Links and SEO - A Timeframe

There’s a nice bit of information from Rand of SEOmoz about the lag between acquiring new links and those links helping out your SEO effort. According to him,

we found that it was not until 10 weeks after our efforts had begun that the rankings showed progress. Moreover, rather than being a steady climb, the site, which ranked primarily in positions 8-12 for most keywords, rose to #1 for nearly every term (almost like a mini sandbox-escape, though the site is quite old and has no other “box-like” features). This startling jump at Google is a new experience for me, as most of our projects have shown relatively steady climbs as the number and quality of links slowly increases.