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How much does SEO cost?

Posted on February 14, 2022April 22, 2025 by Phil

If you understand how much a website can do for your business, then you should understand the importance of SEO! Search Engine Optimisation is one of the core fundamental practices when it comes to website performance. Website design and performance can then (if measured accurately) be the key to a website working hard for you. It can either earn you exponential ROI or just sit there and essentially cost you money.

Just like the website itself, SEO is an investment. Over time there is no doubt you will see great returns (if you use a trustworthy SEO expert). But how much should SEO cost?

The cost of SEO services will vary depending on a range of things. Like your SEO plan, the types of services included (and if the agency can perform them all in-house), and more. To be fair, most ongoing projects involving SEO cost between $750-$2,500 per month based on the project scope. One-off projects will range between $2,000-$30,000 (which is a huge ball-park) and will typically include SEM services too. Hourly rates for SEO freelances and consultants range between $75-$200 per hour.

Like anything in the realms of marketing, there is no set rule about SEO cost or what it should be. However, there are some key elements that are worth understanding. Then you can decide how much to invest.

SEO service types

When setting expectations for the ROI that a company will receive on an SEO campaign, you must consider the comprehensiveness and quality of the SEO campaign itself. Is it a one-off? Or is it to be ongoing? What are the parts that will make up the strategy? All of these things and more will contribute to the SEO cost. Below are the three most common SEO services:

1. Technical SEO

This is where an SEO agency, freelancer, or consultant, monitors and fixes technical issues on your website. Typically these fixes relate to site speed, Google core vitals, website security, and mobile optimization. This should involve a monthly audit or health check, where these issues can be detected and fixed. Technical SEO would also involve keyword research to understand Google search volumes and keyword difficulty. From there, this will often lead to rewriting the meta-data on your sites, such as title tags and meta-descriptions, and alt-tags on images. Depending on the level of service and your SEO cost, your provider may also monitor and fix the following:

Backlinks
Structured data
Crawling
Indexing

Technical SEO generally requires the help of someone with expert skills in web development to perform the technical stuff. So find out from the provider if they do this work in-house or outsource it. Find out more about technical SEO in this article: Website performance. Is it important?

2. Standard Content Marketing

Google now more than ever is putting its users at the centre of what they do. That means providing the most relevant information to their search query. The primary function of performing cursory keyword research typically consists of looking up keywords using an online tool. It also involves producing 2-4 blog articles per month of average quality relative to your competition.

3. Educational Content and Thought Leadership

This type of content marketing is a subset of Inbound Marketing. When you start to use it to get found online, it crosses the border into SEM, or search engine marketing. With so many conflicting names and crossovers, it’s no wonder everyone is confused.

Embracing the Inbound way of thinking is where your results will amplify and really level up! Inbound Marketing is really about putting your client or customer at the centre of what you do. By focussing on creating value for them at every stage of their buying journey with you.

This type of SEO campaign is where the best SEO agencies extract from you, the expert in your field, an intimate understanding of your customer’s buyer personas’ pain points. What problems are they facing, and how do you solve these problems? Through thorough keyword research, with an emphasis on target audience persona needs and pain points, transactional behavior, and search intent, you can build out clusters of topics. Over time, coupled with complementary services, these strategies will help you and your business win online.

If you’re serious about winning in the online space, then building out a Marketing Road Map that includes: Growth-Driven Website Design, SEO, SEM, and a solid Content plan will return exponentially on your investment.

What is your SEO Cost?

When figuring out how much you want your SEO cost to be, one option is to reverse engineer the process. How much do you want to make? We know that depending on the industry, SEO results and ROI range from 300% to 1600%. It is also important to understand that with setup and tweaking, and how long it can take to see SEO results. In reality, it depends on how old/good your website is already. A brand new site can take 6-9 months to break even on your SEO cost.

