My favorite SEO question-”how long will this take?” First, this answer has at least two parts, “how long will it take to rank and get traffic?” and “how long will it take to keep rankings and traffic?”

Answering, “How long will SEO take?” is like answering, “How long does it take to achieve trust, authority and relevance.” The real answer is that they’re both a process, not an event.

So how can online marketers answer this question in a way that helps the business owner make room in their marketing plans for much-needed SEO?

Important steps are to define goals based on the bottom line. Establishing expectation for ROI for your SEO campaign is far more helpful (and measurable, and attached to business success) than establishing goals around rankings and traffic.

Once you’ve established your goals, next steps are to define the trust, relevance and authority needed in your space. Steps for achieving this are different for a spa in a small town competing with 25 other spas, than steps for a laptop company competing with thousands of online companies which sell laptops.

What is trust online?
Trust is established through several criteria,
-How long have you been in business?
-How well does your site perform?
-Are you an expert in your field?

What is relevance online?
-Does the visitors search query match your site content and other signals?

What is authority online?
-Are you an established company?
-Are you serving exceptional, unique content that establishes you as an authority?
-Do other relevant and authoritative sites link to you because you provide important information to your visitors?
-Are you doing it better than anybody else in your space?

That last one is daunting, but the reality is that many searchers don’t delve past page one to get the answer they need. If there are 3,000,000 pages returned for a query, are you doing it better than the other 2,999,990 pages returned for that query? If not, you have more trust, relevance and authority to achieve.

What’s missing from many companies’ approach to SEO is the acceptance that SEO (like every other part of building a business) takes time and commitment. It’s not a one time event, nor is it easily achieved. With that in mind, it’s also not okay for your SEO company to have ambigious strategies and tactics for achieving trust , relevance and authority. Though SEO is a process, that process should be marked with events that achieve the end goal.

The good news is that establishing trust, relevance and authority will help you in other online marketing efforts including perception of your brand in social networks.

Getting clients to realize that search (and other onine marketing disciplies) is a process and not an event helps incorporate the need for an ongoing relationship with a search marketing professional that will help them get and maintain an edge. And what do you need from an SEO? You guessed it; trust, relevance and authority. Read Google documentation about choosing an SEO.

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