Website clients often ask me, “how long will search engine optimization take” or “how long will it take me to have good Google rankings” ? There are many different opinions out there, and I’ll show you my answer, with real statistics from my own website.

I’ve worked hard on my own website’s search engine optimization or SEO, as it’s known in the field. I’ve continually monitored my traffic, changed my page content, added pages, deleted pages, added a blog, just to name a few. All of these were designed to lure traffic from search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. I set out determined not to have to pay for my traffic, so I didn’t elect to run a pay-per-click campaign. All my traffic is FREE! But it takes time, patience and persistence to achieve these results.

What does it look like when you continually work on Search Engine Optimization? Here’s my very own traffic trend chart:

This chart represents 18 months of continuous search engine optimization effort. Now, I wasn’t working on my website every day, but rather search engine optimization works best if implemented in cycles, which is one of the reasons why it takes such a long time to dramatically change your website’s traffic using this method, especially if the competition is stiff (like it is for my field).

You do research, and decide what to change. Then you change it, noting the day you made the change. You wait for Google to recrawl your page, which may take days, or weeks or longer, depending on how frequently you change your page (the more you update, the sooner search engines will come to visit). Then you analyze the results, and do it all over again.

I wanted to share this data to help set the expectations of new website clients, who sometimes expect great rankings and huge website traffic right away. I also wanted to help set expectations of folks who already have a website, and have asked me to perform search engine optimization to improve their website traffic.

If you’d like to have me do an SEO audit of your website, please contact me. I can usually complete audits in around an hour, and provide you with a report containing recommendations.

If you found this article helpful, please take a moment to share it with your friends, it will be much appreciated. Thanks! Jill