Realistic Timeframe for SEO results

[scotl47]

I have a lot of sites I am seeking SEO help on, and as you can imagine, am trying to wade through the fact or fiction. The sites I am targeting are already indexed getting the search bots often, most are well over a year old, but have not been optimized at all.

Now, when I had the time, I have gotten sites revamped and new traffic pretty fast, some of these places/people are talking weeks to months to get any real results. Is this still a reality?

And am I nuts thinking about profit sharing? I really do not want to pay $1500+/week for someone who may not get results, when if they can produce 25 leads/day they would make more than that.

Thanks,

Scot

PS.

[banker0679]

depends on your niche

if you're marketing mortgages, it will be a lot harder than someone who is selling clothes pin online

also, it depends on the site you have. is it a well known site...old domain....already indexed...etc

bottomline is...is it even worth paying someone 1500 per week? that's 6,000 per month
Average SEO charges 5,000

[scotl47]

It is a newly competitive niche with foreclosure help, but not as swamped as mortgage because of many unique good volume searches. The sites are over a year old, indexed, and do get some SE traffic, but never truly monitized.

Got ya on the costs. I would never question an expert in a niches charges as long as the results follow. Which if the time line is a couple months, I could throw away money and not get results.

Thanks,

[banker0679]

it really depends on the SEO

some seos can get results within 1 month and some can take a lot longer

it can also depend on
1. state specific
2. national

doing loan mods or short sale may not be as saturated as a regular refi or mortgage, but it can be an issue if you want to go national.

here's one of the main issues
you get page 1 listings for most of your keywords, and Google changes their Algo which they constantly do.
Is this the SEOs fault or Googles?

I would assume the answer is neither...but this is why nobody can guarantee a certain timeframe.

There are old school SEOs who may not even know how to get out of the new Algo because they think old school...and there are others who will know how to get out because they constantly test their methods.

Here's a post I wrote about achieving page 3 for the keyword SEO in 49days
2yr old boy on page 3 for keyword SEO in 49days
Within 75 days I was #11...out of 250million results

In the last weeks Google has changed their Algo, and I was on vacation for a week.
I had other projects to do than mess around with my blog, and it ended up putting me on Page 10.
The blog is a beta blog where I write some posts, tested Pagerank sculpting, and other stuff, but I'm not going to spend too much time on a blog. I made a couple of adjustments and will wait to see what happens.

The point is that Google changes when you least expect it, and you have to come up with a great solution(s) or your business will suffer. This was the only site that experienced a drop, but it's not surprising since the keyword SEO is a highly competitive term.

Originally Posted by scotl47

It is a newly competitive niche with foreclosure help, but not as swamped as mortgage because of many unique good volume searches. The sites are over a year old, indexed, and do get some SE traffic, but never truly monitized.

Got ya on the costs. I would never question an expert in a niches charges as long as the results follow. Which if the time line is a couple months, I could throw away money and not get results.

Thanks,

[scotl47]

I hear ya on the changes. Seven years PPC, and it seems like everytime I get it really prefected and do not need to mess with it anymore, everything changes.

The sites are for national lead generation, but I do have the dirctories built up like the top few guys do here :
flagstaff foreclosures - Google Search
So there is a page for every state, county, and city. Granted still not looking to be #1 for the main location specific terms, but should help on more obscure terms where people put in their location.


And lol on the blog, Japanese and Poop ... now that you should get on the first page pretty fast :-)

[banker0679]

well PPC doesnt change much compared to SEO

PPC is a lot different than SEO
SEO can change at least every 3-4 months when the PR changes
This is when Google normally releases some major update
Just recently they had an update on the nofollow pagerank sculpting...right after their PR update.

if you plan to target city/state, then it will depend on 2 factors
1. do you plan to have unique content for each city?
2. or do you plan to use dynamic pages and use the canonicalization?

Most of business is in lead generation for myself or for clients

The amount of time spent on a client is determined by their budget.
The amount of money spent may also be used to spend on resources

Originally Posted by scotl47

I hear ya on the changes. Seven years PPC, and it seems like everytime I get it really prefected and do not need to mess with it anymore, everything changes.

The sites are for national lead generation, but I do have the dirctories built up like the top few guys do here :
flagstaff foreclosures - Google Search
So there is a page for every state, county, and city. Granted still not looking to be #1 for the main location specific terms, but should help on more obscure terms where people put in their location.


And lol on the blog, Japanese and Poop ... now that you should get on the first page pretty fast :-)

[Rich Currie]

As it has been stated in some of the above posts, the length of time really does depend on a bunch of things. The amount of back links that a site has pointing to it from relevant and creditable site also add some value.

While I do agree that Google changes there algo’s often, and we need to always be testing, there are still some very important things that need to happen within the site structure. Such as using keywords in you link names and intra linking etc.

So as you can see there are many things that will change the time frame. I have had many sites that I have built brand new and right out of the box they have out ranked sites that have been around for years in very competitive niches.

I will tell you this in my humble opinion, doing the keyword research and testing long before you ever write a single page of content is paramount, and not very many people even know how to do that process correctly. When done correctly, along with proper site structure (and the rest of the SEO game) you should rank well in a short period time.

[scotl47]

Tell the PPC people they are not that many changes :-)

I may know you know ... did you used to be on a certain "outpost" a while back?

Regardless, I hear what you are saying. Things are ever changing, and to really get good full time SEO/SEM results, you need a full time effort and not part time tinkering.

[banker0679]

sure was on it before

i eventually left when i saw there was more $$ in the lead generating sites and doing SEO for other people.

I saw some folks offering SEO at 500 per month, and I just couldnt offer my services in that atmosphere especially when a lot of these other ppl didnt know what they were doing.

I met SEOs who were charging btwn 5k-10k, and they couldnt produce many results.

So i started the SEO blog to prove results so I would stick out like a sore thumb.

My 1st article on SEOMoz was featured, and I now post articles on SearchEngineJournal.
Some of my clients asked for referrals before working with me but that's hard when your current clients don't want you to release their sites lol.
The guest blogging at SEJ helped me out a lot...and playing with my SEO blog

In the SEO biz...you have to show results!!

Originally Posted by scotl47

Tell the PPC people they are not that many changes :-)

I may know you know ... did you used to be on a certain "outpost" a while back?

Regardless, I hear what you are saying. Things are ever changing, and to really get good full time SEO/SEM results, you need a full time effort and not part time tinkering.

[ChrisBa]

Honestly, the biggest thing is the niche and keywords you are targeting.. that will also determine your competition.. but 1.5k is steep

[scotl47]

Thanks Rich, have the keyword research, and dread having all the unique content. That is the least enjoyable part for me :-)

Banker, small world. I just check in there for browsing around ... like watching the National Inquirer sometimes. I made my jump in 2002 for the exact same reasons as you.