How long do you tell your SEO clients it will take to see results?

It all depends upon the website,the work he wants, the time he wants you to spend on it. Its not possible to give answer without any information.

From my friend's experience (Who provide SEO services), they usually mentioned to the client, from about 3 months to 6 months.

Of course, they also mentioned some of the factor neeeded to be considered, like:

1) Whether is the domain name new or it's been a while, Longer period of the domain name rank higher and faster than new domain name

2) Competitiveness of their industry among others

Normally, to make sure they are on the right track, they uses SEO software services such as SEO profiler, Webceo etc....

What do you think?

SEO is ideally a continuous process but results can already be delivered within 3-6 months.

I always analyze their website first..See if the website itself is going to need allot of work, look at the competition, link profiles.. A bunch of different factors.. However, I usually tell clients they can expect to see some increase in traffic within the first three months or so. That doesn't mean they'll be #1, but with all the different marketing tactics I put into play, they will definitely see some traffic by then.

Anything above 6 months should be a safe estimate. Although this might repel some potential customers, you won't have to deal with those who expect you to rank their site in one month along the line.

There's really no way to accurately answer that question without a thorough analysis of the competition, the scope of the key-phrases in play and what's already been done right/wrong so far by that domain owner. Giving a generic answer like, "It will probably take 3 to 6 months" is not an answer a competent SEO person would ever give, because the initial analysis alone should take hours to complete.

For example, if you wanted to rank #1 on all three search engines for "Stinky Flank Bird" (which is a phrase I just made up), it would take me less than 24 hours IF the search engines are actively indexing your site. And if its a new site then it could be up to a month before Yahoo bothers to check, while I'd have you #1 on Google within 15 minutes. So even with something super easy with zero competition, the answer is complex.

On the other hand, if you wanted to rank #1 for for "life insurance", then you're talking one year minimum...and that's if you have a seven figure budget to fund me with. Because I'd need 20 writers and a dozen others working around the clock to even have a chance of making that possible...and it honestly may not be able to happen in 12 months or ever...depending on what the top domains do once I begin to challenge them.

So the answer here is that there is no specific answer...it differs on every domain.

I usually say after 3 months we will start getting traffic from search engine. But as many warriors have already mentioned we can't say exactly when it will rank or how long it will take to rank keywords, it all depends on keywords and industry.

I always say you won't see the start of the progress until the end of the second month. And you won't see the true rate of the progress until somewhere between the third and the sixth month.

You can never really be accurate with predicting growth in SEO, there are too many variables. I have had clients that doubled their traffic in the first months, and others that didn't see more than a 5% increase during the first 6 months, which then shot up to 50% during the 7th and 8th month.

SEO is helpful process to upgrade the business level in best standards,the results are shown in slow manner but trustful.You can easily manage the techniques in seo according to web master guide lines.

I am always honest within the first 5 min on a call or Skype - you need to be totally transparent with clients.

I even do this with tire-kickers with tiny budgets like $20 and they want Page #1 rankings

Obviously being honest and transparent comes with skill and knowledge - no point saying "oh yes I will rank your website on Page #1 in 4 weeks" and you don't even understand the following:

1. competition
2. algo changes (just understanding is enough)
3. backlinks required
4. social elements
5. on-page
6. Domain Authority and Citation Flow {means influential a URL based on the number of sites linking to it)

If you need more help just ask

There have been some great thoughts shared here and I just want to share my experience with all my fellow warriors.
The normal time if you have a low competition keyword and Off and On page SEO factors are taken care off. Social sharing and Web 2.0 done regularly then it takes around 4 months to rank on google but I would again say tgat might change with competition and consistency of backlings or quality of backlings and consistency in posting on your site.

Based from my experience, it takes about 2-3 months before you can see results. Of course, you also have to consider several factors like looking at the website status/standing.

It is important that you first conduct a website analysis to check and somehow assess how much SEO work should be done on the site.

