Probably one of the hardest questions for any SEO Guru or even your favorite search engine company spokesperson to answer is "When will I see my web site on page one of the search results for my keywords?" Professional SEO has a better track record of answering the question of "How" do I get on page one than "When". The most common answer given is six to twelve months. That is certainly a reasonable estimate based on the law of averages, but not always the best answer to provide your CEO or VP of Marketing when it comes to spending dollars on optimizing your web site for search engines.

SEO Time is not a linear measurement. There is no Greenwich SEO Mean Time or Atomic SEO Clock by which you can compare or measure your current SEO positions even though it seems that many offers guarantee top positions within X weeks. First off, SEO Time is going to be relative to what and when something gets indexed. When someone asks when was your web site indexed by Google, MSN, Yahoo, they should really be asking when was a specific page indexed. Your home page may have been indexed last week but your products page was indexed three months ago. Contrary to popular belief, a web page can get indexed in matter of hours after it appears on the Internet. And sometimes it may take literally months before a page is officially indexed.

The fact of the matter is that Search Engines don't want you to know when, if, or how your content will get indexed unless you participate in paid advertising. So if you need a listing to appear on a specific page at a specific date for a specific keyword, pay per click is the only "guaranteed" way to get listed. Time is money in the business world so likewise SEO Time to get on search engine results pages depends on how much time you spend on either getting your site ranked organically or money you spend on pay per click online advertising.