by De Ivett

I get this question all the time! Whether you work on your SEO or hire an expert, you will not see immediate results. It takes time for search engines to crawl and rank your pages, and even with an XML sitemap, you are at their mercy as to when that will happen.

Here is what SEO guru Neil Patel reports:

He dug into the hard data from over 100 million sites to find the answer to this question.

Here’s what he found:

• Traffic increased 11.4% within the first 6 months
• Another 9.58% traffic bump in months 6-12
• Year 2 saw a 49.4% boost over Year 1
• Year 3 was up 30.7% over Year 2
• Year 4 grew another 13.5%

Sites that stick with it continue seeing growth in Years 3 and 4.

What does this mean for your SEO project?

SEO is an ongoing process of research, content development, social marketing, backlink development, fine-tuning, and much much more.

In addition to technically optimizing your website and adding on-page optimizations for your selected keyword strategy, a lot more work is needed to make your SEO more effective!

Off-Page SEO Strategies:

• BACKLINKS: Acquire high-quality, authoritative backlinks from reputable websites in your industry. Implementing this strategy is a lot of work and takes time – but every valuable backlink you receive from a reputable website will give your page rank a boost!
• CONTENT DEVELOPMENT: Write informative, valuable blog posts that you can publish on industry-related blogs and websites as a guest blogger. In return, you can include links back to your site within the content or your author bio.
• SHARABLE CONTENT DEVELOPMENT: Develop shareable, link-worthy content, such as infographics, videos (for your website and Social media channels), and in-depth “how-to” guides.
• DIRECTORY LISTINGS: Optimize your local SEO presence by ensuring your business information is accurate and consistent across relevant local directories, review sites, and Google My Business.

Content Strategy:

• GRAPHICS, ANIMATION, VIDEO: Develop a Content Strategy to engage customers
• POST CONTENT: Develop high-quality, informative, and engaging content around the target keywords and topics. This can include blog posts, product descriptions, “how to” guides, and tips.
• SCHEDULE / CADENCE: Create a content calendar to schedule regular updates and maintain a consistent publishing frequency. The algorithms love consistency!

Social Media Strategy:

• STRATEGY: Develop a Strategy for social media engagement using the channels that best suit your business.
• PROMOTIONS: Promote your content through social media, email marketing, and other channels to increase its visibility and reach a wider audience.

PPC Strategy:

• PPC MANAGEMENT: Develop and manage PPC campaigns for Google, Bing, Linkedin and Facebook
• MARKETING SUPPORT: Develop landing pages for each campaign for better conversion tracking.

Landing Page Optimization Strategy:

• ANALYZE: landing pages to improve the user experience and increase conversion rates. Test and optimize elements such as headlines, CTAs, forms, and images.
• TEST: Conduct A/B tests to determine the best-performing landing page variations.
• OPTIMIZE: Ensure that landing pages are optimized for mobile devices to capture mobile traffic effectively.
• PERFORMANCE TUNNING: Optimize landing pages for fast loading times to prevent bounce rates.

In Summary

SEO is a vital ongoing process and investment in your business. It is the fuel for your website to thrive and move up in the ranks. Without SEO, you are relying on word of mouth, referrals, and other tactics to grow your business. With SEO, over time you can organically reach your target customers, increase your sales, and grow your business. Is it worth it? Absolutely.

If you’d like to talk to an SEO expert contact us today!