Most veteran SEO experts probably have a general sense of how long an SEO project should take to get meaningful results.
They also likely have a sense of what size investment will be needed for backlinks, content marketing and technical SEO to beat the competition.
But if there are surprises, a good SEO marketer will know how to pivot and what areas to review.
Reassessing the SEO Strategy
The first step in improving SEO results is to thoroughly analyze the current strategy. This includes reviewing the keywords targeted, content, backlinks, technical SEO aspects, and the latest algorithm updates.
Keyword Research Adjustments: An SEO specialist may need to re-evaluate their keyword strategy. This could involve finding less competitive keywords, long-tail keywords, or better aligning keywords with user intent.
To know what range of keyword difficulty scores your website can realistically rank for, you can analyze the ranking of your past 15-20 posts. Pull the keyword difficulty scores of the target phrases, and then see which posts reached page 1 of Google.
Ranking data can be found in Google Search Console.
If user intent is the issue, this will likely be reflected in low conversion rates and low time spent on the site. You’ll also notice a lower amount of pageviews per session from Organic.
That data can be found in your Google Analytics account, so be sure that when you hire a SEO specialist, they know their way around GA4.
Double Check Your Technical SEO: This could involve improving site speed, ensuring the website is mobile-friendly, updating sitemaps, or fixing any crawl errors that might be affecting how search engines index the site.
Indexing reports from Google Search Console keep you informed about which pages on your website Google is ignoring. They’ll be under a tab titled, “crawled but not indexed.”
If you see relevant website content in this section, you can request that it be indexed straight from your Search Console account.
To learn more about your website’s page speed, use Google PageSpeed Insights tool. Don’t just check your home page. Pull pages from different sub folders and multiple blog posts.
Pay close attention to the scores of your Core Web Vitals.
Building More High-Quality Backlinks: Backlinks are a critical component of SEO. If the site isn’t performing well, it might be necessary to invest more time in acquiring backlinks from reputable sources.
This is also one of the more challenging aspects of SEO. It may involve manual outreach to websites or people you have no previous association with. You may need to work on affiliate or referral marketing, and see if you can spin those relationships into something more organic, like content exchanges and guest blogs.
Continued Learning: SEO evolves. An SEO expert should review annual ranking studies – the studies that find correlations between different algorithmic variables and high rankings.
SEO tactics that achieved high rankings 5 years ago may no be as effective today. So a specialist needs to stay current with industry trends and updates to search algorithms.
Consultation or External Help: If despite all efforts results are not improving, an SEO specialist might consult with peers, attend professional development courses, or hire external experts or agencies for assistance.
It’s a good idea to work with consultants who know other consultants and have a reliable professional network.
Remember that SEO is a long-term investment and it often takes several months before you see significant changes. Patience, persistence, and constant refining of strategies are keys to successful SEO.
If you feel your SEO results are not satisfactory, contact me at cort@bayareaseosolutions.com.