" Let us say, a businesses is starting from scratch and they hire you and perhaps a web developer, a designer and someone to work on let us say, content development, do you think a year is enough time to work on it and expect substantial results or it might actually take longer than or less than that. What is your experience?

It depends how much time the people that you have hired have to devote to your project but if you are determined to have a substantial web presence and you are starting from zero, it is worth it to put a huge amount of front end money into it because there are legitimate ways to get a brand new site index in search engines and Google within a month - Well that is fast then. "