SEO, easy isn’t it. Write some content, mess with the Meta Tags, get your image names and Alt Tags right and Bob’s your uncle, right? Instant SEO love from google and a rush up the search engine results pages (SERPs)

Wrong………SEO takes time. Despite the amount of technology and artificial intelligence devoted to managing Google’s (other search engines are available) search results it actually takes some time for your changes to search to actually take effect.

If you are not familiar with key SEO terminology then pop across to my SEO Glossary

But how long does it actually take?

Google certainly isn’t telling but a number of people have carried numerous experiments and a number of conclusions have been reached.

The first is an answer that you don’t want to hear – “it depends”. And it depends on so many things, more than 200 according to Google.

Like everything, SEO should be planned and can be broken down into a number of phases, the first of which is

Research and Discovery

Audit your website to see what needs to be done, have a look at your competitors, think of the ways that people might be looking for the things you do.

Implementation

The next step is to take the results of your research and start to build it in to your website. The “Technical SEO”. You should be auditing your back-links to make sure that they are of a high enough quality

Next up you need to start creating new content. Writing blog posts, creating FAQs, writing white papers etc. You should be sharing these through your Social Media channels, email campaigns etc.

By month four you should begin to see some improvement in your position in the search results – an indication that your work is paying off – but don’t stop.

Management and Tracking

You should be paying attention to Google Analytics to see how much traffic is visiting your site and how many leads, sales, enquiries are being made. If traffic has increased but actions haven’t then you are either reaching the wrong people, sending the wrong message or your site is not working particularly well. Now is the time to look at all of the issues and put resolutions in place.

Continue with your content creation. Too many companies opt out of SEO after 3-4 months because they don’t feel that it’s working for them. The reality is that their SEO may only just be getting going. A time frame of 6 months to a year is where you should be aiming. SEO is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. The more you work at it, the better things will get but the marathon never ends.

But remember

It’s no good being number 1 in the search results if your website isn’t playing its part in the role and converting those visits in to leads, enquiries or sales.

Not only that but SEO is just part of your marketing mix, you also need to be effective with your Social Media, email and Video marketing and everything else that you do to promote your products, services and your brand.

And if you need some help with any aspect of your SEO, from a site review to a full package just get in touch for a free, no obligation conversation and we’ll see where it takes us.

If you need help with your search engine optimisation (SEO), your website or anything else to do with your marketing all you have to do is pick up the phone and give me a call on 01793 238020 or send andy@enterprise-oms.co.uk an email