If you have launched a website, and are looking for ways to get more traffic to your site, I have the answer for you! Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the key component of achieving more visits to your website. Over the years, I have offered SEO services to my clients and they always ask me the same question. When will I start seeing the results from doing SEO?
The answer to this question varies. Some websites are able to achieve their goal of increased traffic in just days. For others, it can take up to a few months.
Traffic For A New Website
It can sometimes take months for a new website to start gathering traffic. It is dependent on using competitive keywords. If you are using pretty commonly used keywords, or words that most other sites are using, you probably won’t get a super high ranking from Google right away. If you have a business that has a new or unique name, that doesn’t have a high search volume, it is likely you will rank in weeks, or even days.
What Products or Services Does Your Website Offer?
Depending on what your website is marketing, certain keywords can be pretty competitive. It can be difficult to rank against other industries who have a much higher listing on Google. For example: If you launch a website selling soaps, you’ll go up against popular brands such as Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, etc. These companies are mentioned in a ton of articles, and have pretty heavy traffic to their websites. This may result in you having to find other ways to market to potential customers or visitors to your site.
Now, if your website happens to have a very niche product, service, or idea, it is possible to rank in a shorter amount of time. Perhaps you are marketing a unique product that no one else has introduced. It will make ranking keywords for your website much easier. If it is niche enough, your site could receive quite a bit of traffic, even without a lot of content.
Check Out Your Competitors
Take a look at your website and compare it to one of your competitors. This is a good way to learn a different perspective, and to see the need for SEO for your site. If your competitors have been around for a while, it may be harder for you to rank on Google. But if you have a pretty unique business, with few competitors, you have a much higher chance of success.
You can also look to see what content is popular on your competitor’s page, and from that, create new ideas, and similar content to redirect traffic to your own site, and possibly outrank them.
One benefit to checking out your competitors is seeing which keywords they use to rank high. To do this, you can use tools like SEMRush or ahrefs to search the keywords your competitors use to help their ranking. Let’s say one particular business ranks higher than all of their competitors. One of those competing businesses can use these tools to find all the key words the successful business uses, then use the same ones to help their ranking.
Using specific and dedicated sources for SEO can help give you quicker results. Some large companies have employees who solely work on SEO content and post blogs to their website. That can be pretty costly, so smaller businesses might use a part time freelancer or SEO agencies to create SEO content.
It is extremely important to have someone who can regularly produce content that is of a higher standard, providing people with important and helpful information from your website. It also helps to reach out to other blogs and post to social media.
Is SEO Working For Your Website?
To see if the SEO process is working for your site, you will want to check the keywords ranking and search impressions. You may not see a ton of traffic at first, but once you establish your website and create quality content, you should see an increase in search impressions.
INSERT GRAPHIC of SEO is working chart
Search Impressions are a good way to tell if your SEO content is working.If impressions are going up, that means your website is showing up more when people are searching for certain things. Which is one step closer to someone clicking on your website. A useful tool to monitor the impressions your website is receiving is Google Search Console.
If you use an SEO tool, you can keep an eye on the keywords that help you rank. Just as the chart shows, a fairly new website is consistently increasing new keywords. Even if you aren’t seeing a major increase in traffic, new keywords are still beneficial to your ranking.
It may feel like you are waiting an eternity for your SEO efforts to work, so it could help to learn the process of how your website ranks on Google.
First, Google has to know about your website, and if they don’t, you won’t have any ranking keywords. To help with this, you can use Search Console to add your sitemap to Google. This will be submitted to Google, and in about a week, they will index your website.
Second, Google needs to see that your website has traffic in order to rank it. If your website already has considerable traffic from pay-per-click ads or social media, it will show Google that you have high quality content.
It also helps to see the amount of time that traffic stays on your website. If people only stay on your website for a few seconds, Google may see little value in your site.
To increase the amount of time visitors are on your website, try to post articles, blogs, and other captivating content.
After Google has indexed your site, you will want Google to start showing your website for a search result. If someone searches your brand, product, or service, you may start ranking for those. If you have substantial content, and exceptional keywords, you could see higher rankings within weeks.
It will benefit your website ranking considerably if your site answers questions, provides the information for which the person was searching, has a good amount of content such as, blog posts, articles and even links to other websites.
A Fast Way to Gain Organic Traffic
A main way to keep people on your website is to ensure there are no SEO errors. If there are problems on your site, it is more likely that people will jump off and go elsewhere. They need to be able to easily find what they were searching for. Make sure you fix any broken links, and make sure your meta tags are matched up to each page’s target keyword.
Another key factor in reducing your bounce rate (people staying on your site for only a few seconds, then leaving), is making sure your content answers people’s searches. Whether it is for information, business, navigating a map, transactional, etc. It should direct the person to the appropriate page on your site. If all of this is easily accessible for the user, you will probably see an improvement in your rankings over time.
A great way to get traffic is to use less competitive keywords. This means using more specific questions or words in relation to your site. If these keywords have a lower search volume, you may have a better chance to rank for them. After a while of doing this, you can begin to use higher-volume keywords.
If you already have some traffic to your site, using social media is another good way to increase that traffic. It shows Google that your website is worthy of ranking.
As mentioned previously, having an exceptional SEO resource, whether it is a freelancer, or an SEO agency, is crucial to your SEO success. Having good content, links to your site, and having someone with a good sense of technology are particularly important. This person or agency should be able to handle research for your company, have a good strategy behind their SEO process, be able to fix errors, produce content, and build links.
Is SEO Worth It?
It may take some time and effort creating content for your site, and working out the specific keywords, but in the end you will see results. Plus, those results may just keep on giving. SEO effort is a lot like working out and weight loss. It takes time to get to the front page, or your goal weight, and once you get there it takes effort to remain there.
SEO is definitely worth it, especially for small and medium businesses. If you want some help with this, Contact Floating Ax Today and we’ll help you get started!