With that said, let’s say your industry’s average return on SEO investment is 700%, or a 7x return. Then, if you want to return $700,000 in revenue each year, you would need to invest around $100k per annum in SEO. This includes online advertising spend or PPC, continuous website improvements (Technical SEO), and content creation (Inbound Marketing).

Of course, there is no guarantee you’ll see this return. However, any half-decent SEO agency should be able to help you if you’re focused on SEO investment and return, rather than SEO cost.

Who is the best SEO Agency in Southland?

Posted on February 3, 2022April 22, 2025 by Phil

Updated: 30th November 2022

As we state in our article Who is the best web design company in Invercargill, narrowing down the best business in an industry can be tricky. This is especially hard when it comes to all things digital. SEO or Search Engine Optimisation in itself is complicated enough!

So how do you find the best SEO agency for your business? How much does SEO cost? Will I even see results from SEO? The questions go on… The most important factor for one person may not matter to another, and vice versa.

Understanding what is SEO all about, is important, but you need to understand, there are so many things to factor in. Also, you need to understand the difference between organic SEO and paid search! One aspect can stand out among the rest for you and something else for your neighbour. So how do we define who is the best SEO agency for you?

Business is not finite! In fact, if the business were a sporting match, it would be a draw with endless overtime. There is no official way to measure who is better. Or is there? We have business awards, design awards, and a number of other ways to measure who is best, but these are still finite and somewhat subjective things within the infinite.

Who are the best ranking SEO providers in Southland?

Which company will be the best for you depends on your needs and circumstances. What’s your criteria for partnering with an SEO agency or freelancer? What do you want them to do for you? What results do you hope to achieve?

One of the most important parts of teaming up with a company is working with people who believe what you believe! You can usually feel that in your gut. And from my experience, I would say trust your instinct! The reality is if you’re providing SEO services, then you should be able to get your own website ranking pretty well on Google. However, it’s easy in an online world to bend the truth or manipulate Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (or SERP). But the good news is, it’s getting increasingly harder to do. Consumers want trust from their providers, whether that be from their mechanic, their power company, or their website design team.

At the time of writing this (bearing in mind staying at the top of the search results or SERP, is tough at the best of times), here are six of the highest-ranking SEO agencies for the search phrase: best SEO in Southland?

Back9 Creative

Well, what can we say? I guess the fact that you’re on our website and you more than likely found us in a Google Search, then reiterates it. Not that we like to toot our own horn when the results speak for themselves, but yes, we do believe we are one of the best SEO companies in Southland. Much like the others on the list, we offer the same laundry list of services. So what makes us different? Well, Nothing specific really. We’re all good at SEO, or our websites wouldn’t be ranking on Google, right? So you’ll choose to talk to us if you think we can deliver value (pssst… We can by the way…) And we’d love to have a chat and see if we can work together…

BWG

BWG is a full-service digital agency based in Takapuna, Auckland. They are Google certified and their mission is to grow New Zealand SME’s and create jobs. They believe the primary difference between them and other agencies is the ratio of production staff to sales staff. Their sales staff are also competent in production. This is why they believe their campaigns deliver higher than average results.

They use Photoshop, HTML, and WordPress CMS for all design and development work. BWG also offer a full digital marketing suite, including Google Ads, Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media, and more.

The search term best SEO Southland, returns a decent ranking for BWG, albeit for a landing page for Napier. If you’re not opposed to dealing with someone outside of Southland, then these guys are possibly at least worth having a discussion with.

Net Branding

Net Branding ranks reasonably well for best SEO Southland search term – around 6 on the first page. They say they “bring a unique approach to digital marketing services – a full-service digital marketing service from strategy to success”.
As a full-service online marketing firm, they can be your SEO company, craft an online marketing strategy, offer website development services, and more.

They bring a team of specialist expertise in multiple disciplines – acting as your SEO company, your Digital Marketing Firm, Email Marketing consultancy, Website design company, and more!

Net Branding state their “SEO services are second to none. And they’re more than just a web developer or SEO Services Company – their offer is a unique, end to end integrated digital marketing solution for your business”.

