When Will You See SEO Results?

When SEOs hear this question, we begin to behave like people who are legally required to give warnings. “It’s impossible to guarantee particular results,” we caution people. “Your results may vary. This is marketing, not magic, that we’re doing here, and we all know that no marketing should be undertaken without a firm commitment to five months’ worth of effort. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Side effects may include euphoria, excessive googling, and dependence on your refresh button.”

We’re right to be cautious. Scammers abound in SEO, and people sometimes start out with unrealistic expectations. There are also factors that aren’t under our control. We can’t honestly guarantee specific search results, and even awesome search results don’t guarantee awesome sales.

Truthfully, the answer to “When will I see results?” is, “Who knows?”

It depends on the quality of the website, the competition, the resources you’re willing to invest, the limitations of the situation, and myriad other factors, not least of which is precisely what results you’re after.

When asked, I usually assure clients that they should see results in a couple of weeks.That is, you should begin to see better rankings, more traffic, and other signs of progress within a couple of weeks of starting to put serious effort into SEO.

That’s my experience. You should see more and better results as you continue to work on it. Our clients continue to see improvement in their metrics as long as we continue to work for them.

But results may vary. No marketing effort should be undertaken without a firm commitment to five months’ worth of effort. And you have a right to remain silent.