Why Does SEO Take So Long In Vancouver?

Slow and steady wins the race. Throw up a billboard at the intersection of Granville Street and SW Marine Drive and you might get a call from a friend – it feels good to hear “Hey, I love that billboard!”.

But is it profitable?

No one is going to phone you to congratulate you on ranking first for a specific keyword. It’s the kind of thing that goes unnoticed, even though it takes a lot of work. But when 51% of all website traffic comes from organic searches, and 40% of revenue is captured by organic traffic, you’ve got to pay attention to SEO to be competitive. (Thanks to SearchEngineJournal and Brightedge for the SEO stats). 

With SEO, you might not see results right away – but when you do see results, they’ll be long-lasting, measurable, and impactful. A high ranking will increase your sales if you know what you’re doing.

We’re going to teach you why SEO takes so long in Vancouver, why it’s worth the wait, and how it’s going to improve your bottom line. Along the way, you’ll learn about this history of search engines, how they work, what techniques will help you rank, and how a variety of factors will affect your ranking timeline.

Sound good? Strap in: we’re going for a wild ride.

 

SEO in Metro Vancouver

Before we delve into the meat of the topic at hand, we thought it might be a good idea to provide a bit of clarity about the two most important things we’ll be talking about: SEO and Vancouver.

 

A Brief Description of SEO

SEO is search engine optimization. The whole aim of SEO is to get your website to rank for relevant queries – that’s what we call the searches people make in search engines. The idea behind SEO is simple: most web traffic goes through search engines, so by helping you pop up first for relevant queries, you’ll get the biggest share of the traffic pie.

 

Vancouver is Big (really big)

Doing SEO in Vancouver is a bit unlike doing SEO in any other city in Canada because Metro Vancouver’s population is spread over such a large number of different cities. While the City of Vancouver itself is about the size of Winnipeg, Metro Vancouver is the 3rd largest metro area in Canada.

Some companies will do well to target only the City of Vancouver itself, while other companies will benefit from also targeting cities like Surrey and Burnaby, or even smaller cities like Port Moody and Langley. 

Exactly who you’ll want to target depends on the scope of your operation – it’s generally a good idea to target any city or town where you offer services, especially if their population is large enough and they’re not being targeted by your competitors. We’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves, though.

The core takeaway from this section should be that, as you can probably guess, the larger the area you’re targeting, the slower your SEO efforts are likely to be. There are a number of reasons for this, but the biggest one is that places with large populations tend to have more competition.

Metro Vancouver is, of course, a very tech-savvy, business-friendly region, so you can expect a lot of competition no matter which city or cities you’re targeting.

 

A Brief History of Search Engines

Search engines of varying kinds have been around since before the World Wide Web. We’re not going to focus too much on these pre-web search engines, like Archie, because the game has changed so drastically since then.

 

The Web’s Killer App

Imagine using the web without a search engine – you’d have to know all of the URLs of any websites you wanted to go to. In this form, the web would have stayed a niche service for hobbyists, instead of the one of the most ubiquitously used tools on the planet.

While there were a bunch of small search engines born almost immediately after the web was founded, the first major player was Yahoo. Yahoo basically started as a gigantic, man-made directory – as if you literally had compiled a list of all the URLs worth visiting. They didn’t have crawlers, or any of the things you’d usually expect from a search engine (the first crawler that indexed the web, WebCrawler, was created after Yahoo).

Yahoo was, at the time, basically a curated directory, so SEO would basically involve sending your website to Yahoo and saying “Pretty please include me in your directory”. Searching on Yahoo was also not the easiest thing on the planet – it couldn’t handle natural language queries well at all; you needed to search for the right keywords to find the right results.

Alta Vista changed that with natural language queries, advanced search features, and the ability to add or delete your URL from their directory within 24 hours (Yahoo had much longer wait times). Suddenly, there was competition.

 

The Rise of Google 

Quietly, while all of this was happening, two Stanford PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, realized that there were better ways of creating search engines. They came to the conclusion, taking a page from academic papers,  that links from one site to another could be used as a way to index pages and rank their importance.

This system, known as PageRank (a pun on both the rank of the page and Larry’s last name), is still used by Google today – though it’s much improved from its original form. To this day, understanding the nature of algorithms, like PageRank, is core to SEO – though things are much more complex than they once were.

You see, back when Google was first hitting the scene, webmasters realized they could fool its algorithms by creating link farms, hiding text content in backgrounds, and other shady (known as black hat or grey hat) tactics. These tactics cannot be used today – in fact, they’ll actively hurt your ranking. This is one of the reasons that SEO today takes the slow, methodical approach.

