The Hardest Part of SEO

[morestar]

So I was taking care of one of the most important aspects related to working SEO and found that reporting could easily, in my books, be one of the hardest parts of SEO work.

Reports for your clients: you have to create the reports, do the keyword research, put the reports together, get competitor's rankings, more keyword exploration and then put all the information onto nice and tight reports that actually make sense to your clients AND clearly illustrate any potential action plans that could or should be taken with respect to the SEO campaign.

The second hard part in my opinion would not at all be the on-page SEO work but the link-building - what do you think? Do you feel there is another aspect of SEO that is harder than writing reports?

[inertia]

For me, reporting is the easiest and most interesting part. Just doing a massive keyword/ranking report now as it happens! I quite like the feeling when you finish a massive spreadsheet with loads of useful data, that looks great! The clients love it to!

On page SEO, easy. As long as the sites not built in some far out CMS that takes me a week to figure out. I'm not from a developer background so getting to grip with a sites dynamics takes me longer than some, and is IMO my main (dare I say only) weakness.

Link building, is easy but hard work. Low competition sites that require the low hanging fruit approach to link building are easy enough but for the more competitive international sites it's far trickier. Link building usually involves plenty of copywriting, which is something else I enjoy.

I find the hardest part of being an SEO (not the art - and it is an art) is finding clients who are a joy to work with (responsive, cooperative, understanding, respectful of your knowledge, willing to help etc).

[Boss Content]

Onpage SEO is easy nowadays, especially if using wordpress. All-in-one SEO does it all for you.
Linkbuilding is easily outsourced.

[morestar]

For me, reporting is the easiest and most interesting part. Just doing a massive keyword/ranking report now as it happens! I quite like the feeling when you finish a massive spreadsheet with loads of useful data, that looks great! The clients love it to!

On page SEO, easy. As long as the sites not built in some far out CMS that takes me a week to figure out. I'm not from a developer background so getting to grip with a sites dynamics takes me longer than some, and is IMO my main (dare I say only) weakness.

Link building, is easy but hard work. Low competition sites that require the low hanging fruit approach to link building are easy enough but for the more competitive international sites it's far trickier. Link building usually involves plenty of copywriting, which is something else I enjoy.

I find the hardest part of being an SEO (not the art - and it is an art) is finding clients who are a joy to work with (responsive, cooperative, understanding, respectful of your knowledge, willing to help etc).

Nice response inertia, I couldn't have said it better myself and with respect to responsiveness I totally agree, SEO is time sensitive and an art to boot!

[inertia]

Onpage SEO is easy nowadays, especially if using wordpress. All-in-one SEO does it all for you.
Linkbuilding is easily outsourced.

I know what you mean, but I dont agree. Allinone SEO doesn't edit existing and add new textual content, add the correct semantic markup, add hyperlinking, bolding, itallics, alt tags, change the URLs etc etc...

And outsourcing link building... Well we could just outsource it all and in that case SEO is a walk in the park!!!??

[morestar]

And I must admit for one of my blog sites I don't use the all in one seo pack. I simply have 3 wordpress variables in place of the content attributes in the meta tags and for the title tag and simple add the appropriate field in the post page. It's much easier, cleaner and quicker....

I suppose the all in one seo pack does a few more things in the background but I'm not entirely convinced that it helps much. We'll see, I'm still checking it's ins and outs.

[PhilipDunn]

link building is the hardest for me, or the least fun...

[SnerdeyWebs]

The hardest part for most is to not over due it :) 2nd hardest is the instant results most seek. Link building and SEO take time. I've heard so many bad stories from clients who spent tons of money on PPC to be #1 only to have horrible sales and bounce rates.

You can lead a visitor to your website but no matter how high you show up on ranking.. your website better be sticky or it will all be wasted efforts. Many websites are designed per what the business owner(s) want compared to what they should be for maximum ROI on time and money spent on SEO.

Have a great week everyone!
Snerdey

[morestar]

The hardest part for most is to not over due it :) 2nd hardest is the instant results most seek. Link building and SEO take time. I've heard so many bad stories from clients who spent tons of money on PPC to be #1 only to have horrible sales and bounce rates.

You can lead a visitor to your website but no matter how high you show up on ranking.. your website better be sticky or it will all be wasted efforts. Many websites are designed per what the business owner(s) want compared to what they should be for maximum ROI on time and money spent on SEO.

