Short answer: yes, yes you do. Why?

Picture all of your website visitors as a massive pie. For the average website, 50% of that pie will come from search engines like Google. Search engines are a discovery tool, meaning that many of these website visitors are discovering your website for the first time. As more and more people discover your website from search engines, you’ll see each other traffic channel (email, social media, etc.) increase as well. In other words, as this part of your pie gets bigger, the rest of your pie will get bigger as well.

We'll send you instructions to get access to a few of your digital assets such as your website and Google Business Profile. We will also schedule an onboarding meeting within 2 to 5 business days to further discuss the plan and collect feedback from you.

The answer is...it depends. Frustrating, isn’t it?

But it’s the truth. What does it depend on? It depends on how long your website has been around, how much SEO has been done on it previously, what shape the website is in, how much content is on it, its link profile, and many other SEO factors (see infographic below). No two websites are starting from the same place, even if they’re in the same industry and competing for the same customers.

If you have not done so already, read the FAQ, "What's type of SEO activities and results can I expect in the first few months?" It contains a plausible scenario for what your SEO efforts might look like during the initial months, and the results you might expect.

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. 

Yes, you absolutely can. However, success by any standard rarely comes within the first 3 months, even with a healthy SEO budget.

I’ve seen companies get started the right way, but quit after 2 to 3 months and say “We just weren’t getting the results we needed to justify the cost.” This tells me they went into the exercise with unrealistic expectations.

If you can’t budget for 6 to 12 months of SEO, you might be better off putting that budget somewhere else. Paying for just a few months of SEO is, in many cases, no better than throwing your money away.

SEO is a long term marketing tactic, and shouldn’t be seen as a way to generate sales quickly. However, if you make the proper investment, and plan on being in it for the long haul, SEO is a marketing tactic with one of the best ROIs out there.