What's the optimium time duration for an SEO campaign?

We’ve get asked this question quite regularly, by clients having small as well as fairly large businesses. There’s no one size fits all when it comes to SEO, since it is largely an iterative, continually improving process as the campaign gets underway.

So, what’s the right time duration for an SEO campaign? We will aim to answer this in a nutshell. SEO campaigns can be as varied as the different businesses in operation. The very first variable to factor in is your competition. For any business, there are hundreds of similar businesses all vying for top rankings.

For an entity operating in a niche area of business, a focused campaign can last anywhere from 6 months to a year, until they have sufficient online presence and traction to attract new and repeat visitors and leads, and have built up sufficient brand leadership with their local SEO and social media. This also means that we’ve established the three important parameters (among many) that Google uses to rank web pages: Relevance, Usability and Quality.

For a business or practice operating in a highly competitive field, once you’ve gained ranking traction, you wouldn’t want to stop. This is simply because your competitors are snapping at your heals already and there really cannot be any lapse in momentum. The traffic and leads also start coming from longtail keywords and social media once a campaign reaches its peak operating curve. Results start showing anywhere from 2-4 months after starting but may take longer to stabilize, and thereafter keep climbing up in ranks. As mentioned earlier, SEO is an iterative, adaptive and continuous process.