There is no magic formula for ranking a website in Google; no one can tell you how long it will take to get to the first pages.
According to several studies, if you are starting a website now, you may have to wait 3-4 months until you see your first visits from Google. After 6-7 months, provided that you are working in the right direction, you can get some serious traffic from Google.
To avoid any confusion, the above estimates are to be found on Google that can get you some organic traffic and not necessarily one of the top 5 positions.
You may have to wait over a year to rank higher on Google and reach the top spots.
From experience, though, regarding Google rankings, some factors are more important than others, which I will explain in this article.
Factors Affecting How Long To Rank In Google
Google has repeatedly said that they are using more than 255 factors in their ranking algorithm, but the most important factors that are also related to how long it takes to rank in Google are the following:
- Domain Age
- Google Penalties
- Competition
- Type of Content
- SEO
- Content Quality
1. Domain Age
An old and trusted website is more likely to rank higher in Google search results than a newer one, provided other factors remain equal.
This does not mean a new website cannot achieve good rankings; it simply means it will take more time.
A domain is considered new when active (not parked) for less than 6 months. After 6 months, you can get serious traffic from search engines.
2. Google Penalties
This is another factor that can work in favor of or against your efforts to rank in Google.
A clean domain is a website that has not been penalized by Google either by a manual or algorithmic penalty.
How can you tell if your domain is clean? There are 2 ways to do this:
1. Log in to Google webmaster tools, click on a website to go to the dashboard, and select ‘Manual Actions’ from the Search Traffic menu. If you see the message ‘No manual webspam actions found’, the website has no manual penalties.
2. Besides the manual, you should also check for algorithmic penalties. The best way to do this is to log in to Google Analytics (or in the analytics tool you are using) and go to the traffic sources report.
Select Google as the traffic source and set the date range from the beginning of the year. Watch for any drastic changes in traffic and compare the dates these happen with the Google algorithm change history.
If you see a connection between the dates you lost traffic and the date Google rolled out changes, you know that your website was penalized, and depending on the type of change, you can start working on your recovery.
If your domain is not clean, it’s a waste of time to rank for any terms in Google because the imposed penalty will not let you.
The best way to continue is first to clean your domain or maybe consider starting from the beginning with a new domain.
3. Competition
There is strong competition, especially for the most popular keywords, so you should be selective of the keywords you want to rank for.
If you try to go after popular keywords believing that this way you will get more traffic, chances are you will not achieve much unless you have a very strong and trusted website.
What you should do instead is to target low-competition keywords until you get high rankings for those, and then try to go after popular keywords.
High rankings for low-competition keywords will get you traffic and links from other websites, and slowly, this will make your website stronger and able to rank for more important terms.
4. Type of Content
Another factor that affects the time needed to rank in Google is the type of content. Breaking news stories will rank faster than stories that are not considered news.
For example, a story about possible war episodes in the Middle East will likely appear in the top positions faster than your story about food allergies.
Likewise, a new picture of the newborn British Prince will reach the top faster than the image you are uploading to accompany your new post.
5. SEO
On-page and Off-page SEO is vital in ranking a new post or website and in how long it will take to rank.
SEO takes time but is the only way to improve your Google rankings. The most important SEO factors that can speed up the process are:
The number of external references (links) – A new post/page that receives several natural links, because it is important, useful, and valuable, will also climb the SERPs faster.
How often you publish new content – The frequency with which you publish content affects the time needed to rank a new page in Google.
If you have a steady schedule (i.e. 2-3 times per week) then most probably your content will get indexed almost immediately but in the cases that you don’t publish new content that often, it may take a day before search engines find out about it.
Note that indexing does not mean ranking, but it’s the first step in the process. If you are unsure about the difference, read my previous post on how search engines work.
An SEO-optimized title is more important than you think; it can help you rank faster than a non-optimized title.
If you are a normal blogger or webmaster, i.e., you have a relatively new website with a not-so-strong author profile and only a few incoming links to your website, then even if you write the best content but choose the wrong title, you won’t rank for anything, at least in the short term.
6. Content Quality
This is also related to the age of the domain, as explained above.
A post published on a website that already has many quality published posts will probably rank faster than an article published on a website with only a few published posts.
Original Content
This goes without saying, but sometimes it is essential to clarify the basics. Don’t expect to rank non-original content on Google or other search engines.
How To Achieve Higher Rankings In Google?
Besides what I already explained above, to achieve better rankings in Google, you can follow these tips:
Be patient – Patience is perhaps one of the most important characteristics you need to have if you want to succeed online.
Complex ranking algorithms govern search engines; they have BIG data to manage, the competition is huge, and it generally takes time to convince them that you deserve one of the top rankings.
Hire a reliable SEO agency – The Internet is very important for all businesses, and sometimes, when you can’t get the results you want, maybe it’s better to leave it to the pros.
Outsourcing to a trusted SEO firm is perhaps the best thing to do, and it does not cost as much as you think.
Keep updating with good quality original content – Don’t give up, but keep trying. If you have not done anything that may get you into trouble (like buying links, for example), then perseverance and good quality work will get you results.
Work on your social media presence – while waiting for Google to find and recognize your good work, you can turn to social media for more exposure and visibility.
Forget about Google for a while – Don’t be obsessed with Google because this will make you make mistakes.
Instead of checking your ranking statistics many times per day, you can forget about Google for a while and concentrate on other ways to increase your traffic.
This will not only help you be less dependent on Google but also diversify your traffic and income sources, which are necessary if you want to build a solid online presence.
Conclusion
It takes time to get good rankings on Google. If you are starting a website now, you may have to wait 3-4 months until you see your first visits from Google.
After 6-7 months, provided that you are working in the right direction, you can get more serious traffic from Google and the other search engines.
What you can do if things don’t look good in the first months is not to give up but to keep trying using white hat techniques; sooner or later, you will get the portion of Google traffic you deserve.