This is quite an enlightening thread, we also have seen it 3-6mths primarily as it is incremental however there is a problem. The market is moving much faster therefore a 3-6mth lead time is going to cause retailers some serious headaches, people only jump after it's gone bang, and then want a quick fix. We have been doing this for and even spent time explaining why they shouldtake preventative measures, in most cases it's a negative return. So it was implemented differently, however it's a fundamentally different way of doing it therefore has been kept to internal projects via an incubator. If you mentioned 3-6mth SEO to them you would be kicked out the door. Depending on who you work with it will range from 2-4wks to 3-6mths, most being the 3-6mth range.

Pretty much everyone here is saying at least 3 months. So if you are a client and you don't see any improvement after 3 months, should you fire your SEO consultant?

Based on my own experience going after big keywords with large amounts of competition, it usually takes about 6 months before really seeing solid results. Could be sooner than that. Just depends on the niche and keywords being targeted. Nothing comes quick. If it does, chances of it lasting are slim. SEO is better approached at a slow pace to do the proper research and develop a strong campaign.

hahaha I remember this has always been the question I got from my client.
The ideal would be 3-6 months but I don't really think that there is a certain time, because based on my personal experience mine took almost a year before it was able to recover its ranking on SERP.

It really depends on the website along with other factors like domain age, previous SEO work done, competition, etc.
You can sell that it will need at least 6 month to start to see results. In order to deliver results, you only would try to rank 'buyer' keywords, not always those your client want to rank his website for.

3-6 months? What kind of SEO are yall doing?

If you're targeting sites for links properly then you'll start showing increases in traffic from the minute your first link is published.

This shouldn't take you more than a week from when outreach starts.

If you're still talking about SEO results from an organic ranking perspective and not from a traffic increase perspective then you're doing things the wrong way, in my humble opinion.

SEO has evolved kids, you need to evolve with it.

Target your SEO to bring your clients buyers to their site, not to get them to higher organic positions, although this is usually a nice side effect of getting links on sites that your clients target audience are already visiting.

How long to rank?

Local or National?

High Competition or Low?

Where are they at now?

What did they do in the past?

There are way to many variables to give any kind of a real world answer.

There are some SEO things you can do to produce near immediate results especially for local terms
The amount of traffic they produce within the first few days may not be a lot

I'm taking about ranking authority sites/listings that link to your clients main site

Around 3-6mths for most, a week or two for us (actually a few days normally but that sounds ridiculous to anyone outside of Amazon), but then the implementation company we work with are listed in Bloomberg, have their own social media management arm, use a hosting architecture the same as Facebook & Etsy, plus a few others. So they do know what they are doing.

Actually it depends on how much you are working on this project. If you spend 3 hours per day and following the right methods then you will get a result within 2-3 months.

Usually I say four to six months but of course it depends on the niche and existing condition of the site. Sometimes it can be more than six months too.

It is totally depends on your domain name/site life, the competition of keywords, sitemap, keywords linking and may more things, but the site is a new domain name with new fresh content, you can easily seo it for at-least with sitename and some of low competitive keywords, which will surely shown on goole in 2 weeks time.
but apart from that you need to have minimum 2-3 months of time to get something noticeable on google
But with google, you can show your client some other search engine results also, which generally will not take much time.

As your in SEO client business you have to have some instant traffic seo techniques also with you to monetise some keywords faster.

rest is how intelligently you show reports to your client

If SEO is done correctly it takes around 6 months for the results to be visible but you can start noticing the results from third month. I always inform customer that results will be visible from the 7th month just to be on a safer side.

I would have to agree with @kk075 -- it all depends. The terms, competition, how much has been done before in terms of infrastructure and indexability... etc.

It's depend on the industry but my power - suit rocket science method may be work for your clients less than 30 days

For Ranking the Keywords it will take 3 months and it should maintain another 3 months total 6 months..

SEO is a continues process , but results starts from 30-45 days .. Important is to find the right keywords to work on.

I usually state around 3 months before they start seeing any results.

It all depends upon the website,the work he wants, the time he wants you to spend on it. Its not possible to give answer without any information.

Seriously where do you lot actually get your info from, do any of you do SEO? and if so, are you successful, all I read here is nonsense.

3-6 months? for every site? in any vertical? hahaha

Hi,

When website is new, then it will surly take 4-6 to months to see the result, also its based on website age and the penalties.

When a website has history with Google then you can see result in 2 months also.