You’ll see below, that they clearly state they are in Southland Digital Marketing Company in the title – but caveat emptor they are not. In saying that they are showing up on the page for the search term ‘best SEO agency Southland” so maybe they know what they are doing 😉

Best SEO Southland screen grab of Net Brandings Result

Grow NZ Marketing

Much like the crews above, Grow NZ states they are a Southland/Otago Based company. They say they have “Over 100 Years’ Marketing Experience”

“With a mix of some of the world’s best technology and some extraordinary Kiwi marketing talent, we can ensure your marketing dollars are spent in the areas that drive the best return for your business…”

Firebrand

Firebrand has recently snuck onto the first page of google for the search “Best SEO Southland”. Dunedin-based Firebrand is a Digital transformation Agency.

They refer to themselves as: Masters of the Digital Universe

They are a full-service marketing and digital transformation agency, based at our awesome premises in Dunedin, New Zealand.

Our capabilities include business plans and strategies, branding, and complete digital marketing solutions tailored to agreed outcomes. We offer brand positioning, website design, UI/UX design, custom website development, web app development, e-commerce, social media marketing, SEO, copywriting, video, and photography.

So, who is the best SEO agency for you and your business?

So which SEO company based in Southland, is the best for you and your business? Well… That still depends on what you’re looking for. Are the above companies still at the top of the results? SEO is a complicated field – actually it’s a minefield. And to stay at the top of Google you (or the agency you partner with) need to work bloody hard!

All of the above businesses claim to be the Best SEO company in Southland. Best these days is subjective, and is more about what it best for you and your business! What are you trying to achieve and who aligns with your values the best?

If you’re looking to partner with an SEO Agency or Freelancer, or wondering How to choose the right marketing agency for your business you must take the time to research. We’ve had several clients over the years who feel they have not seen results paying for SEO. And the reality is, there are a lot of people out there saying they are the best. SEO is also a long-term investment How Long it takes for SEO to show results will vary. This will depend on a number of factors… These include (but are not limited to) how good your website design is. And then how well developed or built it is too.

Search Google to see who comes up first

When you’re deciding who to contact, do some google searches to see how well their website ranks. Look over their website. If their site seems easy to use, and it answers most of your questions, chances are they could be a good fit. One tip is to check right at the bottom of their website and looks for the “Copyright ©” info. If it says 2014, chances are they may be a bit out of touch. Read up on their services, and testimonials. Ultimately if their style and tone match what you want for your own business, they may be worth talking to. Taking time to find that right fit and work with credible, reliable businesses can save time and trouble later on. So it’s worth the effort!

Ironically, though, if you’re reading this article, you found at the top of the Google Search results. Well… You may have found the best SEO company in Southland already 😉

What are the Marketing Trends for 2022?

Posted on January 17, 2022April 22, 2025 by Phil

Update: Check out Marketing Trends for 2025

Welcome back to the roaring ’20s, a time where 90 per cent of the country are now active internet users. With practically everyone online, if you have a product or service that could benefit people, it’s important to get your message out to them so they can find out about it. Unfortunately, just about every business owner is thinking the same thing. So how do you stand out?

Like with fashion, the internet has trends and patterns of usage. While flash-based sites aren’t likely to return, some trends with internet usage rise and fall. And then rise again. One of these is the way that searches are done. A lot of people first starting out with the internet would type full sentences into Google. But the results were often less than stellar. Then, the focus became on limiting words to a few keywords to find what you needed. Now, with voice searches on the rise, full sentences are also making a return.

For 2020, we’ve identified 9 important trends in marketing. We’ll touch upon each of them briefly here, but if you’re interested or want to know more about a particular topic, we encourage you to download our free eBook, 9 Marketing Trends for 2022, that you can get by filling out the form on the bottom of this page.

