“We can place your website on Google’s 1st page.”
Does that ring a bell? As a website owner, you likely have received countless spam emails containing a similar message.
For instance, check out this email we received:
The sender suggests their “New SEO Backlink service” can get a website first spot on Google’s SERPs for only $25.
Sounds extremely promising, no? You won’t have to bother creating shareable assets or chase pesky editor-in-chiefs of those authoritative websites. You can just pay $25 and get the required backlinks — 100% customer satisfaction guaranteed.
But is there any truth to these claims? No.
Convincing the search engine bots to rank your website with search engine optimization (SEO) takes time. And if you opt for agencies that guarantee overnight SEO results, you’ll have nothing to show for it except for an underperforming website.
Let’s see how long SEO takes and check out why overnight SEO results aren’t possible.
Jump Ahead to a Specific Section:
How Long Does SEO Take?
Ahrefs polled its LinkedIn followers and found that 84% of respondents see SEO results in three to six months or more. Given that many of Ahrefs’s followers are professionals in the SEO industry, you might experience similar results from SEO when working with an expert team — or longer, if not.
That said, you can certainly get results earlier than this with black hat (not recommended) SEO tactics.
However, I’m talking about consistently upward trending results, which is what you want by investing in SEO — not one day at the top of a relevant SERP and the other day getting deindexed forever when Google finds out that you went against their terms of service.
We’ll get into specifics of black hat SEO later on.
In other words, while cliché, SEO is a marathon, not a sprint.
Why Does SEO Take So Long?
SEO takes a long time because modern search engines consider several factors before ranking a webpage for a particular query. Adding keywords alone won’t convince the bots to rank you. You must build trust, authority, and credibility — all of which take time.
1. Search Engines Reward Authority
Think of ordering a beer at the bar you’re a regular at and letting the bartender know that you left your wallet at home and will pay the next time. The bartender would probably agree to it. But if you do so on your first visit, you probably would have to leave an ID behind.
The same is true for search engines. Search engines reward websites they know and take time to trust newer websites.
For example, both HubSpot and Software Planet Group tried their luck with the topic of “how AI works.” HubSpot’s How AI Works appeared on the first page for relevant keywords within the first 30 days. In contrast, Software Planet Group’s How Does Artificial Intelligence Work? couldn’t rank for a single relevant keyword in the top 10 positions in two years.
What does HubSpot have over Software Planet Group? Trust with search engines.
In other words, search engine algorithms probably believe that returning a result from HubSpot would help the reader more than a result from Software Planet Group.
However, that doesn’t rule you out of the race. You may earn search bots’ trust if you pick your battles carefully by finding content areas big websites, such as HubSpot and CNET, don’t cover and creating useful content for the end readers.
For instance, CSU Global probably managed to claim one of the top 3 spots with its article How Does AI Actually Work? after eight months because it published its blog post before the bigger websites and had more authority than Software Planet Group to negotiate with the search crawlers.
And by doing so, as of writing, it ranks above giants like Forbes.
2. Web Referrals/Backlinks Require Time
In the bar example above, you might be able to convince the bartender if one or more regulars back you up or lend credibility to you. The same happens on the web via backlinks. If a trusted website links to your website, the bartenders of the web understand that other bar patrons trust you and may start trusting you too.
But that’s where it gets complicated. Unless you went to school with editors at The New York Times, you might not find trusted websites ready to give you backlinks. In other words, you’ll have to earn the trust of big guns as well.
While there are several ways to do so, there’s a common theme among them: all of them take time — up to several months.
For example, you might try guest posting — writing blog posts on other websites — to get backlinks for your webpages. But that means you’ll have to bide your time waiting for replies from website owners.
Alternatively, you may consider creating shareable assets, such as infographics, original research, or case studies, for content creators to use in their blog posts to get an influx of backlinks.
For example, we complied a chart of minimum wage rates by U.S. states for our client Hourly.io. Within a few months of publishing, it’s already generated 75+ backlinks.
That said, producing link-worthy content demands time and effort. You must find a relevant idea, allocate resources to offer unique insights, and publish and promote the results to get some traction.
Put simply, the referring process involves too many unknowns, which makes it impossible to get guaranteed SEO results overnight.
3. Web Crawlers Have To Understand Your Website
Search bots typically crawl your webpages, digest headings, titles, and meta info, and follow internal and external links to grasp the relevance and authority of your website and determine where your content fits in.
But here’s the deal: You must have a robust internal link structure for this whole process to work. Or, you need to link to related posts on your webpages to let the bots know that you cover these particular themes and would be helpful to relevant readers.
Now, I’m not talking about a bare-bones structure here, where you link to related internal webpages whenever you feel like it. Instead, The Blogsmith recommends creating pillar pages (primary webpage on a specific topic), crafting cluster content on related ideas, and interlinking them via hyperlinks.
But how many cluster pages do I need to see SEO results? That was my question as well, so I asked Jonas Sickler, Digital Marketing Analyst at Terakeet, who’s an authority on topic clusters. Here’s Jonas’s answer:
“There’s no way to give a ballpark number because it varies from topic to topic. However, the best way is to identify a topic cluster and answer all the related questions with respective blog posts.”
