How Soon Can You EXPECT Results From Link Building?

By Sabahat Ali – Link building expert since 2009 – 668+ clients served

It depends!

Not again, right?

You don’t want the standard “SEO answer” to all questions — especially after spending $70 – 150 on a guest post backlink.

We got you!

Besides, the backlink would have to be indexed first before ranking happens. And for the “ranking,” you’d have to endure the waiting game.

For how long?

We will discuss the timeline and more in this piece. And rest assured that our figures and estimates are bankable. They are aggregates that took our clients to see increases in rankings.

Link Building Results Can Take Up To 12 Months – Or More

Before we pitch our ideas, see what other SEOs think.

What Are SEOs Saying?

In August 2022, Ahrefs created a poll titled “how long does SEO take” on LinkedIn and Twitter.

On LinkedIn, after 3974 votes, here are the findings:

On Twitter, there were only 322 votes. However, the results were similar.

Here is the overall summary:

Deductively, it takes 3 – 6 months (on average) to get results from link building (since it’s one of the core parts of SEO).

What Do We Think?

From our experience, your money page will see an increase in rankings between 2 – 6 months with EFFECTIVE link building.

Now, the increase might be insignificant at first. But give it time, and you’d soon see significant changes.

For specifics, you can add up to 70 -100 organic visits in the first month.

By the third month, the traffic would have increased significantly — say x5 or even x6. You would have added 350 – 600 organic visits to your money page.

However, remember the keyword “effective link building.” Without that, you can have a totally different timeline altogether.

Timeline Of Getting Results With Link Building

The timeline is usually in 3 stages:

• Finding the link builder
• The strategy
• The execution

Finding The Link Builder

Regardless of your budget or how promising your prospect looks, you’ll be disappointed if you don’t start your link building with the RIGHT builder.

So, ask yourself these questions:

• Who is the best man for the job?
• Can you go at the task alone?
• Should you outsource your link building campaigns? If yes, to who?

If you’re managing the campaign, you might as well jump to your strategy.

Otherwise, know this:

If your hire is an agency, you might take 1-3 months to get the RIGHT agency — from the initial meeting and interview to the official agreement.

If you are going with an in-house link builder, the time frame could reduce to a max of 2 months.

The Strategy

Your link building strategy is just as crucial to your rankings as your builder — if not more crucial.

Also, if you pick the RIGHT strategies, you can save time and money and focus on other areas.

So, what are the RIGHT strategies?

• First, audit your site and competitors with your link builder’s direction.
• Combine the usual techniques — guest posting, niche edits, creating linkable assets, infographics, and broken link building.

Warning: don’t ever use black hat SEO strategies. They will not only deter your link building efforts. Your site could be temporarily banned altogether from search results.

About the “timeframe,” light-research strategies such as guest posting and niche edits will require 2 weeks – a month.

On the other hand, deep-research strategies such as “broken link” and “infographics” link building can take up to 3 months.

The Execution

Once you have the RIGHT link builder and strategies, you can start your campaign formally.

However, there might be hiccups like managing email campaigns and prospects not replying to your messages.

Either way, you’ll only need 2 weeks to a month to roll out the campaign.

Now, let’s sum up the timeline. You’d see that it matches the 3 – 6 months from the Ahrefs poll.

[Find an agency] + [strategy] + [execution] = 2 + 3 + 1 = 6 months

If we’re using the minimum time requirements, you’ll only need 2½ months to get results.

The estimates seem too good to be true, eh?

Not in this case. We have case studies proving that quality results are achievable within the timeline.

Check them out below!

Examples Of How Soon Link Building Worked In Real Life

Below is one of the results we got for one of our private e-commerce project:

Can You Shorten The Average 6 Months WAIT?

Yes…

We did not use 6 months at SERPreach for 57+ clients – as shown in one of our case studies mentioned above.

Beyond our experience and results with link building campaigns, other SEOs also attain the same feat (increased traffic and ranking) in under 6 months.