1. Increase in Voice Search

Voice search has been on the rise for a few years and is expected to become even bigger in 2020. Unlike typed searches, voice searches are done a little differently. People are much more likely to search using full sentences on voice than with text, which is a big part of why full sentences are on the rise. With smart speakers getting more popular and voice assistants a given on most phones, voice search isn’t going away anytime soon. Plus with the recent BERT update from Google, it’s likely to become much bigger than ever before.

2. More time spent watching videos

We’ve talked a lot about how video tends to be the most engaging form of content. In the past, most of the bandwidth (data sent across the internet) was from people watching videos. That number is expected to increase even more in 2022. If you haven’t started doing videos for social media, your website, or YouTube yet, now’s the time to start!

3. Featured Snippets becoming more important

A featured snippet is what you see sometimes after a Google search where you get a little box that answers your query. Like if you type in “When did Columbus Reach America?” you’ll get a box that says 1492, and then a paragraph from the source page. This is also the result that you’ll get from a voice search, so long as a featured snippet for the term exists. And with voice search getting more frequent, optimising your page to maximise its chance of becoming the featured snippet will be one of the most important parts of search engine optimisation.

4. Interactive Content getting more popular

Interactive content is anything that lets the audience interact with it. So things like Facebook lives, contests and competitions on social media, animations, and even games. One of the best ways to go viral is to create interactive content that people want to share. Then, they can do a lot of the work promoting it for you!

5. Customers expect faster response times

Gone are the days when a customer makes an inquiry and you can safely put it off for a week before getting back to them. By that point, they’re likely to move on–and maybe to a competitor. In 2022, customers want faster response times, with most expecting a response in an hour; for many, this includes times outside of business hours.

6. Consumer trust is slipping

In 2022, the overall consumer base is becoming more cynical. Rarely are the claims a business makes about their products and services taken at face value anymore. Instead of starting with trust that can be lost, trust and loyalty typically need to be earned. The best way to do this is to provide quality offerings with friendly service and prove why you’re the best around at what you do.

7. Mass marketing isn’t working well anymore

Few people keep their unopened emails at zero. Some people have even gone as far as to make separate email accounts, including an account dedicated to signing up for newsletters and offers to keep their primary inbox less cluttered. When dozens of emails come in a day, sending massive emails out to the entire client base will miss the mark for a lot of people. Wouldn’t it be better if they didn’t get those emails they weren’t planning on opening? Instead of mass marketing, in 2022, personalisation is key. Segmenting lists and targeting are now in; people prefer to only see relevant information, and the more relevant, the better!

8. Provide the best possible customer experience

We’ve worked with some clients who conduct their business entirely online and don’t have a physical storefront. For others, we’re the first interaction they have with dealing with working on the internet and doing digital marketing. No matter where on the spectrum you fall, providing the best possible customer experience is paramount in 2022. This includes interactions in-person, online, and by phone. When all work together seamlessly, customer satisfaction increases.

Practically everyone has a Facebook account. (There are over 2 billion active accounts!) But focusing solely on Facebook means you can miss a lot of opportunities. LinkedIn is growing in popularity and is designed with businesses in mind. Accounts are free to make, and immediately make a business seem more reputable. If you’re looking to reach a younger crowd, it could be worth looking into some upcoming social media sites too like Tik-Tok or Tumblr. Doing Snapchat stories could also be a helpful option.

I want to know more about these 2022 marketing trends!

If you want to know more about these 2022 marketing trends, download our free eBook 9 Marketing Trends for 2022 by filling out the form below.

How to take photos for a website banner

Posted on January 14, 2022February 8, 2022 by Phil

Finding a good image to use for your website can be difficult. A banner image (also known as a “hero” image) is the big picture that you see will see on most website pages. It is usually located at the top, but that is not a hard rule as website designs are becoming more unique and creative. It’s important to get this image right but it’s not as straightforward as uploading a high-quality photo and you’re done. In this blog, we will be talking about how to help you take and choose the right image for your website banner.

