When you first start with SEO – whether that’s with Hike, with an SEO company, or anyone else – then it’s important to know that SEO takes time.

Google has built its algorithm to promote websites that have built a level of ‘authority over time. it does not want to promote websites that have not proved they are worthy of their customer’s traffic.

Some of the factors that determine keywords ‘authority’ are:

– Age of the website
– The quality of the content
– The quality/quantity of backlinks pointing to that website
– The quality of the website itself (technically speaking)
– Other signals (citations, social channels, reviews, etc)

But how long? That depends on two things:

1. How quickly you build authority based on the above – the quicker the better
2. The competitiveness of the SEO market you’re targeting
3. Avoiding doing anything that Google doesn’t like

Let’s focus on number 2; the competitiveness of the SEO market. This means – simply – how many other websites are actively SEO’ing for the terms you want to rank for.

There’s a general rule of thumb to play by here:

The more people search for a keyword => the more SEO competitive that keyword will be => the longer it will take to rank/the more authority you need to build for your website. For that purpose, it’s preferable to use a rank tracking tool like Linkio to follow your rankings and help you build your online presence.

(Bearing this in mind is why we always promote small businesses to write blogs! Blogs target less competitive keywords, as they target users who are looking for a question/very niche service/very niche piece of information.)

OK, so with the education piece over, let’s provide you with some general timescales for SEO:

– If you write a good blog (following the rules set out here and here) you can expect to start driving traffic to that blog within 1-2 months
– If you optimize you a product/service/homepage with a keyword that is low in competitiveness for your website*, then you can expect to rank within 3-6 months
– If you optimize your product/service/homepage with a keyword that is medium in competitiveness for your website*, then you can expect to rank within 6-12 months
– If you optimize you a product/service/homepage with a keyword that is high in competitiveness for your website*, then you can expect to rank within 12+ months

*Use our priority score to judge competitiveness for a keyword for your website. The higher the bar, the lower the competitiveness of that keyword for your website.

To make it super clear; the above are all based on previous experience/general SEO timescales but are dependent upon the quality and amount of SEO you do.

It also depends upon the quantity and level of SEO completed previously.

They are not guaranteed timescales, especially if you are not completing all of the SEO actions that Hike provides.

The more SEO you do – the more time and effort you put into it – the quicker and better you will perform.