requires a number of signals to ensure you are indexed properly.

In short, there are some key foundations for SEO success that need to be properly optimised to ensure you are ranking. We cover these briefly in our basic SEO overview and more in-depth below.

Onsite Optimisation. A thorough on-page optimisation process needs to take place to ensure Google knows exactly what your website is about. This is conducted at an initial website level of ensuring current pages have appropriate meta titles and descriptions, images are properly optimised with alt text, keyword canibilisation isn’t occurring and other key metrics.

Technical SEO. Every SEO campaign that Australian Web Experts is engaged in covers technical SEO. In this process, we ensure your website core vitals are properly optimised, your website loads in a timely manner and other caching metrics are optimised. At this stage of the process schema markup is also conducted, along with the integration of SSL certificates to ensure your website is protected.

Content Production. A quality SEO campaign will always include content production. Depending on the nature of your business, content production usually comes in the form of an informative blog. These blogs and posts need to be well researched and optimised accordingly for SEO purposes.

Clearly Defined Keyword Strategy. A clearly defined keyword strategy will target specific keyword search terms that are relevant for your business, industry and the traffic level your website requires. A clearly defined keyword strategy involves a deep crawl of your website, competitive analysis and more.

SEO Landing Page Creation. Extending on your keyword strategy, your SEO campaign should focus on ensuring you have specific landing pages designed and built to rank for specific keyword search terms. This can be a timely process, and needs to be factored into the time budget of your SEO campaign.

Backlink Acquisition. Often one of the most time consuming tasks in any campaign, a well executed SEO strategy will involve acquiring backlinks from relevant websites. In each SEO campaign we undertake, this is completed on a monthly basis to ensure your website is found and indexed by Google.

Conversion Rate Optimisation. Another major focus for each SEO campaign is conversion rate optimisation. This is a timely process, and should evolve each month during your campaign. There is no point getting website traffic if it isn’t converting into customers for your business. Our CRO specialists work every month to ensure we are taking advantage of the traffic your website receives through SEO.

These are just some of ranking factors in each SEO campaign, there are 100’s of signals that Google takes into account when deciding how relevant your website is for particular keyword search terms. As with all things in SEO, you need to ensure that each of the key SEO pillars are completed to the highest degree and completely compliant with Google best practices. 

While these processes can take quite some time, you will often fast track these results by working with an experienced SEO agency with industry experience. An SEO agency, like Australian Web Experts, will ensure you can achieve first page results, in the most efficient and sustainable way.

How Long Does SEO Take To Work In 2022?

Google completes hundreds of algorithm updates every year, with changes made daily to the ranking algorithm. In saying that, the time to rank in 2022 is effectively the same as it has always been in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). It depends. 

There are a number of factors that go into determining how long it will take your website to rank, and this depends on your industry, your geographical location, whether you are targeting local, national or international website traffic and the level of SEO already completed on your website.

An experienced SEO agency should be able to deliver a positive swing in keyword movement within a 3 month period, however first page results can sometimes take up to 12 months for competitive keyword search terms.

How Long Does It Take For A Website To Get Organic Traffic?

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Organic keyword upward trend to 4,284 organic keywords.

Organic traffic is the holy-grail of all website traffic. Free website traffic, consisting of your ideal audience or customers, delivered to your website directly through Google. Unlike Google Adwords or other methods of digital advertising, organic traffic targeted through SEO means you aren’t paying per click and the website traffic is highly relevant. Typically speaking, the website traffic targeted for organic search terms will be buyers in your industry looking to engage you for your product or service.

In terms of a timeframe, and how long it takes for a website to get organic traffic, you have to keep in mind our general timeframes for SEO. Organic traffic can only be delivered to your website by people searching specifically for your business name, or people finding your website through specific keyword search terms. In order to be found through specific keyword search terms, you need to be completing SEO work on your website every single month. 

SEO Timeframes & Milestones

We know that business owners are tired of agencies hiding behind vanity metrics and they want answers. As business owners ourselves, we completely understand this sentiment when it comes to SEO and Google rankings.

We have created this simple, but effective guideline that we work with on all of our client projects. As with everything in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), the general rule is that the process will look slightly different for each project, but here are our key milestones with SEO timeframes and timelines:

SEO Month 1-3: During the first three months of your SEO campaign, your website should be found on Google for your business name and other low competition keywords. If your SEO campaign is targeting more competitive keywords, your SEO provider should be building out website assets, both on-page and off-page, to ensure these keywords continue to climb. As a general rule, your competitive keyword search terms will be starting to get discovered in the algorithm.

SEO Month 6: By month 6, quite a lot of foundational Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) work has taken place on your website. You will have quality backlinks pointing to your website beginning to take effect, properly optimised landing pages targeting specific keyword search terms created and a content plan in place to ensure Google sees your website as active and relevant. By month 6, you should have 90% of your keyword search terms on the first page of Google.

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Backlink profile, organic keyword and traffic value through SEO.

SEO Month 9-12: During months 9 to 12, you will be seeing a large upward momentum of organic traffic to your website. The earlier foundational SEO works are now properly indexed and your organic traffic is substantially increasing. Your SEO agency will have a backlink process in place to ensure you are getting mentions on other websites, your content is constantly updated and you are seeing an increase in enquiries, sales and revenue as a direct result of the SEO work completed on your website.

SEO Month 12 and Beyond: At months 12 and beyond, you are favoured by Google for your ideal keyword search terms. At this stage, our clients will generally look at increasing budgets, allocating spend towards more competitive keyword search terms and beyond. The sky really is the limit at this point with your overall SEO strategy.

Please keep in mind that the above timeline and timeframe for how long SEO takes is based on your campaign being completed by an experienced SEO and digital marketing agency, and with a healthy budget allocated to your project.

Key Takeaways – How Long Does SEO Take?

The key takeaway from this post on how long SEO takes should be that a good quality, properly executed SEO project takes time, however you should be seeing an upward trajectory within 3 months of your SEO campaign.

So, we’ve covered the highly asked question, how long does SEO take? Once you have considered the length of time your investment in SEO will take, it is time to consider the costs of SEO and how you can even complete some SEO work on your website for free.

Hopefully we’ve been able to give you some insight into how long SEO takes and provided you with some clarity. If you have any other questions, please reach out for a free consultation to get an exact SEO strategy and timeframe of ranking on Google for your business.

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