How Long Does It Take To Optimize A Website?

Optimizing your website is one of the best ways to drive in more traffic and boost your business. However, the uncertainties regarding the time it takes to optimize a website and for it to show results might be something that holds most businesses from going all out with this effort. To clear your doubt, we created this article to take you through the key factors that influence website optimization timelines and answer one of the biggest questions in website optimization efforts: how long does it take to optimize a website?

What Can Affect the Website Optimization Timeline

Before we dive in further, let’s take a look at some of the factors that affect the initial and ongoing effort in optimizing a website. While the process of optimizing a website is similar for every website and business, the effort and degree of optimization may differs depending on these factors : 

1. Initial Website Health
   The initial health of the website will affect the amount of effort and optimization needed to be put in for the website to reach the expected SEO performance. The health of a website is made up of : 
   1. Existing SEO foundation : Some of this SEO foundation includes the HTML tag, proper internal linking, and a clear keyword usage that depicts what a page is about. A website with a strong SEO foundation will generally require less time to optimize than one without any prior foundation.
   2. Technical issues : Technical problems like slow loading times, broken links, and mobile incompatibility can significantly delay optimization efforts as it is one of the ranking factors set by Google.
   3. Content quality and relevance : Having a high content quality and relevancy is one of the key deciding factors that make or break a website optimization effort. A website with low quality or irrelevant content, which includes any plagiarised content, will need more effort and attention.

2. Competitive Landscape : One of the key factors affecting the time taken to optimize a website is how competitive the SEO landscape is. Here are some of the elements that make up the competitiveness landscape for specific SEO effort are : 
   1. Industry competitiveness : A highly competitive industry, like e-commerce, often requires more extensive optimization effort and strategy to achieve good results. This is because you will be competing against big and well-established companies like Amazon and Shopee.
   2. Competitor strength : The strength and SEO practices of your competitors will affect the level of effort needed to outrank them. A competitor with a highly optimized website will require you to do at least the same level of optimization or strategy to reach their ranking, and more to outrank them.
   3. Market saturation : A saturated market might require you to use more aggressive SEO strategies and more efforts to stand out from the competitors. This may include finding a proper penetrating point, targeting longer tail keywords, and creating high quality content that stands out from the competitors. 

3. Degree Of Optimization : The levels of optimization to be implemented would also affect the timeline. Here are the breakdown of the elements that affect the degree of optimization:
   1. Scope of optimization : The optimization scope involves to what extent the desired improvements will be targeted and implemented. For example, optimizing the website for a few longer tails keywords will be faster than a high amount of short tail keywords.
   2. Technical complexity : Complex technical issues or improvement, such as restructuring or redesigning the website will affect the time taken for the optimization process as a whole.
   3. Content creation : The amount and type of content needed to be created is one of the biggest factors that can significantly impact the timeline. For example, creating a new landing page might take a lot more effort than creating an article or blog post but it might have a larger effect on the end results.

What Is Involved In Website Optimization And How Long Does it Takes

1. Competitors Research (1 to 2 days)

Competitors research involves identifying the key competitors in your industry in terms of SEO. This is an important step for benchmarking and reference purposes. Do keep in mind that sometimes the biggest competitors in your industry in terms of business won’t necessarily be the biggest competitors in SEO point of view, and the process would usually take 1 to 2 days.

2. Keyword Research (1 to 2 days)

Keywords are the foundation and will make or break an SEO effort. Choosing the right keywords will affect the whole strategy, and the result as a whole. Some of the considerations used when choosing a keyword is its volume, competitiveness, and their relevance to your business. The amount of time taken for this step is usually 1 to 2 days but it is highly dependent on the numbers of keywords to be targeted and the competitiveness of your industry.

3. Technical SEO (1 to 2 days)

Technical SEO is the act of optimizing a website’s technical aspect that will impact the SEO effort and results. This involves improving the website speed by optimizing images, applying caching, improving the mobile-friendliness of the website, and creating sitemaps. The time taken is usually 1 to 2 days but it might be longer if there is a severe issue with the websites that need to be rectified.

4. On-page Optimization (1 to 2 days)

Optimizing the on-page elements involves updating the title tags and descriptions for each page related to the SEO effort, updating the header tags for better content structure and ensuring there’s proper internal linking for each page. It usually takes around 1 to 2 days but the effort is highly dependent on the amount of pages involved, and the initial SEO health of the website.

5. Content Creation (4 hours)

Creating high quality and informative content is one of the ranking factors set by Google that emphasizes on E-E-A-T ( Experience, Expertiness , Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness ) of a website. While the time taken to create a high quality content may vary depending on the topic and type of content, it is generally estimated to take around 4 hours to create one high quality article for a website.

6. Off-page Optimization (3 hours)

Off-page optimization involves optimizing the elements that are outside of the website. This involves the Google Business Profile ( previously known as Google My Business ), and creating backlinks. While optimizing Google Business Profile ( GBP ) doesn’t take more than 1 or 2 hours, creating backlinks on the other hand might take more depending on the strategy. On average, the time taken to create 10 backlinks is around 1 hour, and there are a few methods of backlinking that will differ in the amount of time needed for their implementation.

7. Continuous Optimization (Ongoing)

Several times a year, Google releases significant and broad changes to their search algorithms and systems called Google core updates. While the amount of time they made this varies, with 10 confirmed algorithm updates each in 2021 and 2022, and 9 in 2023, an ongoing optimization effort is highly needed to ensure your website stays up-to-date with these new algorithms and best practices. Detecting the changes and applying proper optimization changes will take different amounts of time depending on what changed in the updates.

Conclusion

On average, the optimization efforts for a website will take around 5 to 10 days depending on the initial website health, competitive landscape, and degree of optimization needed. While this might seem like a long time for some, optimizing a website for SEO allows for great long term results and a high credibility from user’s point of view. This is a great addition in terms of improving business ROI and longevity, ensuring your business prosperity and success in the long run.