January 28, 2026
Author: Jason Faber
One of the most persistent myths about SEO is that it's inherently slow. Founders hear "SEO takes 6-12 months" and assume the channel itself is inherently painfully slow. They plan accordingly, set low expectations, and settle into a slow march toward gradual improvement.
But here's what I've learned after working with dozens of teams: SEO isn't slow. Most SEO teams just move too slowly.
The difference matters more than you think.
When people say SEO is slow, what they usually mean is that rankings and traffic don't spike overnight. That's true. Search engines need time to crawl, index, and assess changes. Authority builds gradually. Trust accumulates over time.
But none of that explains why it takes some teams three months to publish a single page, or why a technical fix identified in January still isn't shipped by June.
The bottleneck isn't Google. It's the team.
I've seen companies wait weeks for content briefs, then weeks more for drafts, then additional rounds of internal review that stretch simple updates into multi-month initiatives. I've watched technical debt pile up because engineering has competing priorities and no one senior enough to make SEO decisions is in the room when roadmaps get finalized.
The work isn't inherently slow. The process is.
Fast SEO teams don't skip steps or cut corners. They make good decisions quickly, ship iteratively, and treat momentum as a competitive advantage.
Here's what that looks like in practice:
They ruthlessly prioritize. Instead of building exhaustive content roadmaps with 50 topics queued up, they identify the 5-10 pages that will actually move the business forward and focus there first. They're willing to say no to low-impact work, even when it feels productive.
They ship imperfect work. A published page that's 80% optimized beats a perfect page that's still in draft. Fast teams understand that rankings improve with iteration, not perfection. They get content live, gather data, and refine based on what actually performs. Done is better than perfect.
They focus on impact over output. Ethan Smith famously said that 95% of SEO impact comes from 5% of the activities. Most teams ignore this and spread their energy across dozens of low-impact tasks that feel productive but don't move the needle. They optimize every meta description before fixing critical technical issues. They build elaborate content calendars without validating search demand. The re-write alt text instead of building better and deeper internal linking. Fast, impactful teams identify the handful of initiatives that will actually drive rankings or revenue, then execute on those first. Everything else gets deferred or deleted.
They optimize what exists before building something new. Most teams default to creating new content when their existing pages are underperforming and underutilized. Fast teams audit what's already ranking on page two or three, identify quick wins, and refresh those pages first. Updating a page that's already indexed and has some authority is almost always faster and more effective than starting from scratch. You can often double traffic to an existing page in weeks, while a new page might take months to gain traction.
They build efficient processes. High-velocity teams design workflows that eliminate unnecessary friction. Instead of routing every piece of content through five approval layers, they establish clear guidelines and empower the right people to make decisions. They create templates and frameworks that speed up execution without sacrificing quality. They automate what can be automated and streamline what can't. The goal isn't to eliminate process, it's to build processes that accelerate work rather than slow it down.
They treat SEO like product work. Product teams ship fast because they work in sprints, prioritize ruthlessly, and tie work directly to outcomes. SEO teams that adopt the same mindset stop treating organic growth like a side project and start treating it like a core growth lever.
I can usually spot a slow-moving SEO function within the first discovery call. The symptoms are consistent:
Too many stakeholders involved in content approval, which turns a simple blog post into a six-week consensus-building exercise. No one with enough authority to make the final call, so decisions stall or get reopened repeatedly. SEO sits outside the product roadmap, so technical work gets perpetually deprioritized. Strategy gets revisited every quarter instead of being locked in and executed against.
The underlying issue is almost always the same: SEO doesn't have a clear owner with enough context, authority, and accountability to move quickly.
When SEO lives with an agency that's arm's length from the business, they can't make decisions fast because they don't have the context. When it's owned by a junior hire or generalist marketer, they can't move quickly because they lack the authority. When it's spread across multiple people without a single point of accountability, things just don't get done.
Here's the part that most teams underestimate: velocity in SEO compounds.
