How long to see results?

[CaseyC]

I know there is no real good answer to this question, but I would like to hear feedback from personal experience....how long does it generally take before you see the effects of your link building? I know there are all sorts of variables, but for instance I have been doing some substantial link building via articles, discussion forum participation, directory submissions, etc but have seen little movement in the rankings at least for some of my more competitive terms and was wondering if I am just being too antsy and that it may take more time that I expect.

I would be curious to see what others have experienced.

[jimbeetle]

Well, if you're getting antsy then it is taking more time than you expect. ;-)

There really isn't any good answer here. Google dumps data into its system on, as far as we know, a fairly continuous basis, so there should be some steady incremental improvements. It's possible that your increments are quite small and any improvement might not be visible at the moment.

And, of course, much depends on the quality and PageRank of the pages you're getting links from. A much larger number of links from PR 1 and 2 pages would have to be factored in than from a handful of links from PR 6 and 7 pages to show discernible improvement. The good point here is that pages with low PR now have might have higher PR later, thereby increasing the link juice to your site.

One point about directory submissions. Once you've been listed in the fairly few quality general directories and maybe a handful of focused and relevant ones that might exist for your niche or vertical, there really isn't reason to get listed in any others. There are tons of directories out there that are no more than link farms and might do more harm than good. Be very picky about where you submit your site to.