How Long Does it Take for SEO to Work

One question that I get asked a ton when speaking to business owners daily is: How long does it take for Seo to work? When can I expect a Return on Investment?  This question is an interesting one because every website is different.  SEO is different than direct response digital marketing where you can spend X dollars and expect X+ Results instantly.  SEO is about planting seeds that continue to bear fruit as long as it can.  In this blog I want to examine what it takes to do seo successfully, share some company stories and client success, and share why it takes as long as it does to achieve results. If you want to speak with me you can call me directly at 617-475-0964 or book a complimentary Reach More Clients Power Session.

How Long Does Search Engine Optimization Take?

I started a garden in the fall of 2020. The pandemic was in full swing, and I started to plan what I wanted to grow. I wanted to grow eggplant, collard greens, radishes, carrots, mustard greens, potatoes, green onions, red onions, thyme, rosemary and basil. 

I was completely all in. I would get up every morning and water and talk to my plants. I would watch the dirt from the top and nothing appeared to be going on. However I continued to water my plants, and I definitely marveled at how they grew. It took about 3 months for the garden to really start making progress.

This is the same with SEO. Even when you think nothing is happening, you have to trust the process because your day of traffic will come. When I decided to go all in on seoqueen.com in addition to working hard for my clients it was a similar process. I invested the time and the energy in January 2021, and I started to blog, and add content to my company website. We went from ranking for 15 keywords to hundreds and getting 100s of organic website visitors by November 2021 to our site. This was accomplished in seven steps:

1. Identifying the long tailed keywords that we wanted to pursue to rank form
2. Consistently getting high value backlinks from major media outlets like BlackBusiness.com, BlackEnterprise, BusinessInsider and more. 
3. Having great messaging
4. Blogging Consistently a minimum of 1 time a week.
5. Keyword Research
6. Being Consistent
7. Being Patient

When you identify your best keywords, optimize your website for that content, and amplify your reach through link building you will win.  To get to over 1,000 keywords it took seoqueen.com almost a year. This was accomplished by blogging once a week, and optimizing the meta tags, and link building. Even now, seoqueen.com is still in progress with its on page optimization,, content plans and more. This is a daily business development and marketing activity to get your brand to the next level. It takes time for Google to crawl your site, index it, and then organize it to the best spot in its search results. 

What Is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and this is the process that your content and code is optimized so that Google knows to send people to your site that are interested in what you want them to come there for. For instance if you sell puppies, you want people who are searching for puppies to come to your site. We call the phrase puppies a short keyword or a short keyword phrase. In addition if you want to rank on Google page 1 faster, and get traffic that does not have as much competition, you go after long tailed keywords or long tailed keyword phrases. These long tailed keyword phases are specific. One term that I found that has 2,200 searches on it monthly on google is “white golden retriever puppies for sale near me” and there is only 1 page on Google that has that phrase in the meta title. 

SEO is about doing the market research so that you can see how the market is searching for what you are selling, and out working your competition with the phrases that have the least amount of competition that your competitors are NOT using. This is how you win and start to gain ground in 3, 6, 12, 18, and 24 months. In order to establish a multimillion dollar company you need to be ranking for thousands of keywords. If your product or service is less than $1,000 then you need to double or triple that number. 

The SEO Queen does not rank for seo or seo services.  When I launched my company I did not even consider attempting to rank for those very competitive keywords because I would need a super long blog post that got a ton of links from very high profile websites. So instead, I did my research. I found that there was a phrase that my competition over looked that had hundreds of keyword phrases and I went after that. In addition I optimized my online presence for my own brand name. Coming up on Google page 1 for “the seo queen” is a powerful way to create credibility in a market place where people have very little trust for businesses. When I can demonstrate that I can get on Google page 1 for my brand name that has brought me more and more clientele. 

How Does SEO Work?

I know you came to this blog to understand the question: how long does it take for seo to work, but I want you to understand that SEO can vary in its time of impact for a company website depending on the level of competition in that niche, quality of the website being optimized and more. The rationale behind the SEO Services that The SEO Queen has to offer is simple. SEO is a big ongoing project that requires a lot of resources to get completed. So we have broken down the process into chunks. If you just want the bare minimum content and links we have our SEO Launch Phase, and for those who want to be Google Famous AND dominate google page 1 and get the most targeted traffic, we also have our SEO Signature program. 

For those who are just starting out with a brand new website that is not even being indexed SEO is an investment that will not yield results overnight.  In order to expedite the process of Google trusting your website and giving your website more visibility you should focus on quality content and link building. Depending on your domain age, quality of content, competition in your niche, website platform ranking for keywords.

If your website is older, and is already ranking for keywords optimizing it for more traffic is a process that goes faster. Determining a return on Seo is more than taking the sum of traffic and comparing that to your revenue. SEO helps your website to be visible on search engines so that you begin to dominate your niche and increase your credibility online. The buyer’s journey is more than the bottom of the funnel where the sale is made. The Buyer’s journey is about getting your ideal customer to know, like and trust you and this is a process that happens with every blog post, every search, every social media share of your website. Rome was not built in a day, and an impactful organic online presence takes time, thousands of pages of content and backlinks and more. Even the most perfectly planned and implemented SEO campaign will require time to see ideal results. There is no way to shortcut long lasting seo rankings, the work has to be put in. The goal of the launch phase and signature phase is for you to partner with The SEO Queen long term for your seo needs until you can afford to bring your efforts in house. Hiring and training in house personnel to do your seo is a time consuming effort that costs 2X+ the amount that The SEO Queen charges for our SEO Services. 

Finally I want to share with you that in today’s global economy having patience is tough. Investing in something that has months or years until its peak return is a challenge. However, the reality is that there are no short cuts around this. Your domain must age, and you must create content to get the organic website traffic that you are looking for. You have to increase your trustworthiness in the eyes of Google. You achieve this by accumulating as many links as your can from high value platforms like CNN, ABC, Blogs and more. You will see incremental changes in a week., and month. However, the hockey stick growth can take a year or more to establish. This growth is worth the wait. The SEO Queen has seen some great consistent leads happen for us and our clients.