Have a great week everyone!
Snerdey

Oh and I totally agree, and I could add to that as well that when an SEO is in-house and knows what to do to clearly make a website sticky and rank pretty high or at the top for chosen keywords but the SEO has no clout or enough say to make crucial time sensitive decisions...that hurts every SEO down to the core of their soul...

[korbs]

What are you using for reporting tools? Is there one that can run on a site and gather a large amount of data?

[Jeffwend]

I use Raven to help with SEO reports. It makes tracking links easy to organize. It tracks SERPS and shows up and down movement over a set time period.

The hard part can be getting the customers to understand what it all means. This means I have to print out a lot of the articles and blog posts that were written for them to show what is happening.

One client that is paying 300 a month just contacted me wanting to know what I have done for February before they send the February check. We just met with them 3 weeks ago to show all of the work that had been done so far for their brand new website. They were informed then that they would be receiving a quarterly report documenting their SERPS and the links that were built. They were impressed with what we had done, but now 2-3 weeks later they want another meeting to know what we have done over the last 2 weeks.

For only paying 300 a month it can be hard to let the customers know that you can spend your time doing SEO, or you can spend your time in meetings explaining what you do.

Finding a client that gets SEO is the best. With them, I go over the report once, and then mail them a quarterly or monthly report and they know what the data means.

Often it seems that the less the client pays, the more time they demand.

[morestar]

What are you using for reporting tools? Is there one that can run on a site and gather a large amount of data?

At the moment for SEO reports I've gone with WebCEO. From a reporting perspective though I don't believe I'm getting the most out of these keyword/ranking reports as I should be.

[morestar]

I use Raven to help with SEO reports. It makes tracking links easy to organize. It tracks SERPS and shows up and down movement over a set time period.

The hard part can be getting the customers to understand what it all means. This means I have to print out a lot of the articles and blog posts that were written for them to show what is happening.

One client that is paying 300 a month just contacted me wanting to know what I have done for February before they send the February check. We just met with them 3 weeks ago to show all of the work that had been done so far for their brand new website. They were informed then that they would be receiving a quarterly report documenting their SERPS and the links that were built. They were impressed with what we had done, but now 2-3 weeks later they want another meeting to know what we have done over the last 2 weeks.

For only paying 300 a month it can be hard to let the customers know that you can spend your time doing SEO, or you can spend your time in meetings explaining what you do.

Finding a client that gets SEO is the best. With them, I go over the report once, and then mail them a quarterly or monthly report and they know what the data means.

Often it seems that the less the client pays, the more time they demand.

Exactly, SEO is sort of intangible in the sense that business owners who contract us out or bosses don't see actual results always or right away. They don't understand that the 'long-tail' keyword we optimized for (as per one of their keyword related requests) actually brought 2 visitors in this month and earned them $6000.

It's really difficult even just explaining what we've done for the past two weeks for the client if they ask. As Clay once mentioned, our 20 minute conversation with a client, and what they get from it or our 20 minute work can bring the client a wop of business in the future but a high number of times they won't even know it was due to our work.

:-(

[claybutler]

I'll disagree as well with the All In SEO WP Plugin doing the SEO for you. Just because something makes it easy to fill in titles and descriptions doesn't mean you have any idea what to put in those fields.

I love the All in One Plugin but not because it does SEO for me. I like the way it makes it easier for me to work my magic.

Link building is probably the "hardest" in the sense that it's the ultimate example of delayed gratification. You just keep doing it on the faith that it will all mean something someday.

I'm really good at SEO but I've never pursued it as an individual business model. It's always related to my clients overall branding and marketing strategies. So for me, designing a full page add, a new website or logo is way more satisfying than than generating reports or link building.

It's really nice to crack open Illustrator and four hours later have a kick-ass design that's off to the printers. Two weeks later I see it in print. It will never move or change. It will always render perfectly in all "browsers" and my competitors will never knock me off the "page". What Google thinks is irrelevant. It has a nice feeling of completion, control and permanence that SEO can never have.

However, seeing my SEO efforts succeed is infinitely exciting and fascinating. It's like winning at a $5 blackjack table over and over again.

[inertia]

The hard part can be getting the customers to understand what it all means. This means I have to print out a lot of the articles and blog posts that were written for them to show what is happening.

