You’ve done it. You made the leap. You’ve taken the plunge. You’re a SaaS marketer who’s just invested in developing a stellar SEO program. You understand the payoff from a well-executed SEO strategy: site traffic, organic leads, and ultimately more revenue for your business. You’re now wondering, how long is it going to take to see all these results from the work you’re putting in?
At Demandwell, we always try to emphasize that SEO is something you contribute to that grows over time. There are no lightning-fast SEO solutions and no overnight successes. Sometimes, you may start creating content for the first time, immediately get indexed, and start ranking well within a few weeks.
Sometimes, however, you won’t see a result for six months or even a year. One of the key determining factors that impact SEO performance is how much you are contributing to the strategy. If you are producing five or six pages a week, you will see more results than a company that is only publishing one page per month or simply just tweaking its site here and there. The great thing about SEO is that the more you put in, the more you get out. Just like with a 401k, the smarter you are, and the more right things you do, the more reward you’ll see in the long run.
Getting true benefits out of an SEO program is linked strongly to whether or not you understand the key SEO ranking factors. These include making sure your site has fresh content, a high-performing keyword strategy, and great site infrastructure. You may never see results because you’re not focusing on the areas that matter for improving SEO. The benefits of SEO can drive many years of sustainable growth, but it is going to take time to see that SEO ROI come to fruition.
There are many reasons why it takes time to see SEO results. Depending on the industry you are in, there may be much more competition. For Demandwell, we are competing against SEO agencies and other SEO platforms, so results come slower for us than they do for some of our customers. Another factor may be how much content you have published. If you are just starting with SEO and you do not have many pages published, then it will be difficult to see new pages rank quickly. Having an existing library of content published can help establish yourself as an authority in your space and make it easier for new pages to rank, so Demandwell strongly encourages new SEO programs to publish at least 50 pages of SEO performance content as quickly as possible.
SEO is all about continuous improvement. You need to be consistent in your SEO content creation, and you need to reliably follow SEO best practices. Fortunately, this is not as complicated as many people think. With the right tools, you can know exactly what you need to focus on to succeed with your SEO strategy. What matters most is that you just keep working on the proven plan. The results will come eventually, and your business will have access to one of the most efficient marketing channels in existence today – organic search.