 

How Pages are Indexed and Ranked

Search engines use crawlers, a term we described earlier, to index web pages. The premise behind crawlers is simple enough; they’re bots that travel around the web (for this reason, crawlers are sometimes called spiders) finding pages, creating copies of those pages (though not always), and adding them to a gigantic directory. In this way, search engines haven’t changed since the early days of Yahoo – you still are, in effect, just drawing from a gigantic directory of URLs.

Pages are indexed pretty slowly – note that whole sites aren’t all indexed at once. Crawling and indexing takes a lot of resources, and given there are about 547,200 websites – not pages – created every day, there’s a lot of crawling to do. Note that every single site can have hundreds or even thousands of pages. 

Nowadays, there are all kinds of useful things search engines do to categorize web pages, using metadata and keywords to make them easier to search for. When it comes to how these pages are ranked in order of relevance to particular keywords and key phrases, you need to understand RankBrain.

 

RankBrain

Most of Google’s searches are based on two key criteria – PageRank as determined by link authority (how many links you’re getting and the quality of the websites linking to your page), and the content of your page. Google uses natural language processing to determine how relevant content you’ve created is for answering a particular query, as well as other factors, like how long users stay on your website.

RankBrain is a machine-learning algorithm – in other words, it learns on its own. The goal of RankBrain is to determine the intent behind a given search, and to serve up results that match that intent. A user’s intent can vary based on:

  • Their search history
  • Their interests
  • What other searchers were looking for when they made a particular search
  • The semantic relation between a query and similar searches

…and a whole lot more. Because RankBrain is actively learning, and Google’s algorithm as a whole is always changing, so is SEO.

 

The End of the Black Hat Era

So why the history lesson? We wanted to showcase how much SEO has changed in twenty years – from pitching your website to someone at Yahoo, to shady algorithm-tricking content stuffing, up to the present day. Nowadays, SEO is necessarily incredibly complex because search engine algorithms are changing constantly. They’re learning, so simple tricks won’t do – you need a comprehensive strategy to improve your rank. Couple that with how slowly indexing can happen, and it’s easy to see why SEO can take a long time to show results.

 

Focus on Google

You’ll see that almost all SEO content you can find online focuses on Google, including this article. There are two main reasons for this:

 

Which SEO Techniques are Popular?

Now that you know the history of search engines, we can delve a bit deeper into which techniques are effective at boosting your website’s rank. A term to keep in mind during this section is signals. Every web page that Google has indexed sends a number of signals, positive and negative, to Google, and those signals allow Google to determine how it will rank.

The two biggest signals are links and content, with the third being RankBrain. The signals from links and content are, in and of themselves, incredibly complex. Companies who want to rank well in Vancouver need to know about what signals they’re sending to Google, and how SEO techniques affect those signals.

 

Black Hat vs. White Hat SEO

The relationship between Google and SEOs (that is, companies that do SEO) is…well, complicated. Google actually provides a lot of support for SEOs, and will even help users do their own SEO research. They have a tendency, however, to keep their information pretty vague.

Google even has a guide called “Do you need an SEO” where they list the advantages of SEOs, but follow these advantages up with a bunch of warnings about shady tactics. This is the world of White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO.

The people at Google keep how they rank pages vague because they don’t want unethical SEOs to find opportunities for exploitation. The goal of Google (and any search engine, for that matter) is to provide the best results for searchers. That means they only want to serve up useful content. 

Black hat SEO comprises a number of techniques to get low-quality content to rank well. If you get caught using black hat techniques, your rank will take a huge hit. Worse yet, Google might even take your site off their listings.

First Rank is not a black hat SEO. We’re white hat, which means that we do everything above board, in compliance with Google’s guidelines. The links we get you will be from 100% legitimate sources. The content we create ranks well because of its high-quality, uniqueness, and use to searchers – not because of keyword stuffing or other shady tactics.

All of this takes a lot more time than black hat schemes, but the extra effort is more than worth the rewards you’ll get. Let’s take a look at some white hat SEO techniques that Vancouver businesses can use to boost their rankings.

 

Keyword Research

Keyword research is Step 1 of any SEO strategy, be it white or black hat. “Keyword” here (and in the rest of this article) means keyword or key phrase – basically, an expected query.