One client that is paying 300 a month just contacted me wanting to know what I have done for February before they send the February check. We just met with them 3 weeks ago to show all of the work that had been done so far for their brand new website. They were informed then that they would be receiving a quarterly report documenting their SERPS and the links that were built. They were impressed with what we had done, but now 2-3 weeks later they want another meeting to know what we have done over the last 2 weeks.

For only paying 300 a month it can be hard to let the customers know that you can spend your time doing SEO, or you can spend your time in meetings explaining what you do.

Finding a client that gets SEO is the best. With them, I go over the report once, and then mail them a quarterly or monthly report and they know what the data means.

Often it seems that the less the client pays, the more time they demand.

Absolutely, the small fish who wouldnt shell out for a decent amount of monthly work are always the ones who want as much as possible for as little as possible. These guys end up being the ones for whom SEO doesnt work. It's the wrong approach from the off...

Now I'm freelance I try to avoid these clients by keeping everything hourly. If they want more work than those hours allow then I tell them they need to buy more of my time. It's fair enough... I cant do it any other way without getting blagged.

One way that I approach proof of link building work is to get clients to search for "their company name" and "matt inertia". And if I pick up any really great links I email them straight away with a very enthusiastic message!!

[inertia]

I'm really good at SEO but I've never pursued it as an individual business model. It's always related to my clients overall branding and marketing strategies. So for me, designing a full page add, a new website or logo is way more satisfying than than generating reports or link building.

It's really nice to crack open Illustrator and four hours later have a kick-ass design that's off to the printers. Two weeks later I see it in print. It will never move or change. It will always render perfectly in all "browsers" and my competitors will never knock me off the "page". What Google thinks is irrelevant. It has a nice feeling of completion, control and permanence that SEO can never have.

Just did my first design through to completion and marketing job towards the end of last year and it was very satisfying! It was for a friend who was struggling for business a little. So I sorted him out with a new domain, site, logo, branding, all SEOd, fired a few links at it and BOOM! Top of the SERPs for his keywords (not a competitive area admittedly). In the last 3 months the site's more than paid for itself and my mate is cruising all the way to the bank. He's just ordered a load of T shirts, cards etc with my logo on as well. Real job satisfaction!

[mjtaylor]

I find creating reports tedious. I wouldn't say it's hard but it might be my least favorite task. I tend to put it off and I am not sure I appreciate the reminder! I'd much rather go write something.

[morestar]

lol MJ, we're in the same boat. I understand fully what and why reports are needed from an SEO perspective but at times it would feel nicer if most of the clients would simply trust us and let us do our work. I have a few clients that are that way and they're great, plus they love the ROI they're getting as well.

It must be nice to be a business owner have be able to sit back and not worry about the SEO part of things.

[aleksandarr]

I feel just the same as Morestar. Reports are most boring part for me, too. I don't see any creativity there and I just hate pure manual work.

[chrisJumbo]

I don't often have to do reports. I use analytics to track the basics and Market Samurai for tracking positions.

I manage the site, but also to the day-2-day sales so not always a lot time.

I enjoy writing so have posted quite a few articles. I enjoy the blog, but haven't written since December.

Link building is certainly the most time consuming and results come later down the line so sometimes it gets put on the back burner.

cd :O)

[SemAdvance]

WebCeo Pro for reporting and XLS spreadsheets.....

Never monitored competitors rankings....I mean if the clients at # 1, whats to care where the rest fall????

;->

[morestar]

Same here, WebCEO and .xls spread sheets. I already worked on at least 5 today!

Almost meaningless to me.... The competitors rankings information comes in handy when I want to compare rankings for the client who usually wants that type or report.

[korbs]

Often it seems that the less the client pays, the more time they demand.

This has been my experience exactly. I'm sure most service trades are the same.

[DesignsOnline]

For me creating the reports isnt particularly hard it is just time consuming, and I cant help feeling that it is time that could be far better spent in other ways...

[themezoom]

Hi guys,

As a designer of a pretty comprehensive SEO reporting tool used by quite a few people, I have to at least comment that it is not necessarily reporting that matters as much as providing the client with missed opportunities and making sure they understand the reporting. For example, during the process of designing theme zoom I found that the average client would not understand the data until we added the pretty pictures.

