It can take time to climb the page rank in Google for local searches. Why you need to start now!

“It’s 2015 and we all use the internet to find local services…restaurants, movie theaters, doctors, and dentists. Most of us click on first page search results because top results are showing the best of these services, right? After all, they beat everyone else!

If you agree with this premise, you want your website to rank above your competition’s and the sooner the better. In the following scenarios, leading SEO experts provide the average timeline to expect significant local results:

A Brand New Website
If you just launched a new website in a competitive city, 80% say 3-9 months and in a non-competitive city 95% say 6 months.

Website with some optimization
If your current website has undergone a little optimization and is not ranking well, most experts say it will take 3-9 months in a competitive city and 50% say 2 months in a non-competitive city.

Website that has been poorly optimized
If your website has undergone optimization, but the quality of the work is low, 89% say greater than 5 months in a competitive city and 63% say 3-5 months in a non-competitive city.

Google Penalized website
If your website was penalized by Google due to a ‘suspicious’ link profile and it doesn’t show up in results for any keyword terms, 76% say it will take up to 3 months to reappear in search results and 60% say 6 months to return to pre-penalty rankings.

Stopped investing in SEO
If you decide to stop SEO, experts say there will be little change in rankings for the first 2 months. After 2 months a steady decline in local rankings can be expected…at 6 months a 35% decline and after 2 years, a 50% decline.

You also have to keep in mind these scenarios are based on the norm. You see, a reputable SEO company will also be monitoring your Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and your website for any issues out of the ordinary (broken link warnings, unreachable pages, pages with sharp visitor decreases, site updates which cause viewing failures, etc.) and will be on top of them before they can cause significant damage.