Website Banner Sizes and Ratio

The standard picture ratio that most smartphones take is a 4:3 ratio, and most digital cameras will produce a 3:2 ratio. However, the average website banner is around 4 times as wide as it is tall or a 4:1 ratio. This means that only a small portion of the photograph will be visible when it’s used for the banner image. Below are some tips to help achieve a great looking banner photo.

A good website banner shows your customer that you’re professional and care about your brand. And as a bonus a good banner image can also double as a great cover photo for your business’s social media pages too.

Shoot in landscape

Be sure to only use landscape oriented photos. It is very commonplace to take photos in portrait orientation when using your smartphone, but this can cause a lot of problems if you wanted to use the image for your website. Portrait photos have a much smaller usable area when cropped to banner size. This will result in a massive loss in photo quality, and make the website look very unprofessional. It is also nearly impossible to crop a portrait photo into a banner and make it look good. See the difference of the photo on your phone compared to what visitors will actually see if used as a website banner.

Don’t shoot too close

Zooming out and creating more room around the subject is crucial when taking photos for the website banner. Zooming out or moving farther away gives more options for cropping the photo. It is important to allow for different amounts of cropping. A websites banner crop will be different depending on if it is viewed on mobile or desktop, so it is important to allow for both. This means that some photos will have a slightly taller and more narrow picture on some screens and a wider and shorter photo on others. Zooming out fixes this problem by having more negative space in the photo to fill in those areas that might get cropped out. This is a fine balance though, as you don’t want to have to crop the majority of your photo out because you will quickly lose image quality.

Leave room around your subject

This goes hand-in-hand with zooming out, but allowing for space around the subject leaves room more many different composition options. If your photo has a person in it as a subject, but you haven’t captured them entirely or have partially cut them off on the side of the photo, it will mean that they are fixed to that side of the photo and it will limit your options with further cropping. However, if the photo has space all around them, there will be much more room to play with the cropping and composition of the banner image. It will even allow for clear cuts of the subject. Having more options will always end with a better final result.

K.I.S.S. (Keep it simple…)

Simplicity is key in marketing. A photo that has too much going on will often send mixed messages and the viewer will often not understand what you are trying to portray, and will often just look chaotic. Choosing a nice and simple/plain background, or removing unnecessary items in the photo, will draw your viewers eyes to the subject or message much more effectively and more efficiently.

Using negative space for website banner photos

Negative space is referring to a part of an image that does not appear to have a subject or any visual interest. Kind of just empty space. Website banner images are fantastic for using text to quickly convey a message. Creating negative space lets you have room to place text and make it look clean and legible. You do not want to have to place your message over a busy area, or even worse the subject.

Not only is it important to have an open area in the photo, but a shallow depth of field as well. This occurs when the subject is in focus but the background is blurry. A good lens paired with a dedicated digital camera can achieve this reasonably easy, although smartphones have recently learnt wizardry that has allowed them to simulate this look using software. Not only will the shallow depth of field attract your attention to the subject, but the text that is placed in the banner will also pop much more since it won’t be competing with the background of the photograph.

Panoramas

It can be hard to get a great panoramic photo. Moving objects and an unsteady hand can make some really funky and sometimes hilarious results. However, most panoramic photos are already the perfect size for a banner image, require little to no cropping, have more pixels to work with compared to a normal photo and provide a unique look to catch attention. Most smartphones have this feature built into their camera app. But you have to be careful to get it right or you can get some awful looking results. If you take a close look at this intentionally bad photo of our home page that came from panorama mode you can see what can happen.

Getting that perfect website banner

Beautiful, well-executed banner images is a fantastic way to make your website stand out above the competition and really give your business that professional look. Getting the perfect banner image may take more effort and planning than most other photos for your website, unfortunately just using existing photos that you have taken on your phone likely will not yield good results. But spending a little extra time and attention will make a massive difference.