In other words, you’ll need to complete a topic cluster to do effective internal link building — which takes time since you’ll have to think of ideas, craft content, and publish it.
Last but not least, search bots may take time to index your webpages. For instance, according to Google senior search analyst John Mueller, Google crawlers might take anywhere from several hours to several weeks to crawl your website.
While that’s too big of a range to work with, the crawl frequency — or how frequently search crawlers check a website for new content — depends on how much value search engines place on a website when serving their users with search results.
For example, Google will probably index a new HubSpot post within hours because it may consider HubSpot’s content helpful for searchers. In contrast, Software Planet Group might have to wait a week or two to get their new posts indexed.
4. The Competition Does SEO Too
SEO efforts don’t happen in a vacuum. You probably won’t rank on the first page by talking about Apple Vision Pro — even if you posted a blog right when Apple announced it during WWDC23. After all, you’ll have competitors with loyal followings, including giants like CNET, The Verge, and TechCrunch.
While this example may seem exaggerated, the takeaway is that your direct competitors will have their own SEO experts looking through the keyword opportunities to attract the shared target audience.
Want an example? Both Torque and WP Tavern published their take on WordPress 5.6 on the same day (Dec. 8, 2020).
Similarly, you’ll see brands everywhere sharing their position on different market trends around the same time. The result? The competition’s unpredictability makes it challenging to promise guaranteed SEO results.
5. Search Engine Algorithms Evolve Over Time
- Doorways: Doorways refer to webpages that are only created to rank high for specific search terms and funnel their traffic to another webpage. For example, suppose a website has a webpage of “best WordPress security plugin.” In that case, it may create doorway pages of “best WordPress security plugin for Astra,” “best WordPress security plugin for GeneratePress,” and other similar pages and redirect traffic to the original webpage.
- Hidden text: Instead of creating valuable, evergreen content, a black hat SEO agency might stuff a webpage with primary, secondary, and semantic keywords and then hide them by setting their opacity to 0, using the same font color as the background, or placing them off-screen with CSS.
- Private blog networks (PBNs): A PBN refers to a network of interlinked websites that link to a specific website to artificially inflate its authority to search crawlers.
You’d be treading thin ice by adopting such techniques since search algorithms evolve and penalize websites that violate their spam policies. For example, Google may issue manual penalties, including deindexing or rank demotion, to webpages and/or websites defying its policies.
That said, algorithm updates don’t just remove spam. They may modify how search engines rank webpages in their search engine result pages (SERPs).
For instance, Google updated its algorithm in December 2022 via the helpful content update to reward webpages useful to people and penalize content created solely for search engines. If your SEO strategy relied on content written for bots, you had to update your SEO tactics to stay competitive.
And that was just one update. Google’s algorithm changes all the time — with small tweaks several times a day and larger updates spread over quarters or months — and reshapes the SEO landscape.
While you may prepare for algorithm updates to compete with other websites, it’s often a hit-and-trial method where you iteratively adjust your SEO strategy based on your interpretation of algorithm changes, which makes it difficult to predict SEO results.
6. Good SEO Relies on Data and Strategic Human Context
Even with all the keyword analysis, you’ve got to deal with the black boxes at the heart of search engines. And that’s also one of the reasons why you should shy away from SEO firms promising guaranteed results from SEO.
The best way to work with the pesky search algorithms is with data. You may see where the search engines are rewarding you and might even discover certain keywords you’re ranking for without effort.
You can typically access that data in Google Search Console by navigating to Performance > Search Results. For example, here are two keywords we don’t optimize for in our SEO campaigns, yet our website ranks for them in Google search.
However, it may take time for Google Search Console to populate if you have just started a new website.
Lastly, you must balance the needs of both bots and humans with your content for good SEO. But here’s the catch: While search metrics may start to make sense within a few months, understanding how humans interact with your website might take a substantial amount of time.
The reason? To start, human beings are unpredictable, so you need a vast amount of data to get some insights. Second, with average organic click-through rates at ~2%, you don’t get as much data on human interaction until you start receiving considerable traffic.
For example, you can see from the screenshot below of our Google Analytics that one of the new pages hasn’t gotten traction at the time of publication, which makes it difficult to predict anything about its SEO success.
You can access similar data for your website by navigating to Reports > Life Cycle > Engagement > Pages and Screens in Google Analytics 4.
Final Thoughts: Reasons Not To Expect Guaranteed SEO Results Overnight
Long story short, while ranking your website for relevant keywords seems a no-brainer deal, it’s an arduous journey, not a task. At the very least, you must make your website appear authoritative and credible to search engines and engaging and captivating to end readers.
And all of this requires months, if not years, of effort. So don’t lend an ear to scam SEO agencies that promise guaranteed SEO results overnight.
Instead, rely on data and opt for partners who look out for you and join forces with you for the long run. If you’re looking for one such reputable SEO agency, contact The Blogsmith.
At The Blogsmith, we follow best SEO practices (also called white hat SEO) to help your website build trust with search engines. We create people-first content to help you have a chance at attaining first-page rankings and leverage organic conversions to achieve business goals.
To see our work in action, check out our case studies and explore how we helped several tech companies achieve their content marketing goals and acquire top keyword rankings.
