The Forum SEO Challenge...

Ive got UK Business Forums on page 2 rank 16 today. Is there a timescale when this challenge is complete?

I don't think its fair to impress a forced deadline, and as Paul said, he will leave it to forum members to gauge the results.

From experience, I normally allow 90 days to see a decent positive reaction when it comes to SEO, although initial fixes such as on page tweaks can have quite a quick effect.

SEO can be seen as a black art, and every keyword/market is different, so guess it is down to each individual and how they perceive success, as only you know which keywords convert for your business.

Hi Steve

Its not a question of being unfair. That was certainly not my intention and I'm surprised if you think that.
In reality, its called a challenge, so there must be a finite time otherwise its not really a challenge is it?
The main reason I ask is simply that I would like to know what their thoughts were, especially as you can see from my previous posts I have a vested interest in maybe using them.
I understand it can take a long time, I have been working on SEO for my site for a couple of months and I have managed to get several keywords like Blu-ray Replication in my Replication heading and Variable Data Printing in my Digital Printing Menu on page 1 of Google in a relatively short time, unfortunately, some haven't budged and so I am not interested putting pressure on anyone and I am certainly not even implying anything but I do want it to work for selfish reasons.
Regards

dohh, didn't mean to come over harsh

Fair comment. Personally I reckon 90 days is a fair amount of time to get onto Page 1 from our starting point. To get to the coveted top though, not so realistic looking at the competition

Maybe position 4 in about 6 months...

I forgive you!!

I shouldn't be so tetchy I guess.

Quick Update:

It's been just over a week and initially we saw a big jump in a few days as the site went from page four (37th position) up to near the top of page two. As i mentioned i didn't think the site would budge for a while and might even drop a few places, which has been the case.

As of today the site is still on page 2, position 15. (it had dropped down to position 16 but has come back up 1 spot).

Hi Garlex,

As mentioned in previous posts I will leave it up to the forum members to decide if what we have done was done in a reasonable time.

I am confident that we will have this site on the 1st page before 90 (hopefully well before 90 days). Once we get there I will give my thoughts on whether I think we achieved it quickly or not and the rest of you can have a discussion.

Please note there are many SEO companies out there that will say they can get your site to ??? spot within ??? days. A lot of these use very dubious blackhat methods so be careful. Yes they may get your site to the 1st page quickly for difficult keywords but the manner in which they achieve this may do a lot of long term damage to your site and is not worth the risk.

Slow and steady wins the race!

I couldn't agree with you more, your comments mirror my experience exactly.

Regarding this exercise, I wish you every success and hope you do indeed achieve your aim.

Update:

GOOD NEWS!

Mylocalforums.com can now be found on page 1 (10th position Google.co.uk and 9th position Google.com) for the keyword 'UK Business Forum'.

As the site has only just got to the first page this could be a false dawn and it may slip back down over the next few days. I'll keep an eye on it over the next week or so and give another update when something new happens.

We will try and push the site further up the first page and see how we get on over the next couple of weeks.

Blimey, 11 days in, and from Page 4 to bottom of Page 1

Very impressive. Shall look forward to see if you can push it further over the next few weeks, but if you keep this up, I suspect you may start getting a few enquires!