For your average small biz, how much time to devote to SEO?

[robertalert86]

Great question! I love to think about these problems in terms of analogies. Let's say that you have a small kitchen and you want to remodel it. What's your first item to do? Figure out a remodeling plan and execute the remodel. That transformation of your old crappy kitchen into your new wonderful modern kitchen is what the remodel is all about.The remodel of the kitchen is a lot like the remodel of a website for search engine optimization. This is a big project and in my experience takes about a month for a small business of concerted activity.Then after your kitchen is completed, you need to start cooking your meals. This is your day to day activity. This does not take as much effort! Especially if you have a well-designed kitchen! So it is with search engine optimization.Once you have gone through the remodel and built your website up to best practices of search engine optimization, now you are in maintenance mode. For most small businesses I would say they need to spend 3 to 5 hours per week creating press releases, blog posts, and new content. In addition they need to look for every possible link building opportunity on an ongoing basis.Of course all of this is competitive and in competitive industries more effort is needed. But fortunately in my experience most of your competitors will be relatively clueless and with a little ambition you can crush your competition!

[MikeQ]

I give around 8 hours daily and I don't get good result as well, I think I need to give more time for this...

[GulfsideSoftware]

Depends whether or not you have a niche as general sites/services need different types of attention.

[RH-Calvin]

I devote 30 hours in a week.

[HostingSprung]

Great question! I love to think about these problems in terms of analogies. Let's say that you have a small kitchen and you want to remodel it. What's your first item to do? Figure out a remodeling plan and execute the remodel. That transformation of your old crappy kitchen into your new wonderful modern kitchen is what the remodel is all about.The remodel of the kitchen is a lot like the remodel of a website for search engine optimization. This is a big project and in my experience takes about a month for a small business of concerted activity.Then after your kitchen is completed, you need to start cooking your meals. This is your day to day activity. This does not take as much effort! Especially if you have a well-designed kitchen! So it is with search engine optimization.Once you have gone through the remodel and built your website up to best practices of search engine optimization, now you are in maintenance mode. For most small businesses I would say they need to spend 3 to 5 hours per week creating press releases, blog posts, and new content. In addition they need to look for every possible link building opportunity on an ongoing basis.Of course all of this is competitive and in competitive industries more effort is needed. But fortunately in my experience most of your competitors will be relatively clueless and with a little ambition you can crush your competition!

Agreed with this answer, SEO is the best thing for you small business to get bigger, once you have an established foundation build and renovate on it frequently.