How long does it take to do SEO? An hour a week?

When I introduce people to the concept of SEO, most business owners get excited, “Are you telling me that my business’ website can appear a the top of Google?” 

“Well, basically, yes. With a little work, more of your customers can find your business.”

That naturally brings us to additional questions.

How quickly does SEO work?

Unfortunately, SEO is not quick. Sometimes, after people put in a little time and effort on their website, they don’t see the results they want. They wonder if they’ve done it wrong or if SEO doesn’t work. You can do everything right but not see immediate results. Here’s why:

• Your website can only get credit from Google each time they visit your website- and it doesn’t see the typical website all that often. That means you might “optimize” a page perfectly for Google, but you won’t get credit for it until Google sees it- and, for that, you’ll have to wait!
• Even after Google sees a change, it has many things to consider (thousands of other websites relevant to the same topic as yours) when deciding if and where your webpage will show up in the search results.
• There are many factors (a couple of hundred) behind how Google decides to “rank” websites. Changing one factor may not make much difference when there are potentially hundreds of others to consider.

I’d suggest that the improvements you make this week won’t be reflected in your website’s performance for several weeks. 

Don’t be discouraged. Just because SEO is slow doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. It just means you have to keep working at it. You have to invest time in your SEO campaign to see the results you want.

How many hours should be spent on SEO?

The short answer is: as much as you can. The more you do to help your SEO campaign, the more Google will consider serving your website to potential customers. Don’t do one thing and step away, hoping it will help. Do as much as you can and know that your accumulated efforts will pay off over time.

Can you do SEO within an hour each week?

Since SEO is slow, you need to invest time in your campaign to see results. However, I think if you spend only an hour a week, you will start to see results. The key: focus. Simply reserving time for yourself each week will help ensure you don’t let other priorities distract you. 

Another SEO benefit of focus is ensuring you spend your time on the most important tasks. That’s where Curious Ants can help you. It tells you (in order of priority) where your biggest bang for your buck (or your time) might be. The Curious Ants game plan not only teaches you what you need to do for SEO but also helps you prioritize the tasks that will make the most significant impact.

So, even if you only have an hour a week to dedicate to your SEO efforts, Curious Ants can help.