A common question we are asked, "How long will it take to achieve good search engine results for my targeted keyphrases?" Answer... it depends on how many quality links are pointing to your site, how much competition there is for the keyphrases you want to target, and how much content you have to support the keyphrases you are targeting. Of course, there are quite a few other smaller elements involved in effective SEO strategies, but these are the main three.

Obtaining top search engine rankings should be viewed as a long-term strategy. Of course, there's always low-hanging fruit to take advantage of, but trying to utilize shortcuts or anything else other than a solid long-term SEO strategy will likely be viewed as spam and will do much more harm to your organization's site than good.

Depending on the amount of competition there is for your desired keyphrases and the amount of incoming links and content of your competitors, the amount of time it will take to obtain top search engine results will vary greatly. SmartSearch Marketing will give you our best estimate at the beginning of the search engine optimization project.

2 aspects to Competition:

1. Websites that are listed in the top 20 results for your targeted keyphrases, your direct competitors, and
2. The amount of web sites that are indexed for a particular keyphrase. You can find this information in the upper right-hand corner of Google and most of the other search engines.

SmartSearch Marketing researches the competition by starting with the "suspected keyphrases." Search Engine Optimization begins with understanding how people use the search engines to find your products and/or services. It's a good idea to ask the employees of your company, and even more importantly, find out from your customers what terms they would use online to find you.

SmartSearch Marketing's SEO Toolset™ research summary reports identifies your competitors and their pages that are ranked well across the major search engines for the terms that are most important to you. After obtaining all the necessary information about your desired targeted keyphrases, how your competition is ranked, and how much overall competition there is for those terms, the next step in the search engine optimization campaign is to identify the targeted keyphrases that will best result in sales and take the least amount of time to achieve the best search engine rankings.