I also have to agree with the gentleman who warned against using All-In-One SEO and some sort of final solution. That would be ridiculous. Most well-paid SEO's are still using a myriad of research, reporting and analysis tools to make things happen and keep their SEO firm together. In fact even though TZ has awesome theme cluster technologies for market research and keyword research, we had to design web domain studio do com in order to connect to all the useful online research and reporting tools that are out there. We could try to pull in the date from all of these sources, but it is easier and more comprehensive to show people how to analyze this data within a tab like project managment structure.

Yours, Russell

[alank4882]

SEO is sort of intangible in the sense that business owners who contract us out or bosses don't see actual results always or right away. They don't understand that the 'long-tail' keyword we optimized for (as per one of their keyword related requests) actually brought 2 visitors in this month and earned them $2000.

[full house]

hardest part of SEO is thinking of the algorithm and figuring out how it works.

[pervezalam_mzn]

After analyze and finalize keywords... Results is the most important on targeted keywords... every work that u do SEO is important to acive these results :)

[babloodmax]

Hi Buddy!!!

I feel on page is hardest part in seo.. you..??? thanks many..meet again.

[morestar]

After analyze and finalize keywords... Results is the most important on targeted keywords... every work that u do SEO is important to acive these results :)

Oh ya for sure, the results of our SEO work is very important and proving it to the client is too. I find showing the clients the results is probably really easy as first they get to see their site ranked for the keywords they were competing for and the reports that display this information in detail is truly easy to come by, especially with WebCEO.

The problem with reports for me comes in the form of trying to figure out what else can or needs to be done to further enhance the project. The data is in front of me/us and I need to use it to display the need for more SEO work on not based on my findings.

[Bill Treloar]

Link building is the hardest part. There are some fine reporting tools out there that can be easily suplemented with some home-grown spreadsheets.

Outsourcing link building is something I refuse to do. So many of the outsourcing vendors are overseas where the folks doing the work don't have English as their primary language. They can get lots of links, but many are irrelevant, low value links that you may not want anyway.

Training my own local folks to do proper link building isn't easy, but the value is certainly there.

[williamc]

Bill, I quite agree that outsourced talent for quality links is simply not worth it. For average bulk links, fine. But for a balanced link profile it takes all kinds of links and you won't get that by outsourcing.

[Moviefrontier]

I think it's link building.But you can try outsource

[williamc]

I think it's link building.But you can try outsource

Let's hear your thoughts on outsourcing.

[Top10SEO]

The hardest part of SEO for me is link building. Because of the time-consuming nature of getting quality back links, I have tried the outsourcing route; with 5 different companies. None of them were worth the time or money I spent evaluating their services.

The last company, who probably had the best sales pitch, did the worst job. Their sales pitch addressed all of the right topics, but the execution of their service was detrimental to the test web site I gave them.

If anyone knows of a very reputable back link acquisition company and can share that information, I would love to hear it.

[PhilipDunn]

I am curious about the reporting tools mentioned, for finding link partners..

[itbuzz]

For me keyword selection is most hard one, secondly its difficult to handle permanent link building.

[williamc]

Luckily, I have a team member who is adept at keyword research, to the point where I generally ask him to do that aspect for me, and I have always built my own report generators that put 90% of the report together automatically for us.

We also did the same for automated proposal workups which does all the hard work and creates a nice clean easy to read PDF proposal.

So far, to my knowledge, there are only 2 systems like this, ours and seofox's and they only have it because I sold them my old site :)

And before someone jumps on saying this is a 'Self indulgent post'. Rest assured it is not. Read between the lines. The moral is work smarter, not harder. Be creative.

[cw1865]

The moral is work smarter, not harder. Be creative.

No, its well taken, my dad used to say to me: 'let the tool do the work'

Turning heeps of raw data into useful information, choice is lots of time, or use your 'tools' effectively.

[submitserve01]

hardest part of seo is when your customer ask you to place them in top10 for their keywords and the best part is when you know you can do it

[BluePlanet]

I know there are lots SEO folks here and they have their use, especially for business people doing websites who don't really know what they are doing. Lots of people these days.

If one knows what they are doing, I don't see how they help much. A hotel I know spent $500 a month on SEO and I could never figure out what the SEO company was doing. This hotel site didn't need any help at all.