According to the Ahrefs poll (that we shared earlier), 16.2% of 4300 SEOs get increased rankings and traffic for themselves and clients within 3 months.

So, yes, you can shorten the waiting time. However, consider a few factors.

Nonetheless, the 5 factors below carry the most weight.

Link Velocity

As much as you should prioritize quality over quantity, don’t neglect the latter. Why not combine the two?

Build quality backlinks in bulk to your money pages. Increase the rate at which you add those authority upvotes to your site.

In short, speed things with an increased link velocity.

But will that work?

Yes. And we have two stories to back the claim — from another SEO.

First, one of the team members at Exstreamist promoted a resource. That fetched him around 20 links. After a few weeks, his page jumped four places from #9 – 5.

Also, we tested this approach for one of our pages. And we noticed an increase in rankings too. Even better, the increment was significant for the pages on the “2nd page and below.”

Source: Moz

Domain Authority (DA)

Also referred to as domain rating (DR), DA is an awarded score that reveals a site’s backlink profile and trust. The higher the rating, the more trustworthy your site is to Google.

In other words, Google will push your content, pages, and site above others for matching queries when you have a high DA.

With high DA, your link building results will be quicker.

How high?

Based on our observations, target sites with a DA higher than yours — at least. After, you can target specific scores.

Overall:

Target DA 60+ if your business is in a competitive space like B2B. For B2C, on the other hand, there is less competition. DA 30+ will suffice.

But how will you know your or prospects’ DA/DR?

• DA is a score awarded to a site by Moz. So, use MozBar; add it to your Google Chrome. Fortunately, it is FREE.
• DR is Ahrefs’ metric. So, use its backlink checker to verify the score for your site and prospects.

Further reading: How To Increase Your Site’s Domain Authority

Brand Popularity

Beyond your backlink profile, how “popular” is your brand in your locale?

Do you know “key” actors in your industry? Do they know you, your business, and your services?

While pondering on that, hear this out:

Popularity in SEO is not aesthetics. It can earn you links even without trying. And often, they will be free.

Furthermore, popularity attracts popularity. The top brands will like to associate with you once you are like them.

How can you become a “popular” brand?

• Create FREE, “useful” linkable assets.
• Create viral content
• Have an active following across social media platforms — especially Twitter and LinkedIn.

SEO aside, building your brand can help you listen to sentiments about your business and industry. It will come in handy for product research and launch.

The Competition In Your Niche

Earlier, we recommended targeting DA scores twice that of B2C for B2Bs. That’s what competitive industries can do.

And that’s just at the industry level. What if you are in a niche like real estate or casinos?

These niches are highly-competitive. So much so that you might need to create 100s of quality backlinks to see a jolt in your rankings.

Niches like video games, on the other hand, only require a few backlinks to get to the zenith of search results. From experience, actors here don’t invest too well in link building.

In summary: do a “competitors analysis” to evaluate your competition. Then, see how many backlinks will suffice to get into the game.

Otherwise, you’ll be wasting your time.

Suggested reading: How To Do Competitors Backlink Analysis

Anchor-Anchorless Links

From observation, we see SEOs focus only on anchored links. We understand the aim:

To get your site around the keywords!

However, focusing too much on anchored links and neglecting the anchorless types will cause you to lose rankings. Instead, do this:

Strike a balance between the two link types.

How?

At Serpreach, we use the 40:60 ratio: 40 for “anchorless links” and 60 for “anchored links.”

Key Takeaway

With a streamlined process, getting results from link building doesn’t take too long. You will observe increased traffic and rankings in 2 – 6 months.

By the 6th month and upwards, the spike will have doubled or even tripled.

Need someone to evaluate your campaigns and see why results are not forthcoming?

Serpreach can help!

For costs, see our pricing guide. For ROI projections, use our ROI calculator. For a complete framework, see our 20-point checklist.