How long does search engine optimization take to show results?

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It usually takes 3 to 6 months for SEO to show results.

That’s according to about 4,300 people who responded to our surveys LinkedIn and Twitter.

A pie chart showing how long SEO takes to show results

Side notes.

We also polled our customers-only Facebook group, Ahrefs Insider. Only 82 people responded there, and the most popular answer was 6-12 months.

But there really isn’t a definitive time frame. It depends.

Why Does SEO Take So Long?

SEO is not advertising. You can’t pay your way there. So, if you want to rank first for a keyword, you need to show Google that you are the top result.

Google has two types of results: organic and paid

This means that the time it takes for SEO to “work” depends on many factors. There are a few factors to consider:

1. New vs Old Website

In general, because older sites have been around longer, they have more backlinks (and therefore more website authority), more pages, more content, as well as ranking for more keywords.

On the other hand, newer websites require more effort and resources to get up and running. In fact, some search engine optimization experts even believe that Google has “sandbox“, which prevents new sites from ranking.

So if you are working on a new site, it may take longer for SEO to show results.

2. Competition

SEO does not exist in a bubble. Your competitors are probably doing SEO too. If the keywords you are targeting are highly competitive, it will take you longer to rank.

For example, you would like to rank for the keyword “seo”. But pages ranked by this keyword have tens of thousands of backlinks:

SERP overview for a query "seo," via Ahrefs Keyword Explorer

It actually is Keyword Difficulty (KD) the score for this keyword is a whopping 97:

Keyword difficulty rating for a query "SEO"

If we want to compete, we will need a lot of time and effort. On the other hand, it is much easier to compete for “seo for startups”. We made and now in 1st place:

SERP overview for a query "SEO for startups," via Ahrefs Keyword Explorer

For reference, “seo for startups” has a medium difficulty of 22:

Keyword difficulty rating for a query "SEO for startups"

Recommendation

Here’s how to find keywords that are less competitive:

  1. Enter the relevant keyword in Ahrefs’ Keyword Researcher
  2. go on Expression matching report
  3. Set a KD filter up to a maximum of 20 (or a number that suits you)
Keyword Difficulty Filtered Matched Expressions Report via Ahrefs Keyword Explorer

3. Your resources

The more resources you can dedicate and invest in SEO, the “faster” your results will be.

For example, they could hire more content writers to create high-quality content for you. But you can invest in SEO tools and make your work easier, faster and more efficient. You may even be able to create a link building team that will actively build links for you. The possibilities are endless.

4. Your strategy

A good strategy is half the battle won.

Having a detailed plan of how you want to approach your target keywords will give you a better chance of getting results faster.

For example, maybe you have a lot of important keywords that you want to rank for. But they’re all super competitive. So if you’re putting all your resources into trying to rank for these keywords, it could take months or even years before you see results.

Another option is to slowly build up your most important keywords so that the first targeting topics with low competition that have business value. This way, you can still generate some organic traffic to your site – while you are accumulating links, website authorityand more for the future.

Recommended reading: Insanely Simple SEO Strategy for 2022 (The Orchard Strategy)

5. Your execution

If you want to win the second half of the battle, you will have to actually to execute

There’s no point in dreaming about the best SEO strategy in the world if you don’t do anything. Also, if you have to constantly justify to internal stakeholders, or SEO is worth the effortwhich may hinder your implementation efforts.

So the more consistently you exercise, the “faster” you’re likely to see results.

Recommended reading: How to set the right SEO goals with 3 examples

Learn more

Want to learn more about SEO? Check out these resources:

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