seo time

If you’re expecting good SEO to cause an explosion of traffic overnight, you’re probably going to be more than a little disappointed. If you want sudden traffic that may or may not be relevant, make a viral video. If you want relevant traffic that truly has the potential to grow your company with time, you’ll want SEO, instead. Here’s why it takes so long. 

SEO Must Satisfy Algorithms

Since Google launched in 1997, it has been tweaking and adding to its ranking algorithms to ensure it’s giving its users the best possible results when they search for something. In order to satisfy those algorithms, your website must be relevant to the search term. It must be dynamic and have content that changes regularly. It must have photos and videos with all the proper tags. It must load quickly and be easy to navigate. It must have all these things that simply take time to perfect, and it can’t happen overnight. 

You Have to Climb Past Competitors

Google is a lot like a popularity contest, too. Even if your site is perfect, you cannot and will not outdo another perfect site that has been around since 2002 – at least, not at first. Google knows that the competitor satisfies most of its users, so that’s what they keep showing. It’s up to you to be patient enough to keep making your site better and better while waiting to pass the competitor. After all, that competitor has been proving its worth for 18 years and you’re the new kid on the block. 

Technology Isn’t the Same

The technology people use today to search for a term on Google is a far cry from what we used 20 years ago, and this is something else that Google must consider. As technology changes, search engines also change, and those changes can negatively impact your results. For example, companies who ranked highly by stuffing keywords back in 1999 were quickly overtaken as relevance became an important part of the algorithm. Be steadfast and remember that changes in technology will affect the way search engines work – and that affects how you rank, too. 

Don’t Give Up

SEO can be frustrating, especially for those who are brand new to the concept of digital marketing. Don’t give up. You are building your reputation, and you want to build one that lasts  – not one that blossoms overnight, burns out, and then falls to the wayside like a one-hit wonder from the late 80s. Use the tools available to you to track slow growth, or hire an outside company to help you with your SEO if you so choose, but remember that it is not going to happen overnight. 

Search engine optimization is ultimately one of the best ways to put your brand in front of the right people at the right times, but it isn’t instantaneous. In fact, it can take months or even years to get to where you want to be with SEO alone. Make sure you’re marketing in other ways, too, and be patient with the process. It will pay off in the long run.