When you ship faster, you learn faster. You see what works, what doesn't, and where to double down. You build momentum with internal teams because progress is visible. Engineering starts to trust that SEO initiatives are worth prioritizing. Leadership sees results and becomes more willing to invest.
Conversely, slow teams fall behind in ways that are hard to recover from. Competitors launch first. Algorithm updates pass you by while you're still workshopping strategy. Technical debt accumulates. And the longer SEO takes to show results, the harder it becomes to defend continued investment.
Here's the critical distinction: moving fast doesn't mean moving recklessly.
I've seen teams overcorrect after being told they're too slow. They start shipping everything. Publishing content without keyword research. Making technical changes without understanding the implications. Chasing every algorithm update and industry trend without a clear thesis.
That's not velocity. That's thrashing.
Fast teams move quickly because they have clarity on what matters. They know their target audience, understand their competitive position, and have a clear hypothesis about what will drive growth. Strategy gives them permission to move fast on the right things and ignore everything else.
Without that foundation, speed just amplifies mistakes. You break things that were working. You waste engineering resources on changes that don't move the needle. You publish content that doesn't serve your audience or your business goals. And then you're stuck cleaning up the mess instead of building momentum.
The goal isn't to do more, faster. It's to identify the highest-impact work and execute it without unnecessary friction. Strategy defines the direction. Process removes the obstacles. Speed is what happens when both are in place.
Speed isn't reckless. It's strategic. The goal isn't to do more work—it's to do the right work faster.
If your SEO efforts feel slow, the fix usually isn't more resources. It's clearer ownership, tighter prioritization, and fewer approval layers.
That often means bringing in someone senior enough to make decisions without needing constant buy-in, embedded enough to understand the business deeply, and experienced enough to know what's worth doing and what's not.
It means treating SEO like a growth function, not a marketing side project. It means giving it a seat at the table when product, engineering, and content decisions get made. And it means being willing to ship, learn, and iterate instead of perfecting everything before it goes live.
SEO takes time. But it doesn't have to take this long.
The teams that move fastest don't have bigger budgets or more people. They just have better clarity, stronger ownership, and less friction between strategy and execution.
That's the difference between SEO being slow and your SEO team moving too slowly.
If everything I've said so far makes you want to find someone who can move faster, good. But be careful who you hire to do it.
Speed as a selling point can be a red flag just as easily as it can be a competitive advantage. There's a massive difference between a team that moves efficiently and one that's just making empty promises and quick results.
Here's what to watch out for:
Anyone guaranteeing rankings or traffic within a specific timeframe. No one controls Google's algorithm. Legitimate SEO work creates the conditions for growth, but guarantees are either dishonest or based on tactics that will eventually backfire. If someone promises "page one rankings in 30 days," they're either lying or using shortcuts that will get you penalized.
Agencies that pitch speed through volume alone. Publishing 50 mediocre blog posts isn't velocity—it's usually garbage. If the pitch is about how much content they can produce rather than how strategically they can execute, you're paying for output that won't drive results. Fast teams publish less, but what they publish actually matters.
Consultants who skip discovery and jump straight to tactics. Moving fast requires understanding your business, competitive landscape, and technical foundation first. Anyone who promises to "hit the ground running" without asking substantive questions about your goals, audience, or existing challenges is selling speed without strategy. That's the recipe for the chaos I described earlier.
Services built around automation and templatized work. Tools and templates have their place, but SEO isn't one-size-fits-all. If the approach feels like it could work for any company in any industry, it's probably not going to work well for yours. Real velocity comes from custom strategy executed efficiently, not generic playbooks run at scale.
The right partner will move quickly because they know what to prioritize, what to ignore, and how to integrate with your team. They'll have a clear point of view, ask hard questions, and be honest about timelines. They won't promise the impossible, but they also won't hide behind "SEO takes time" as an excuse for inaction.
Speed matters. But only when it's paired with strategy, experience, and integrity.
