One of the most common questions I get asked about SEO is how long it will take to start seeing results. I love this question because it is one of the few areas that most SEO’s underestimate, and a huge opportunity for me to swoop in and save the day.

In fact, I was reviewing an SEO contract for a friend from a vendor and they wanted him to sign a Two Year Contract for SEO. I don’t care how good a company is at SEO, signing a two year contract is a mistake. There are too many things that can change or go wrong and you’ll be stuck holding the bag. What was really crazy about that contract was their money back guarantee if after two years you don’t at least double your investment with them, you’ll get your money back. This is crazy because not only is search volume and internet usage going up, your sites age influence your rankings to a relatively significant degree. Assuming you are not doing anything spammy, and are creating good content, odds are over two years you will certainly grow organically, definitely enough to recoup the cost of the two year contract. Was it a scam. Actually, it wasn’t.  they were a decent agency, but it was definitely a contract that should never be signed.

This is a common theme for most SEO vendors. They require at least four to six months to show results, so they make you commit to working with them.

They aren’t wrong, it can take months for your SEO efforts to start showing significant improvements, and can certainly take that long to start showing a real ROI. Many links don’t get their full value for three months, after all, Google wants to see that the links are here to stay. For the most part Google wants to see stability and longevity as they are good indicators of credibility which is one of the two things Google is trying to measure (Credibility and Relevance).

So, how long does it take to start seeing SEO results? My answer is TWO WEEKS MAX.

Here’s why… Odds are if you are good at SEO you will be able to find at least several things that can influence rankings on the very next crawl by Google.

There should be several things on site to do and if you are clever, you might find broken links, pages that are 404’d that should be 301’d. Changes to influence Rich Snippets translating into more traffic. Improving your page load times, making your site more engaging, lowering the bounce rate… Lots of onsite changes can influence rankings really quickly.

Even if you can’t find those changes that make a quick difference. There are most likely a handful of keywords that are ranking on page two that can be pushed up to page one in a matter of weeks.

Of course there are other tricks, like earning social sharing. In fact, there is a case study showing how Plus Ones from relevant and established Google+ accounts pushing brand new websites to page one in only a day.

Here’s the thing that most people don’t seem to realize. There are lots of great SEO vendors that have the best practices down pat. But, it takes creativity, and a deep understanding of everything at play to uncover lots of low hanging fruit, and find opportunity to get SEO improvements within a few weeks. This is where high end SEO experts can come into play. They know how to find the issues, not just follow the steps they were taught.

So, the next time you think about hiring an SEO vendor and they say it will take several months to see results, ask them why. I’m not saying you should expect to make a real ROI immediately, I am just saying you should see some improvement in rankings and organic traffic.

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