Damian Sałkowski 
Published: 15.01.2020 
9 minute 
Anyone who has outsourced SEO at least once or deals with it professionally knows that results do not come overnight. You have to wait for traffic from a search engine. Sometimes even many months. It is accepted that 3 months is the minimum we have to wait for something to be noticed. This seems to be confirmed by the very first result we find on this subject in the search engine:
Of course, this period is a kind of simplification. After all, it all depends on the industry, the skill of the specialist, the quality of cooperation with the client or the condition in which the site is located. There are many more factors that determine how long SEO takes.
We researched how long SEO takes
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For this article, we decided to see how it looks in reality. To do so, we conducted an analysis of more than 250,000 key phrases from 23 major industries.
The industries are from the IAB standard – we selected the 23 most important ones.
Explanation of the data:
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- Number of days in TOP 10 – this metric tells us, on average, for how many days the results that are in TOP10 have been in that range. It allows us to know if the results change frequently. Example: for the phrase “dresses” there is a URL https://allani.pl/wyszukaj/sukienki in 1st place – it has been in the position range 1-10 for 720 days. This metric tells us what the average value of days is for all URLs in the TOP10.
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- First position – this is the first average position the site achieves in search results in a given category. In Senuto, we measure the data from 50th place upwards. A value of 14 means that, on average, the first recorded position for a result is 14 (second page). Example: for the phrase “dresses” in position 32 is the URL https://moodo.pl/pol_m_KOLEKCJA_ODZIEZ_SUKIENKI-DAMSKIE-189.html. We verified that it first appeared in the TOP50 on February 22, 2018, and the first recorded position was 32. This metric tells us what the average first recorded position was for the results currently in the TOP10 for the key phrases analyzed.
- Number of days from TOP 50 to TOP 10 – this is the most relevant value for us. It tells us how many days, on average, it takes to get from the second to the first ten search results. Example: for the phrase “dresses” the URL: https://allani.pl/wyszukaj/sukienki is in 1st place. We verified that it first appeared in the TOP50 search results in March 2015, and in October 2015 it managed to enter the TOP10 results for this phrase. The difference between these dates represents the time it took to go from TOP50 to TOP10. This metric represents the average value for all URLs currently in the TOP10 in a given category.
Analysis of the above data provides us with several conclusions:
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| Category |
Number of days in 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 it takes 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 |
| Art & 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 |
| Travel | 846 | 95 | 502 |
| Health & Fitness | 510 | 100 | 513 |
| Education | 764 | 100 | 536 |
| Home & Garden | 802 | 101 | 477 |
| Purchases | 711 | 102 | 499 |
| Eating and Drinking | 627 | 123 | 469 |
| Religion & Spirituality | 801 | 124 | 479 |
| Family & Maternity | 566 | 129 | 489 |
| Motorization | 767 | 130 | 502 |
| Hobbies & Interests | 956 | 132 | 462 |
| Society | 601 | 133 | 503 |
| Career | 911 | 134 | 477 |
| Style & Fashion | 741 | 158 | 457 |
- The longest wait for results is in the Style & Fashion category – on average it takes 158 days to advance from TOP50 to TOP10, or more than 5 months.
- The shortest wait for results is in the Business category – 65 days, or just over 2 months.
- In the Career and Hobbies & hobbies categories, the high-ranking sites remain in the TOP the longest (there is the least fluctuation in results). For example, in the Career category, a URL that is in the TOP10 has been there on average for 911 days or 2.5 years! These are results dominated by very large sites, so the result is not surprising.
- Average across all categories, we will have to wait 105 days for the TOP50 to enter the TOP10. This means that the all-familiar “3 months” deviates little from this result.
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Note that for all categories these are arithmetic averages of several thousand phrases. In some cases, sites wait longer for results than the average indicates, and in some cases shorter. For example:
Category: Fashion, Standard deviation: 457 days
Category: Health & Fitness, Standard Deviation: 513 days
The average standard deviation for all categories is 500 days, the minimum is 449, and the maximum is 566 days. The standard deviation tells us how much, on average, a value deviates from the average. High values indicate that these differences between individual cases can deviate strongly from each other.
