Any business would need to wait for a period of 6 months for SEO to begin taking full effects and the results to reflect in improved rankings and increased traffic. If the results are not seen within 6 months, then the SEO is a failure and the business can stop doing SEO. This period of 6 months can basically be divided into 3 periods of 2 months each and the performance needs to be tracked throughout these 6 months so that we can see how far SEO has been successful.
In the first couple of months, a lot of emphasis is given to the on-site content. Tags are created; robots.txt and site maps are created so that it is easy for the spiders to locate the different web pages. Meta tags, titles and H1 and H2 are properly adjusted to correctly reflect the keywords. Some amount of social media optimization like build FB pages etc are done. Some amount of offsite promotion and link building to websites and directories in the same niche is also done.
In the next 2 months, Meta tags and titles are further optimized, more content is added and optimization of internal links is done as well. Slowly the attention begins to shift to the off-site promotions and even more emphasis is placed on link building in various related and high traffic websites, blogs, forums, social media websites etc is done. If there are local search engines and local websites which have a directory for your niche or your target audience frequents, then the link building and submission happens in such websites as well. The content is built further through internal blogs and articles pertaining to the keywords of the business are written and submitted to a variety of directories and other places. Press releases are also made and submitted at various places as well. A lot of social media promotion is also done and preparation for various types of videos is made.
In the last 2 months of this process, the on-site optimization is reduced to a minimum and it is all about off-site optimization only. On-site optimization mainly involves optimization of the alt-text of images. Off-site optimization involves making videos and posting them at various sites, advanced stage of link submission to free directories and distribution of the articles, press releases and videos to various places on the web.
If all the processes have been done properly and the keywords have been correctly chosen, then the website should see a gradual increase in rankings and an increase in traffic as well. If the right keywords have been used, then this traffic should translate into higher revenue for the site and this is when the real value of SEO will be realized. The higher rankings will continue to stay for a long time for the website and thus the increased revenue flow will become consistent. If this does not happen, then it means that the SEO was not done in the right manner or there is too much competition in the niche and hence the keywords and maybe it would be a good time to stop the SEO.
