What is Timing in SEO?
Apart from Sandboxing, time is no part of any Google search algorithms nor does it add value to content or sites or make content better or more helpful. The only reason that SEO takes time is because, for new SEOs, a big part of SEO is really just an observation, and its almost always one made by someone relatively new to SEO Marketing. SEO takes time from the time it takes to effectively rank a page or site and the time it takes the SEO to get all of the variables in their control into place. Put – without the right SEO signals, like authority, content, and links – a site won’t rank, especially in a competitive landscape
SEO Timing and Results
SEO isn’t instantaneous but it also shouldn’t take months to see results. SEO isn’t a binary list and there also should be a binary list of SEO KPIs and Metrics. As I write frequently, any SEO project should demonstrate progression to an SEO goal and that should be demonstrable. And if you’re not ranking, you can’t expect to just keep posting new content in the hopes it will rank. You need to figure out what elements are in the way or what is missing in order to move a page up.
SEO needs to be measured and reported properly and the problem for site owners working with outsourced SEOs where the project is taking too much time is that they don’t have the right SEO reports and metrics in place.
SEO Leading Indicators in Time
- SERP Reporting
- Rank positions gained
- Rank improvements
- Overall Visibility
- Overall Rank position
- GSC
- Page Crawled and indexed
- Impressions earned
SEO Yellow flags in timing
Discovered, not indexed
If you’re seeing pages drop into this status (and also, Crawled but not indexed) – you likely have an authority issue. This means either not enough authority or that your incoming authority isn’t being shaped or managed properly.
How long do SEO results take?
Google suggests a few months to a year – this is because the learning curve is so steep due to the immense competition inside Google.
Google Ranking Stages
- Discovery: Google discovers a URL and crawls it
- Ranking: Google places the page in an index and gives it a position
- Results: Google returns the page in rank order for a search phrase
SEO Timing in Stages
A new site goes through stages of being registered and crawled for the first time. As Google crawls the web, it does so in a kind of triaged pattern – the most popular and authoritative domains get crawled frequently but not every page and edge (pages at the outside perimeter of a site) don’t get crawled frequently. As Google eventually finds links, the authority of that domain starts to grow.
- Page or Domain found
- Links to the Domain found
- PageRank updated
If you’re new to SEO, and not great at link building, it could take Google weeks or months to discover links and attribute them. And this implies that the links have low value, thus just adding “time” to the question of SEO timing.
How long should my site take?
It depends completely on how quickly you can grow your visibility, get traffic, and grow your online presence. We dive into and further explore the concept of how long SEO results should take here.
How to speed up page ranking and indexing times
As always, Google has the answers and this result from Matt Cutts, former head of Search Quality at Google is simple: We can index billions of documents – get links!
