A How question

How long does an SEO company need to research keywords?

3 min read Cites 1 source

No single figure applies to every site, and none can be quoted honestly before the company has looked at yours. The time depends on how many pages and services the research has to cover, how competitive the searches are, and how much data the company has to start from. What you should get instead of a headline number is a written estimate tied to those factors, with a description of what the finished research will contain, so that you can tell whether a short estimate means a small job or a thin one.

What the time is spent on

Keyword research is more than exporting a list from a tool. The company gathers search data for your products and services, looks at what currently ranks for each candidate term, judges which terms your site can realistically compete for, groups terms by what the searcher wants, and maps each group to a specific page on your site, existing or planned. Every one of these steps grows with the number of terms and pages involved, which is why the scope of the site sets the time.

What makes it take longer

The number of pages and services comes first. Each distinct service or product category is a small research project of its own, with its own terms, competitors, and customer questions, so a business offering one core service needs less time than one covering several trades or a large catalog.

Competition adds time in a crowded market, where more of the work goes into judging which terms are realistic and finding openings that existing pages do not already hold.

Regions and languages multiply the work, because each one needs its own set of terms rather than a translation of the first.

Your own input sets the pace too. The company needs to know which services matter most to you, which areas you serve, and what you do not offer, and the research waits on those answers.

What the company starts with

For an existing site, the queries in Search Console are a natural starting point, but they are not complete. Google’s explanation of the Performance report’s dimensions notes: “Some queries are omitted from the report to protect user privacy.” It also says: “Due to internal limitations, Search Console stores and shows only the most important data rows.” The company therefore has to supplement your own data with other sources, and the time it needs depends partly on how much your site already shows. For a new site there is no data of your own at all, so the estimate should say that the research rests entirely on outside sources.

Getting the timeline and scope in writing

Ask the company to put the timeline in writing as part of the project plan, as a range tied to your site, with the reasoning behind it. Ask what the finished research will include: the terms, how they are grouped, and which page each group is assigned to. Ask how the estimate would change if your site turns out larger or your market more competitive than assumed. And ask whether you are paying for a single first round or for research that is revisited during the engagement, and if it is revisited, how often the company plans to do it.

If an estimate looks short for a large site, ask which of the research steps it leaves out.

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