It is worth answering a few more questions that may arise from the above analysis.
What affects the time it takes to achieve results?
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The factors that matter here are many. I will list a few that are key here:
Competition
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The most significant factor affecting the SEO time of a website is competition. When implementing an SEO campaign, we do not operate in a vacuum. While we’re taking action, the competition is doing it too. The competitiveness of individual keyword phrases can be checked, among other things, in the Senuto visibility analysis.
The keyword difficulty metric, on a scale of 1 to 100, determines how difficult it will be to get into the TOP10 search results for a given keyword phrase. The higher the difficulty, the more time it will take to achieve this result.
Current site health
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The current condition of the site also plays an important role. In a nutshell, it’s a set of factors that determine,how much distance there is between you and your competitors at the start. If it is very large, the time required to achieve results will increase accordingly. Among the set of factors that determine the distance from the competition are:
- the number and quality of links you have from external sites (link building),
- quality of technical optimization of the website,
- quality of owned content,
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Changes in Google’s algorithm
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Search engine algorithms evolve over time. Over the course of a year, Google can make up to several thousand changes. Some of them significantly affect the image of search results. If a site is somehow affected by such an update, the time it takes to reach the results may increase or decrease depending on whether the change is beneficial or not.
Specialist implementing the campaign
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A key role in the SEO process is played by the specialist implementing the campaign. An experienced expert with a lot of knowledge should achieve good results much faster than a less experienced one.
Want to know how much an SEO specialist earns in the industry? Check out our report >>.
Budget
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In any marketing channel, budget plays a significant role. This is also the case with SEO efforts. The more budget you have, the faster you should achieve results.
Of course, there is no direct relationship here. The same results can be achieved with different budgets. The key here is to be reasonable in the disposition of funds. It is also worth mentioning that there is a certain limit in SEO, where the budget will no longer change much. The strategy should be safe, and a large budget can cause us to balance on the edge of safety, for example, buying too many links from outside.
In a survey of 144 professionals, we asked about the minimum budget needed for SEO activities for an eCommerce site. Below are the results:
Most specialists believe that the minimum budget needed for SEO activities for eCommerce is £1000 – £3000 per month. Only 19% of respondents believe that the minimum budget should be higher than 5000 PLN per month. However, it is important to keep in mind that these costs depend largely on the industry in which the site operates and the goals you have for your SEO efforts.
Speed of implementation of changes
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One of the important factors affecting SEO is the speed of implementation of changes. In the same survey to SEO professionals, we asked what are the most common problems they encounter in working with eCommerce sites. Most responded that these were problems related to implementing changes.
If you decide to use an SEO service, you should be confident that the changes suggested by the specialist will be implementable. Failure to implement some of them can prolong the time it takes to achieve results, and in extreme cases will even make it impossible to achieve any results. Therefore, it is worth starting at the beginning with the service of a site audit – on the basis of this document it will be possible to assess whether the suggested changes will be possible to implement and what effect this may have on the results.
Is it possible to reduce the time it takes to achieve good results?
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It is, of course, possible. The values given above are averages. This means that among the analyzed sites there were some that needed more time to achieve results and some that needed less. Above I have listed the factors that determine this. Their optimization can significantly reduce the time it takes to achieve results.
Will these values evolve in the near future?
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In the context of such analysis, it is always worthwhile to look ahead. The evolution of search engine algorithms clearly shows that these results over time can vary. The better the algorithms a search engine has at its disposal, the more accurately it can match the results, and thus the less and less often it will have to change them. Therefore, it can be thought that in the future, the time it takes to achieve certain results will be longer.
Presentation by Robert Niechciał
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On the topic of SEO results, it is also worth reading Robert Niechciał’s presentation he gave at SEMkrk. In his presentation, Robert outlines technical aspects related to Google’s computing power, crawl budget and other factors that can affect the frequency of changes in search results.