If you are thinking of hiring a professional photographer to take these photos for you, it does pay to make sure that they have worked in the commercial space before as this kind of photography does require a different approach than many other disciplines. This can also give you unique, custom photos to encourage visitors to choose you. You can find out more about how professional photos can help and when and when not to use stock imagery in our article Stock vs Original Photos: Can you see the difference?

What is Hubspot? [VIDEO]

Posted on December 21, 2021September 6, 2023 by Phil

The HubSpot CRM platform is a full suite of software built to power an inbound strategy approach to help you — and your customers — grow better. There are many alternatives to HubSpot so it is still worth doing your research, but this article will help you understand more about it.

Sounds complicated if you haven’t used a CRM before. But honestly, it’s not! If you’re using spreadsheets – or worse – a notebook or diary – or worse still – nothing at all to keep track of your customer interactions, then HubSpot could be a game-changer for you and your business!

You may have heard the term (or read it on our website) “inbound” before — but what is it, exactly? Inbound is a methodology for growing your organisation.

It’s based on building meaningful, lasting relationships with your prospects and customers through valuable content and experiences, and empowering people to reach their goals at any stage in their journey with you. Because when your customers succeed, you succeed.

Let’s look at how your marketing, sales, service, and operations teams can leverage the HubSpot platform to achieve their goals.

Hubspot: Marketing, sales, service and operations teams collaborate to remove friction in the buyer’s journey.

Hubspot Marketing

Generate qualified leads.

Create and manage content, capture leads, and nurture them until they’re qualified and sales-ready.

Hubspot Sales

Turn leads into customers.

Engage potential buyers, demonstrate the value of your offering and close deals.

Hubspot Service

Convert customers into promoters.

Resolve customer issues and deliver an experience that turns customers into promoters.

Hubspot Operations

Make your systems work better together.

Connect apps, automate processes, and align teams around one source of truth for customer data.

Funnel to Flywheel: The Buyer’s Journey Is Now a Circle

The flywheel is a model adapted by HubSpot to explain the momentum you gain when you align your entire organization around delivering a remarkable customer experience. With the flywheel, you use the momentum of your happy customers to drive referrals and repeat sales. Basically, your business keeps spinning, you align your entire organization around delivering a remarkable customer experience and continuously produce happy customers. When you use the inbound methodology as a foundation, the three phases of your flywheel are; attract, engage, and delight. By applying force to these three phases, you can provide an amazing customer experience.

Hubspot has changed our business

As a HubSpot Solution Partner here at back9 we may admittedly be a little bit biased, but we truly love Hubspot. We trialed around 6-8 different CRM systems or what claimed to be – back before we tried Hubspot. They were all clunky and had one or two good points but never quite gelled. After using Hubspot Freemium for around 2 years we jumped onboard a paid subscription and became a solutions partner – the only one in Southland (at the time of writing this article).

The price is offputting to a lot of smaller organisations, but the time and energy using Hubspot effectively can save is far greater than the price of the subscription.

If you’re interested in finding out more and would like some guidance, please fill out the form and contact us first before signing up, so we can help you understand and get you onboard.

How Long Does SEO Take to Show Results?

Posted on November 27, 2021September 12, 2023 by Phil

One of the most common questions we are asked after What is SEO? is, “How long does SEO take to show results?”

Business owners want to know when they’re going to see the tangible results from their investment (and understandably so). But… SEO isn’t like paid forms of media, where results can be seen almost as soon as ads are turned on. SEO Services are a long-term investment. It takes time to see success. But how long?

To understand this question, you must first understand SEO itself. There are a number of factors that impact the length of time it takes to see results from an SEO strategy. These include:

What Does SEO Success Look Like?

If you have an understanding of SEO you still need to put in the hard yards. This means an investment in considerable time, analysis, and maintenance. Or an investment in an SEO agency or expert. If you’re prepared to do that, then you Should Expect to See Results From SEO Within 6 to 12 Months…

The Factors That Determine How Long It Takes to See Success From SEO

Your Website’s History
The Competition
Your Resources

What Factors That Determine How Long It Takes to See Success From SEO

To help you to further understand how long it takes to see SEO success, let’s take a look at the factors that determine this.

