Whatever sort of industry in are in or campaign that you undertake it is important to remember that your campaign will take time. Beware of anyone that says they can get you to the top very quickly, this is highly unlikely.

Website Factors for Optimisation

To have any idea how long your SEO campaign will take you will need to consider the below factors:

1. How optimised is your site before you begin?

If you have an old site with poor navigation and set up you may find that some changes to this is needed before you can begin your campaign.

2. How many links do you have?

If you have had a site for a while but have no links then you will need to be prepared for your campaign to take some time. If you already have links and an existing profile the results may occur quicker.

3. What is the age of your website?

If you want to begin your campaign on a new website you need to be prepared to wait. You will need to build links to be found and it is commonly thought that the age of your website is a factor to ranking as well.

4. How easy is it to update your website?

What sort of CMS you have is important to determining how easy it will be. It is important have a CMS where you can edit your site for SEO purposes.

5. How Competitive are your keywords?

If you are going for a very competitive phrase you will find it will take much longer to get to the top. You are best to target a less competitive phrase and once you are doing well for that you will find it easy to then go for the very competitive ones.

6. How do you compare?

It is important to know what the sites in the top 10 are doing. If they are all big sites with thousands of pages and links then you need to think carefully. You should either consider looking for other keywords or prepare to wait a long time to get to the top.

How Long Will You Need to Wait?

Now that you know what you need to consider you will need to get a realistic idea of how long it will take to get to the top. This can be done by determining the competitiveness of your keywords.

1. Niche terms

These tend to be very specific phrases that have a low competition level. For example those phrases that have less than 100,000 results in Google will probably be considered niche. If you have an established site that already has a linking profile it could take as little as 6 weeks to get to the top. However if your site is brand new you may still have to wait a few months.

2. Medium competition terms

These are terms that are more general but still have some form of specification. You will usually find that there are a few million results in Google for these phrases and you will need around 1,000 links to be on the first page. If your site is established you should expect to wait around 4 months to get on the first page for this type of phrase. However if your site is brand new then you will probably looking at anywhere from 6 months to 1 year.

3. Very competitive terms

These are the phrases that are very general and usually have tens of millions of results. In order to get to the first page for these terms you will need a large number of pages and probably thousands of links. If your site is established it will probably take around a year to get on the first page however it could be longer. For a brand new site it could be anywhere from 1 to 5 years depending on how competitive it is.

Having said all of the above you should also be aware that what you put in you get out. If your investment in your campaign is small you can extend these timelines.