When Will SEO Take Effect?

So you have invested in SEO services, now what? 

You may be wondering

• When can I Google my business and come up first in the results?
• When will I start seeing traffic to my website? 
• When will calls start coming in? 
• How do I know if SEO is working?
• What can I do while I wait?

To answer the last question first: sit tight, and trust the process–but don’t do it blindly.

In this blog, we’ll explore what it takes to build a search-engine-optimized website, how to measure success, and why SEO is worth the patience.  

What is SEO? 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your site so that a search engine finds and displays your website on a search engine results page (SERP) when potential customers search for your products and services. 

For example, A Superior Cut Lawn Care expects their SEO website to show up at the top of a SERP when someone searches for “lawn care near me” on Google or asks a voice assistant for a “lawn mowing company”.

Organic vs. Paid Traffic:

Organic traffic, driven by SEO, boasts a significant advantage over paid traffic (like pay-per-click (PPC) ads). Once optimized, your website sustains its rank over time with minimal maintenance. PPC traffic disappears when you stop paying for ads. 

When Will My Website Reach the Top of the SERP?

The honest answer?  No one knows. 

We can however use experience to predict trends. 

An established site that has a decent domain authority may start seeing the results of SEO fairly quickly. Google states that changes take time to reflect in search results– a few weeks to a few months to see an impact. But a brand new site with a new URL can take up to 6 months just to start breaking through the first 100 and then will gradually rise to 60, then 50, then 30, and so on. 

So, what can we do? 

Surge Web Design’s Success Story:

First, let us show you what we at Surge Web Design have done. We originally posted a website for “A Superior Cut Lawn Care” in 2021. Their website has been growing steadily in the Salt Lake Valley and had wonderful success. Early in 2024, they decided to expand their business to Fruitland, ID. In four short months, we generated over 3k monthly visitors for their new location and it now ranks in the top 10 for seven keywords and the top 15 for three more. 

How We Did It: 

Though Google will make no promises about what will work, they do give us valuable tips. We apply all the tips they offer to achieve top rankings for our customers' websites.

Key SEO Strategies Include:

Technical SEO: We ensure your website meets technical requirements by performing site audits. This includes fast loading times, functioning links, and clean code. 

Avoiding Spam: We steer clear of spammy tactics like hidden keywords or duplicate content. Google penalizes these practices. There are rumors of website designers doing all sorts of crazy things in the beginning, like hiding keywords in white text on a white background and creating multiple pages of duplicate content to beef up their site, but Google caught on fast. It penalizes websites that participate in these shady tactics and those that have been hacked or are being used maliciously. There are diverse ways to spam a website but the good news is that Google wants each user to have a good experience and uses its tools, algorithms, and bots to match a searcher with content that best fits their searches. 

Best Practices: We study the latest practices to ensure that your website is optimized with the most up-to-date information. 

• Keywords: We utilize keywords in titles, headings, content, links, and ALT tags to show Google what your site is about, so they will match searching customers to your content. 
• Google Business Profile: We will help you claim and verify your Google Business Profile (GBP) which is a crucial step in allowing local customers to find you. 
• Consistency: We ensure consistency across your website for a user-friendly experience. This includes consistent phone numbers, addresses, and information on every page. 
• Domain Authority: We build authority for your website by using backlinks, linking in important directories, optimizing content, and time. “A Superior Cut Lawn Care” benefited from the existing domain authority of the original website we built for them in 2021.  
• Quality User Experience: The most important factor is creating a positive user experience. The more informative, empathetic, and interesting content we can add to your site, the longer people will stay, indicating to Google that your site is a relevant match for those search queries. 

How Do I Know if it is Working 

Remember the “generally wait a few months” time frame mentioned earlier? That is when you’ll start to see movement. Meaning, that after a few months, you may not have reached the top 3, top 10, or top 50 yet, however, we will track your keywords and ensure that they are trending upward. We aim for some easier-to-rank top-ranking words within 3-6 months and continually work to increase the number of ranking keywords as your site gains traction. 

When working with any SEO agency you can request site analytics or an SEO Report. Surge Web Design offers quarterly SEO Reports for all of our SEO website packages. If you are unhappy with the trend of the prime keywords it is always appropriate to start a conversation about how to target a specific word. 

You can also do a quick SEO self-test. A quick Google search shows that “A Superior Cut” ranks number 1 for “yard maintenance”, showing up on the SERP as the first organic search. 

Please note that location plays a part in your ranking, and you may be ranking very differently in different locations, so the IP address of your computer will affect what comes up in your results.  

Choosing the Right Keywords for Effective SEO 

Keyword difficulty (KD) ratings and the degree of matching search intent vary. For instance, “yard maintenance” (KD:18/100) ranks well, but when we type in the keyword “fertilization” (KD 72/100) A Superior Cut does not even come up and we get search results that are completely irrelevant to lawn care.  

Wow, that is not what we’ve been talking about at all. 

A great website design company like Surge Web Design will help you determine the best keywords that match keyword intent. We target keywords at varying KD so that as your site builds the domain authority it needs to rank for high-difficulty keywords, we are still ranking for the relevant keywords with lower KD. We then ensure they are included in your report so you can see the progress. 

What Can I Do to Speed Up SEO Progress? 

We’re so glad you asked. You can help by telling your friends, inviting reviews, posting on social media, asking us about blogs, and adding content. There are many ways to encourage progress, but let us stress that organic traffic does not happen overnight. We’re in a marathon not a sprint, but effort sustained over time will propel us toward our goal.

With SEO, Time is a Factor–Which Means Now is the Time to Get Started. 

If you'd like to see the benefit of SEO for your small business in action, reach out to Surge Web Design today. Please call (208) 391-3413 or contact us here.

Our team of content writers  and website designers  is excited to design and help drive traffic to a website that will be a useful resource to current and potential customers. Our Boise, Idaho-based business contracts with businesses throughout the United States.