A restaurant my company has done printing for (I own a printing plant among other things) had a local company do a website for them. It is pretty and competent appearing but it was done like a setup to then sell the owner SEO services on a monthly basis. I mean, it was like it was designed to fail unless he paid lots more money. Primary keywords in the title were spelled wrong. It had no metatags at all. There were links that didn't work. Secondary pages had no titles. There were no alt tags. There was very little text for any search engine to use, much less visitors. And a bunch of other things. I gave him a list (for free) and the web design company fixed them, but apparently weren't too happy about it.

[morestar]

Interesting and I see that all the time too. Me? When I tackle a 'web design' job the on-page SEO comes with the program. I let them know they're getting some on-page SEO basically included in the cost.

My on-page SEO usually does a lot of help for their sites too, right after launching we usually see quite a jump in traffic and rankings.

The only time they start getting charged for the serious SEO is thereafter and if they need it at all.

[wblteam]

Hard part of SEO is explain to people what is SEO. 90% people don't know what is this.

I don't think making report is so tough. For making SERP Report I love to use Link Assistant and Other link building report I do in spread sheet. Get quality link is so hard to find

[JosephZ]

I find the hardest part of being an SEO (not the art - and it is an art) is finding clients who are a joy to work with (responsive, cooperative, understanding, respectful of your knowledge, willing to help etc).

I would concur with this being the hardest part (at least for me). Too many people want the design, content, and SEO for 1/10th of the budget necessary. My favorite is when they reference "somebody" they know who was able to achieve the same goal for a few hundred dollars.

When you dig a little, this "someone else" sells "widget fu-fu whatchamacallits" and they are ranked #1 for the term. You try to explain to them that having a ranking for a term nobody searches for isn't as difficult as the terms the client want to go after, which have a million competitors.

[inertia]

My favorite is when they reference "somebody" they know who was able to achieve the same goal for a few hundred dollars.I've had a few potential clients recently who've gone quiet after I've given them a quote. One guy recently wanted an ecommerce site, in a CMS, designed, SEOd, hosted, domain registered etc. I quoted him an absolute rock bottom price but he gave me the old "ill have to have a think about it". That was 3 months ago. That drives me nuts because putting those quotes together takes time and I know he was getting a good deal because I know the industry better than him. I could have quoted multiple 1000s for what he wanted! Grrr. (rant over)

I'm sure some of you guys experience this all the time but for me as a recent solo flyer its frustrating.

[morestar]

brother (inertia) I'll put a few bucks on it he'll be back in a few more months because of one of 2 reasons:

1. he got much higher quotes from other people or
2. he got a nice cheaply done site that bites the bullet and now he needs your professional assistance.

This has happened to me a number of times in the past.

[inertia]

brother (inertia) I'll put a few bucks on it he'll be back in a few more months because of one of 2 reasons:

1. he got much higher quotes from other people or
2. he got a nice cheaply done site that bites the bullet and now he needs your professional assistance.

This has happened to me a number of times in the past.

Very true... I wouldnt be surprised if that happens either! But to be honest, I think the client might be more trouble than its worth!

[JosephZ]

@inertia - I too am a one-man show, so I feel your pain.

I would HIGHLY recommend reading (or in my case, listening to the audio book) of Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play.

Basically the book talks about having potential clients establish a value to the work they would like done. So in your case, when the client wants the CMS eCommerce site that is on page one, the conversation would focus on having the client talk about how much revenue they hope to achieve with this site. When a client focuses on the "value" of a project, then it is easier to establish an estimate for them.

I can't tell you how invaluable the book has been to me because I was spinning my wheels on creating proposals that went no where. I'm still honing my skills, but I would say that I probably have wasted 1/20th the time that I did before on proposals that are received with "I'll get back to you." I was either able to flush out the opportunity as having no potential quicker, or I was able to get the client focused on the value of the service I was providing, rather than on "how much is it going to cost me."

[morestar]

@josehpZ (took me an hour to type out your name)...Great idea!

This way you compel the client to come clean with what they expect to earn from your services in the end and then of course your proposal should be in line with those expected earnings - something to that effect...

[lindamarymax]

Hi Buddy!!!

Thanks many for exposed about the hardest part in seo..meet again

[philiboy]

beside finding the right keywords, the hardest part of SEO is to get quality backlinks and search engines index them

[Alice_Ink]

The hardest part for me is link building.

I don't know if it seems the hardest because it is the one aspect I just really don't enjoy or if I just feel inadequate at building links. It is just so time consuming to get quality back links.