You need to know what keywords you’re going to optimize for. SEOs use a wide variety of different tools for keyword research. Keywords are generally broken down into two key components:

  • The number of searches they get
  • The competition for the keyword

The best keywords get a high number of searches each month, and have low competition. In Vancouver, there’s necessarily going to be a lot of competition for most high volume keywords because a lot of Vancouver-based businesses are doing SEO. Keyword research takes time; you need to figure out the perfect balance between competitiveness and search volume. 

SEOs will also keep search intent in mind – they’ll try to target keywords that have a good chance of converting into sales.

 

Content Creation

Content creation is one of the most important parts of SEO – remember, content and links are the two most important ranking factors. Your content needs to be useful to Vancouverites, and so it needs to be crafted carefully.

SEO-based content is lightyears from the old days where you’d just put in the keyword you wanted to target as often as possible without getting caught. Search engines are getting better at understanding real language, and they also use other signals (like how long a user stays on a particular page) to rank content.

Much like keyword research, white hat content creation strikes a careful balance – being as useful as possible to readers while targeting important keywords.

 

Link Building

The second core ranking factor comes from links. Quantity and quality both matter – if you get a million links to your page from shady websites, you can expect to see a decline, not a boost, to your rank.

Black hat tactics involve using link farms and paid link schemes to boost your rank. These are bad tactics – and that’s not an evaluation of how moral they are, but an evaluation of their efficacy. If and when you get caught, your rank will plummet.

White hats, like us, instead opt to get links from high authority websites by crafting compelling content. This content is sometimes posted on their website with a link to yours, and sometimes posted on your website as a resource. Either way, you get legitimate, high-quality links.

This process, of course, takes time: the time to find sites that want to link to yours, to craft the content they link from or to, and the time for Google to crawl and index those links, registering their authority.

 

Technical Optimization

Technical optimization is essential to any SEO strategy. Remember how we talked about search engines starting to use metadata in order to categorize pages? They still do this – and metadata can help you show up in Rich Results, a type of search result that’s more visually appealing and liable to get clicks.

Your site’s structure, internal linking scheme, redirects, and more, can affect technical optimization. Basically, we want your site to be as easy to crawl as possible, so important pages are more likely to get indexed quickly. While initial optimization can be done pretty quickly, optimization is an ongoing process, and regular adjustments will be necessary.

 

Data Collection 

SEO is a data-driven game; something that works properly one month, may actively hurt your ranking the next. This is a consequence of Google’s ever-changing algorithm (more on that later), and of changing trends in search intent and keyword popularity/difficulty. 

As you continue to improve your SEO, you’ll get more and more data about what’s working and what isn’t: what kinds of content are well-received, what kinds of companies are willing to backlink to content, and more. This all takes months, but processes are continually improving the whole time; like a train, SEO can be slow to start, but when it really gets going the momentum is hard to stop.

 

Google My Business Optimization

While Google My Business (GMB) is primarily a useful tool for businesses who are trying to attract customers in Vancouver (as opposed to BC-wide/national/global ecommerce businesses), absolutely every business should have one. They’re free, they’re easy enough to maintain, and they can lead to some handy search results.

SEOs will optimize GMBs so that local clients will be more likely to find you in “near me” searches. This won’t be the focus of most SEOs working on ecommerce, but they’ll still make sure you have one set up.

 

Reputation Management

It’s easy to understand why SEO takes a long time vis-a-vis reputation management – if you’re doing things the right way, you’re only boosting your reviews with real, substantiated, positive reviews. 

The black hat way of doing this? Review spam. You can imagine how that works out most of the time…

Now you have an idea of how SEO works: black hat SEO can be done relatively quickly, but carries enormous risk. With white hat SEO, it takes time to see results, but those results are better and longer lasting. Now that you know why the techniques are time-consuming, we’re going to look at some factors that can affect how long it takes to rank.

 

Ranking Timelines

I can hear you saying: “Okay, I get it, SEO takes time – but how long does it take?”.

The truth is, there’s no single answer. It depends on what keywords you’re targeting, how well you want to rank, what your competitors are doing, and a whole lot more. Why does SEO take so long? Part of the answer is that it takes infinite time, because SEO is an ongoing process. When will you see results? It depends.

 

Keyword Difficulty and other Factors

One of the biggest factors is keyword difficulty. A reminder here: if you’re the only one trying to target a keyword, life is going to be pretty easy. The biggest problem you have is competitors who are likely working with an SEO to target those very same keywords. Without an SEO company on your side, you’re bringing a knife to a gunfight.

From there, we’ve got to factor in all of the things we talked about in the technique section. How quickly is the web page that targets a particular keyword loading? How quickly is your competitor’s web page loading? How many high-quality links do you have as compared to your competitors? How long are searchers staying on your website? All of these things (and more) will influence how quickly you’re indexed and how high up you rank. 

