How Long Should an SEO Campaign Take?

Don't expect to complete an effective SEO campaign in a matter of days

An SEO campaign can take one day to complete. However you will find that to be far less effective than a 'little and often' approach. At Brown Bear Media experience has taught us that a few hours a week over a period of 9 months to a year is more productive than trying to get SEO done in a hurry.

For example, we keyword-optimise each new article we write for www.brownbearmedia.com and try to gain links to it from other sites all the time. Effectively we have a permanent and ongoing SEO campaign. This is the same approach we advise our clients to use.

After an SEO campaign is begun it usually takes several months before you begin to see results in visitor metrics. This is because it takes time for Directories to approve weblinks. The search engines find new links to the web site and then re-spider the new pages. More importantly, we look at the results and adjust tactics as we go. For instance, submitting an article with links back to the client to a number of different article aggregators is a good practice. Then if after a few months you find one particular aggregator's page rank improves it makes sense to put many more articles on that site.

Over time, if you cease SEO activities you will find the effectiveness of past campaigns diminishes as inbound links get stale or are removed and search engines change their algorthimns.

Basically, the best approach is not to consider search engine optimisation as a specific campaign, but an ongoing activity that brings a steady yet ever increasing flow of visitors. Of course, you should be seeing a rising trend in inbound links and Search Engine positioning over time since these are two of the measurable activities that your SEO team or partner are actively trying to promote.

If you need an immediate boost in visitor numbers consider pay perclick advertising or even a traditional direct mail campaign while the SEO campaign is running in the background.

Read more articles or subscribe to our rss feed