1. Your Website’s History

Whether you’re working on a brand new domain or not is one of the key factors that influence the time it takes to see results from SEO.
A new domain will almost always take longer to show success than an established one. This is because it hasn’t yet built up any authority or earned any backlinks. In comparison, an established domain will usually have earned at least some level of authority and have some backlinks pointing to it.
A brand new domain should expect to see results within 9 to 12 months, rather than 6 to 12.

However, an established domain doesn’t automatically mean that you’ll see quicker results. You likely won’t see quick results if the domain has previously been affected by a penalty, a core algorithm update, or has had SEO work that goes against Google’s webmaster guidelines.
When working on a new project, it’s always a good idea to build up a picture of the site’s history. While you can get an idea of site performance by looking at impressions on Google Search Console, or similar tools can help you figure this out very quickly.

Estimates on how long it takes to show results are usually given based on a site with no historical issues that need resolving first. Always consider how a site has performed over the last 2 to 3 years to help put projections together.

2. The Competition

Results can be seen far quicker in low competition niches and low competition search queries than competitive ones.
Trying to rank a website for competitive personal finance keywords (e.g., ‘credit cards’)? It could take 2 years or more to earn prominent page 1 visibility. On the other hand, for local or narrower lower competition keywords, it might be possible to show promising results within 3 to 6 months.

Understanding keywords and how to optimise and rank in google search for these can be a lengthy process to get your head around. Ultimately it is worth understanding – or employing/paying someone who does. If your website’s visibility is much higher than your competitors then you are the company your buyers will find.

Take a look at an example of the www.back9.co.nz visibility trend vs competitors below.

These results are from an in-depth understanding of identifying Keyword Difficulty. This KD% is a percentage from 0 to 100, and the higher the percentage, the more difficult it would be to rank for.
You should expect it to take longer to show results against high KD % keywords. But there’s more to competition than just Keyword Difficulty.

You need to consider how your competitors got to their current position and what they’re doing to maintain this visibility. Your strategy and projections have to consider what you’re competing against, including the aggressiveness of other people’s strategies.

A good starting point to estimate the competitive gap is to use the Keyword Gap Tool to see how you currently perform against up to four other competitors:

You can also use the Backlink Gap Tool to understand the competitive gap from a backlink perspective:

3. Your Resources

You can’t control a website’s history nor the competition. But what you can (usually) control is the resources that are allocated toward an SEO project. It’s important to understand exactly how this plays a huge part in the length of time it takes to see results from a campaign. The more resources you’re able to allocate toward SEO, the faster you’ll usually see results.

The most important resource you need is time. Let’s give an example…
Two websites owned by small businesses are competing for the same keyword. They’re both aware that the key drivers of SEO success are technical SEO, content, and backlinks. Both employ the services of an SEO freelancer. For simplicity, we’ll assume that both of these sites start on a level playing field.
Website A engages their chosen specialist for 5 days of time per month, whereas Website B engages theirs for just 2 days.

Of course, website A should expect to see faster results.

Be aware that conversations around the time taken to see an impact must take into account the resources being allocated, understanding that the best way to reduce this (within reason) is to allocate more to the project.
It often makes sense to put together a backlog of action points at the start of a campaign (detailing all of the opportunities and actions) and then prioritize this around the allocated resources. This can help to show the opportunities that are still outstanding that could be brought forward with more investment.

What Do SEO Results Look Like?

To answer the question, we first need to determine what SEO success looks like to ensure that the measures of results are clear.
And when it comes to putting together an SEO strategy, it’s common to put together campaign goals and KPIs.

Let’s break this down.

