Month 1 - Research and discovery, website audit, keyword strategy, and planning. In most cases, research and discovery can be done quickly, so technical changes may start being made to the website within the first month.
Month 2 - Begin technical SEO work, that is, making modification to the website based on site audit results. In some cases the website needs to be overhauled, and this of itself can take months. Other SEO activities such as working on the link profile and building content can be done at the same time the overhaul is happening.
Month 3 - Start focusing on content creation. Blogging, FAQs, articles, expanded product/services, company information, etc. You might start seeing some improvements in rankings by the end of this month. If those rankings are translating into leads or sales then even better.
Month 4 - Continued content creation, technical optimization of the website, and development of a healthy link profile (which may include cleaning up low quality links). By this month you could expect to see a marked increase in rankings, traffic, and lead generation. It won’t be anywhere close to the improvements you should 12 months into your SEO efforts, but it should be significant enough that you know SEO is working.
Month 5 - By this month or perhaps earlier in the process you may have started incorporating social media management (see add-on services) into your plan to amplify your content and increase direct traffic to your website. This can lead to a healthy, natural link profile, and of course generate leads in and of itself. We'll continue with content creation and perhaps engage in a some press releases or podcasts. You should be seeing more and more traffic coming in from SEO at this point, and your leads should be growing as a result.
Month 6 - From this point on, our activities will be consistently focused on content creation and promoting that content. We'll also evaluate your keyword rankings and make adjustments to the targeted keywords where we can to increase your reach and visibility. Whatever results you’re getting at 6 months should be considerably less than what you’re getting at 12 months.