The longevity of your website is also considered – if your competitors have been around for a decade while your site is brand new, don’t expect to rank first immediately.

 

Local vs. Ecommerce

A snowboard shop only targeting Vancouver is going to rank more quickly for relevant search terms than a global ecommerce snowboard startup.

Why? A few reasons. First, it’s easier to target local terms, because they have less competition. Second, ecommerce companies are generally larger, and so have more budget to put toward SEO. Finally, you’re competing against the world instead of just Vancouver businesses, so you can expect more competition for any given keyword.

SEO techniques vary a lot from local sites to ecommerce sites, in part, because blogging is far less common on an ecommerce site. Instead, product descriptions become your main source of content.

 

How Local You Want to Get

As you can imagine, if you’re only targeting Port Moody, it’s probably going to be a bit easier than targeting all of Vancouver – you’re not going to have nearly as much competition!

That is, if other companies in Vancouver aren’t actively targeting Port Moody in order to get your clients.

Going hyperlocal can be useful because there’s less competition, but you risk only ranking for low volume keywords. A consequence of this is less clicks – then, when your competitors decide to target Port Moody, you’ll be fighting a tough battle. For that reason, it’s generally a good idea to target larger and smaller cities in the Metro Vancouver area. Of course, that will take more time – at this point, you probably have a good idea why SEO in Vancouver takes so long. 

 

How Well You Want to Rank

This might seem obvious, but it’s worth talking about – how well you want to rank for a certain term will influence how quickly you’ll see results. Movement from page 10 to page 6? You’ll probably see it pretty quickly; even within weeks, and very rarely, within 3 months or less.

We want to get you to the first rank – that’s where we get our name – but we won’t guarantee we can get you there. No one can, and no one should. There are simply too many variables. Within 6 months or 12 months? You should certainly see your ranking improve – a lot – and if you don’t, it may be time to reconsider your SEO strategy or SEO provider. But a guarantee of first rank? Always be wary of that.

 

How Consistent You Want Ranking to Be

Ranking well within 12 months? Fantastic. Ranking well consistently for 12 months? Even better.

As you’ve probably gleaned from this piece, SEO is sort of a positive feedback loop – the better you rank, the more clicks you get, and the more clicks you get, the better you’ll tend to rank. 

Consistent rankings, then, take a lot of time – when you find that sweet spot, and see your site rising through the ranks, you don’t want to stop your SEO services. You need consistent SEO to stay on top, and keep that positive feedback loop going, or you’ll be overtaken by another site actively working on their SEO. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: SEO is an ongoing process. Don’t settle for one and done, inconsistent black hat tactics.

 

Ever-Shifting Algorithms

If all of this didn’t make it hard enough to determine how long it will take to rank, you also have to consider that the algorithm that determines how well a page ranks changes all the time. Search Engine Land estimates that Google changes its algorithm 500-600 times each year. Take a look at Moz’s tally of algorithm updates, and you’ll see that some changes are brought in, shift all of the rankings, and are promptly rolled back, without Google ever confirming or denying anything to anyone.

We understand why they do this – those pesky black hats – but it does mean that SEO is literally constantly changing. Your rankings may slip one day and skyrocket the next with no changes to your website – the key is figuring out what Google likes, what it doesn’t, and focusing on those things.

 

SEO Takes a Long Time – But it’s Well Worth it

Now you know why SEO takes a long time in Vancouver – it’s because of a lot of reasons. The biggest one, though, is that if you want to do something the right way, you need to do it carefully. You need to craft an SEO strategy, do keyword research constantly, shift your strategy when appropriate, create content nonstop, and always look for links and technical optimizations.

In other words, SEO takes a long time because it truly never stops. It’s like asking why any kind of successful marketing takes a long time – it’s because there’s always competition, so to see consistent results you need consistent effort.

We only partner with Vancouver businesses when we know we can deliver positive results for them. What we mean by that isn’t “X rank by Y time” – we’ve already established the impossibility of such a promise. Instead, we promise that we will deliver you SEO that gives you a positive ROI. Want to see how our Vancouver SEO services can help your business? We offer free website audits.

 

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The purpose of First Rank is to help businesses generate leads from their websites. We put a focus on SEO, because we believe it is one of the most cost effective and highest converting forms of traffic generation, however traffic alone is not enough on its own to grow your business. SEO should be combined with conversion optimization, email marketing and retargeting to maximize the ROI of your advertising dollars.