Goals = The end outcome that you want to achieve
KPIs = Metrics that demonstrate progress towards your goals
These are both important measures of success and, ultimately, results from your efforts. Commonly, the reality is that these goals and KPIs look something like the below:
Goals = To achieve an increase in revenue by a set amount over a 12-month period.
KPIs = Growth in organic traffic, visibility, impressions, or rankings.

Of course, setting goals is all about putting in place measurable yet realistic targets. To answer this question, we’re going to focus on the length of time it typically takes to see results across core KPIs, understanding that goals are typically far more unique to a business and change significantly based on several factors.

Primarily there are 3 Parts of SEO Success. Let’s take a look at what these are, and how they Impact the Time to See Results…

There are 3 key parts to SEO success, and each of these can impact the time that it takes to see results. Let’s take a look.

Technical SEO

If technical SEO issues exist on a site, they will need to be resolved before you can experience the growth you’re looking to see.
Technical SEO relates to things like:

Crawling and indexing
Site speed
Canonicalization
Structured data
Duplicate content
XML sitemaps
Hreflang
and more

Resolving issues around some of these areas will have a bigger impact than others, but the fact remains that any technical problems should be fixed.
You can identify technical SEO issues with your site using the Site Audit Tool below and see a list of areas that need your attention:

However, technical SEO on its own isn’t going to be enough. Think of resolving these issues as removing the brakes on your project and allowing your site to compete against others.

Content

You’ve may have heard that content is king, and the fact is that content remains one of Google’s top 3 ranking factors.

Google’s goal is to return the very best results for a given search query, so why would poor content perform well on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)?
It’s important that you place a high priority on creating great content that matches a searcher’s intent. Equally, you should take the time to understand what’s currently ranking. And figure out how to create something better. You can learn a lot from studying the content that already performs.
Poor quality (or even average) content can mean that it takes longer to see results, while great content that’s carefully planned out and adds something new to a topic can help your site to rank faster.

Backlinks

Alongside content, backlinks are also one of Google’s top 3 ranking factors. These are indicators of trust and popularity and have the ability to supercharge a website’s rankings.
After all, links are essentially votes of confidence between two sites. But you need to understand that there’s rarely any shortcut to earning quality backlinks.
It takes time and usually involves creating great content that other people want to link to. And when there’s a sizeable link gap with competitors, this can take time to close.
That said, not all links are created equal, and higher quality links ultimately have the ability to drive rankings faster than lower quality links.
You can work on building up your backlink portfolio but be aware that the need to close a sizeable link gap can mean that it takes longer to see results.
How Long Does Google Say It Takes to See Results From SEO?
So just how long does Google say it takes to see results from SEO?
In most cases, SEOs need four months to a year to help your business first implement improvements and then see potential benefits.

Other Considerations

After you’ve implemented your strategy, it’s imperative to monitor your site to ensure it sees results. SEO is not a one-time tactic; a good strategy requires frequent reporting and maintenance.

SEO should involve ongoing work, and seeing the channel as a long-term, the continued tactic can help to justify the investment. The more resources you can allocate, the faster you’ll typically see results, but every website is a unique scenario. It’s important to pay close attention to the technical issues, quality of the content, and the strength of the link profile before projecting when success could be seen.

You Should Expect to See Results From SEO Within 6 to 12 Months…

SEO should show results within a 6- to 12-month period. By results, we mean a measurable increase in traffic and associated leads or conversions.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have achieved your goal by this point, but any business that is investing in SEO should expect to be able to see progress within this timeframe.

It’s impossible to give a figure that applies to all websites, and the best guess will be based on analyzing a website’s current performance and the proposed strategy.

There’s no getting away from the fact that SEO takes time. Google (and other search engines) want to show the best result for any given search query, and it takes time for you to deserve to rank well. You’ve got to earn authority and top search visibility.

But with the right strategy in place, we believe 6 to 12 months is a long enough period to be able to see the impact of SEO efforts and to be able to justify ongoing investment into growth.