You have a website, you enter keywords into Google that include the products or services your company offers, hit enter, and… BIG NOTHING – your website doesn't show up in the search results, and even worse, your competition shows up. Hmm… so what next?
Two ways to show your products or services in Google search results
- Google Ads – immediate and clearly visible effect, but only exposed during the promotional campaign,
- SEO – the results take time to appear, but the results achieved last longer than a standard Google Ads campaign. In the long run, it's the cheapest method of acquiring customers from the search engine.
How long does SEO take – can you check the waiting time?
Yes and no. Senuto, a group of SEO experts providing data from the world of Google, analyzed search engine traffic based on 23 major industries and over 250 keywords. The results were presented in a simple table. However, although the report provides specific numbers, everything depends on individual calculations and many variables.
What are the overall conclusions of the Senuto report?
Without surprise, the main SEO rule mentioned above was confirmed: you have to wait for search engine traffic!
To make a product visible, you have to work on it.
(The rest of the article can be found below the form)
Interesting fact: The basic problem of SEO agencies is explaining to clients who expect organic results immediately that SEO is a process and not an immediate action.
How long does SEO take?
You can find various analyses online, depending on the industry, website, selected keywords, competition, etc. Why is this the case? Let's imagine you offer "home appliance service in the Krzymów commune," a rural commune with 7 residents. What if you still offer the same service but in Warsaw? Will a customer entering the phrase "home appliance service + specific location" see your website in the same position in the search engine? No.
Based on numerous campaigns conducted by Verseo, we agree that to position a keyword we need at least:
created by macrovector How does the positioning process look depending on the industry?
The shortest wait for results, i.e., an appearance in the TOP 10, is in the Business and Law & Politics categories – just over 2 months . The longest wait is in the Style & Fashion category – a result appears in the top 10 takes over 5 months . The average for all categories is 105 days.
It's also worth paying attention to the Career and Hobby categories. Although the average wait for results was over four months, both achieved positions in the TOP 10 for about two and a half years!
Important: The results presented by Senuto show arithmetic averages for given categories, calculated based on several thousand keywords. If we look at the deviation column, we see that in all categories, SEO-friendly websites wait significantly longer or significantly shorter for results than the third column shows.
Let's also look at the Sports category. The average progression from the TOP50 to the TOP10 search results takes a minimum of about 3 months, but the high standard deviation of 566 days indicates that these differences between individual phrases can vary dramatically.
Check it out:
| Category | Number of days in the TOP 10(average value – how long URLs stay in positions between 1 and 10) | Number of days from TOP 50 to TOP 10(how many days on average does it take to go from TOP50 to TOP10 search results) | Standard deviation |
| Business | 575 | 65 | 482 |
| Law, politics | 571 | 67 | 507 |
| Personal finance | 779 | 81 | 531 |
| Technology & Computers | 805 | 84 | 521 |
| Arts & Entertainment | 679 | 84 | 536 |
| Real Estate | 957 | 87 | 449 |
| News/Weather | 789 | 87 | 518 |
| Science | 702 | 89 | 511 |
| Sports | 819 | 90 | 566 |
| Animals | 669 | 93 | 496 |
| Travels | 846 | 95 | 502 |
| Health & Fitness | 510 | 100 | 513 |
| Education | 764 | 100 | 536 |
| Home & Garden | 802 | 101 | 477 |
| Shopping | 711 | 102 | 499 |
| Food and drinks | 627 | 123 | 469 |
| Religion & Spirituality | 801 | 124 | 479 |
| Family & Motherhood | 566 | 129 | 489 |
| Automotive | 767 | 130 | 502 |
| Hobbies & Interests | 956 | 132 | 462 |
| Society | 601 | 133 | 503 |
| Career | 911 | 134 | 477 |
| Style & Fashion | 741 | 158 | 457 |
Source: https://www.senuto.com/pl/blog/ile-trzeba-czekac-na-efekty-pozycjonowania/What influences standard deviations?
The waiting time for SEO results can be shortened or lengthened by several factors, which, depending on the category of the website being positioned, are more or less significant. The duration of SEO depends on factors such as:
- number and position of competitors,
- the industry in which the company operates,
- modernity of the website – in terms of technical aspects and content optimization,
- having good quality content,
- changes in the Google algorithm,
- knowledge and experience of SEO specialists,
- budget,
- speed of introducing optimization changes.
How can we speed up the appearance of SEO results?
The basic step before positioning an existing website is to conduct an SEO audit. Based on this, you can eliminate any errors and address any identified gaps.
What is important for a properly conducted phrase positioning process:
- qualified and experienced SEO specialists who constantly improve their qualifications and are up to date with changes in algorithms,
- technical optimization of the website,
- the quality of the content and its uniqueness,
- elimination of indexing errors,
- adapting the website code to the requirements of search engines,
- internal linking,
- appropriate selection of keywords,
- valuable links coming from external websites,
- getting to know the target market and direct competition,
- an appropriate budget allocated to the implementation of SEO activities,
- patience.
Much better 🙂Summary
The above article covers the following topics:
- SEO and Ads: Two methods of promotion on Google
- How long does SEO take – can you check the waiting time?