Am I doing something wrong? ;)

[Rukovoditel]

All that it is necessary to do:
1. Fill the registration form.
2. Get up the code baner on your web-page (blog, e-mail).
3. Observe, what your money count increases.

[JosephZ]

From a link building perspective, the first thing I do is look at the backlinks of the competition. 9 out of 10 times I find sites in their list that I can piggyback on, e.g., some obscure social bookmarking site that actually has pagerank and does NOT implement "no follow" tags.

Just about every day I find two or three new sources to get one-way links off of that I never knew about prior. I too find link building the least exciting part - with the exception of landing a backlink from a big fish, aka, a similiar site that competes in a different geographic region and is at the top of SERPs for their region, e.g., west coast divorce attorney (as I'm doing SEO for an east coast divorce attorney).

[morestar]

From a link building perspective, the first thing I do is look at the backlinks of the competition. 9 out of 10 times I find sites in their list that I can piggyback on, e.g., some obscure social bookmarking site that actually has pagerank and does NOT implement "no follow" tags.

Just about every day I find two or three new sources to get one-way links off of that I never knew about prior. I too find link building the least exciting part - with the exception of landing a backlink from a big fish, aka, a similiar site that competes in a different geographic region and is at the top of SERPs for their region, e.g., west coast divorce attorney (as I'm doing SEO for an east coast divorce attorney).

I like the back-linking investigating, it's rather fun and interesting for me as I get ideas of what they're doing, here and there and try out the same - usually it works too. I do feel the downside you say in trying to get links from some of the same sites the competitors have back-links from. In my investigating I've found a few competitors who have purchased quite a few other domains to link back to their main site from. Nothing you can do there as they probably wouldn't link to you in the first place...that bites.

[kevsta]

I've had a few potential clients recently who've gone quiet after I've given them a quote. One guy recently wanted an ecommerce site, in a CMS, designed, SEOd, hosted, domain registered etc. I quoted him an absolute rock bottom price but he gave me the old "ill have to have a think about it". That was 3 months ago. That drives me nuts because putting those quotes together takes time and I know he was getting a good deal because I know the industry better than him. I could have quoted multiple 1000s for what he wanted! Grrr. (rant over)

I'm sure some of you guys experience this all the time but for me as a recent solo flyer its frustrating.

don't know if this might be of help to anybody but lately when I sense that prospects are after (even) better prices (we're not expensive by most companies standards) Ive taken to talking them through their ideal kw targets using the adwords tool and costing their ideal traffic on adwords there and then.

when they see that what they want traffic & kw results-wise would cost them (say) 1000 GBP per month on adwords, on an ongoing basis, it usually puts the cost / benefits of seo work into very clear perspective.

eg for 6-8 weeks worth of adwords cost they get their site there organically instead, and then dont have to pay adwords continually for ever.

if they don't get this, someone else is welcome to their business, as I have no confidence in them making a go of it anyway.

[williamc]

I like the back-linking investigating

I used to detest that part, now it's as easy as it can be. Try Complete Backlink Checker & Report, Link Building Tool (http://linkrep.seofox.com) sometime.

[morestar]

I used to detest that part, now it's as easy as it can be. Try Complete Backlink Checker & Report, Link Building Tool (http://linkrep.seofox.com) sometime.

Thank you William, I'm looking into this now...anything to make the task easier and it looks like it has more features than Yahoo's site explorer...that's mainly what I've been using...that and Alexa...

So it seems SEOFox is a good tool to help you manage your own back-links too...my colleague (at work) and I were JUST talking about this this morning - re: finding a solution to manage our client's back-links - the ones we've acquired over time for them through link exchanges etc.

Thanks William.

[morestar]

That and even being close to #1 and work 50 hours a week but don't get bumped a notch - that bites too!!!

;)

[williamc]

Yes, but those 2 things are expected, or should be by anyone who has any knowledge of search engines. It often takes 2-3 months to see results in any semi-competitive arena.

[morestar]

Yes semi-competitive. For the company I'm working with now, it took around six months to see positive results and those results are now starting to slip again. It's an on-going process unless you rule the #1 spot...to a degree...because of course everything changes including #1 rankings...

[inertia]

Ill usually say 12 months at least for competitive rankings. And that seems to be about right most times, with a brand new site.

[morestar]

Well it looks like now that we have PHPProposal (http://www.phpproposal.com/), a hard or maybe the hardest part of SEO will get a little easier.