Thanks so much for your question and it’s a good one!

There are a significant number of things that are part of good SEO. I wish I had a definitive yes or no answer for you but your question is wallowing in a grey area. With the miniscule bit of information I have about your website, what your SEO people have done, are doing (or not doing) — what you as the site owner have done, are doing (or not doing) — without doing an evaluation of the site and yada yada yada … my answer is “Maybe, but not necessarily.”

Without a doubt I can say that SEO is *not* an exact science. Are there sneaky, underhanded, dirty players out to take your money and run SEO “specialists” making promises and giving guarantees of good rankings? Unfortunately, yes. Even more unfortunately — some people are so desperate to get to the top that they get sucked into this scenario way to often. Are there SEO companies out there deliberately claiming to be experts who aren’t? Yes. Are there well meaning people trying really hard to provide a client with SEO services who think they understand it but really don’t? Yes. More yada yada yada.

On the other hand there are SEO specialists who, with the *total* cooperation of their clients, are able to achieve good results in *most* cases. Others are racking their brains and wearing out their keyboards practicing good, legal, organic search engine optimization but because of the many things that can (and do!) work against a site and despite what they do to make progress, they just aren’t able to get first page rankings for a website. Because there are sooooo many variables, they may be successful for a hundred sites but not for #101.

It’s been my experience that one of the things some clients (not YOU because it sounds like you’ve been patient) expect for their money is first page rankings and some even expect to see immediate results. I believe this mindset comes from misunderstanding how things work. Site owners should *never* assume nor expect that their site is going to achieve first page results just because they want it (who doesn’t?) and/or because they’re paying someone to help them get there. Keywords here are “help them get there.” I’ve found all to often that people literally expect miracles because they’re paying someone to “make it happen FOR them” but they themselves aren’t willing to do their part. Then they blame the SEO person for failing to do their job. Good SEO work is done by *both* the SEO specialist *and* the client and is more successful when the client understands that it’s a combined effort not an “I’ll pay you to make me successful” situation and does what needs doing on the client end of things.

I have no idea which of those your chosen SEO person (people, company) are. I’m not going to guess nor am I going to bash and I have no idea what part your company has played in the efforts. Your situation brings to mind someone (someone being your website) having been diagnosed with a serious illness, the illness being a lack of good rankings. You may want to ask yourself this: “What do people who’ve been diagnosed with a serious illness do?” It sounds to me like you’re thinking and moving in the right direction which is asking questions and seeking information to find a cure. Good for you! It’s nice to see a pro-active site owner!

Because of all the variables, there’s no definite time-frame that one should give a website to show good rankings. You said it’s been months, which may mean a couple or many. I would say if you’re unhappy with things the way they are, no matter how long it’s been, if it were me in this situation I would opt for getting a second opinion. From that I’d learn either I’m being impatient or that I need to take alternative action.

I did click over to your website for a *very* quick look, and I do mean very quick (as in a minute or two) so please understand very clearly that this is not to be thought of as a full-blown evaluation. The only thing I will say is that each search engine specialist has their own way of doing things and I saw things that I’d do differently.

I’m sorry I can’t give you a yes or no answer but I hope I’ve been of some help.

Then comes a million emails and calls on Sunday morning while I’m walking my dog.

The internet is working 24/7, but designers don’t.

Another great post! I know you’re busy, don’t worry about the “thank you”,just keep on truck’n!

Thanks so much for stopping by and I really appreciate your compliments. I’m so happy I was able to give you some help, that’s really nice to hear. I hope you will stop back again and be a regular on my blog. I wasn’t aware that Lis was “passing my name around.” That’s just wayyy cool!

Deb

-Truly impressed Lis commented on this blog, there’s good business after all!

So for me they are doing the exact opposite of what they’re supposed to do and I didn’t even deliberately plan on that or had an existing opinion about popups. Most marketing people know from studies made years ago that popups are highly counterproductive in many ways.

But still, serious companies have crappy marketing departments not really interested in anything some cheap outsourced web service shack they hire tells them about their great plans that actually consist of popups and black hat SEO spam, so they will never disappear.