How Long Does It Take to Rank in Google & How To Speed It Up
Whether you are just starting out in SEO or have been providing SEO services for a long time, you are all asking the same thing:
“How long does it take to rank on Google?”
Well, it’s time to understand what factors affect ranking time so that you can estimate (after an SEO audit) how long it will take to rank, and if so, make a full contract with your client.
This question can be difficult to answer and may even prevent you from successfully closing the sale. I covered this a while back in an article on how to convince clients about SEO. The short answer was that there’s really no telling how long it will take as it depends on a number of factors including budget and competition.
Google ranking constant factors
As mentioned above, there are a few factors that affect how long it takes for you to successfully rank a page for a given keyword.
You really have no idea how long it will take you to audit the site. How many keywords do you want to target? What is the competition for these keywords? What is the current status of the website? What is the budget?
These are all factors that affect how quickly a website can climb to the top.
Quick Tip: I am happy to offer the audit free of cost if they eventually sign an SEO service contract (for a specified period, which will be told to you after the audit is completed). If they later refuse, just charge for the exam. I do this because sometimes an audit can take less than an hour (if the site is small), but it can take weeks or even months (if the site is very large).
Current website performance
The first thing to consider is the site itself. If you have a problem, they will take time. That doesn’t mean you can’t start with keyword research or content creation. You should do this asap. But if your website is not mobile friendly, for example, you cannot reach the top these days.
Technically:
Technical issues don’t necessarily speed up the qualification process, but most people try to fix it first because it’s so important. What do URLs, canonical tags, and href lang tags look like? Is the website well-indexed? Is it mobile-friendly or does it need a complete overhaul?
If you have a bigger budget, you can fix them faster because you can outsource to multiple people. If not, it just takes longer.
If your domain influence is low and your competitors have high domain influence, it will take longer to compete with them.
There is no time here to go into detail about what technical problems you might face and how to fix them. That’s why we believe you’ve got all of that right with our SEO technical guide.
Old / New Website:
In general, an older site will perform slightly better than a newer site. This, of course, is if there is something useful on the site.
Anyway, Google certainly doesn’t trust a website when it’s first launched. It could be just another automated spam site or a really bad website. You need to spend some time getting it indexed well and showing Google that it’s well structured and fast and users love it.
You also need to consider how long it will take to build a website if it doesn’t already exist. Is it small Is it big Does it have basic functions or is it a complex digital e-commerce store with features that are difficult to implement?
Major/Minor Site:
Then again, larger websites usually perform better. Why? Because it also means that they are probably a bit bigger and they probably have backlinks as well. While larger websites can rate a page faster than a smaller non-authority site, it also takes longer to rate all pages because there are so many of them.
If you decide to say to your client, “I think we can rank for these keywords in less than a year,” you also need to assume that you’re going to do the same thing for all of them. Will publish articles in the bar, which is unlikely. Happen
Current website domain performance:
Domain performance is important when it comes to seeing how long it takes to rank. If your website has no backlinks at all pointing to it, it will probably take a lot longer to rank for a targeted keyword than if you have thousands of (quality) backlinks pointing to it.
level of competition
Now that you have determined where your website or your customer’s website is located, you can look at your competition. The secret here is to recognize the opportunities. If you want to build a long-term strategy, I would focus on creating high-end content and targeting mid to high-ranking competitive keywords (albeit realistically) while still gaining short-term gains through PPC.
Content Quality:
If you want to rank for a specific keyword, you need to see what type of content is already ranking there.
You can use the CognitiveSEO Keyword Tool to see the average content performance for your target keywords. You can also try individual pages and see how they perform.
However, this is not the only thing to keep in mind. Is this something ugly? Is she really beautiful What about the information? in order? can you find a hole?
Last but not least, how long does it last? Does Google rank short articles or “ultimate guides” that can be 10,000 words long? You can also see this in the tools next to each result.
Domain performance of the competition:
If you target sites that have really strong indications that they are quality (like Wikipedia) it will take longer to target sites that don’t have a strong link profile.
So if you see a results page full of sites with poor domain performance, it’s a good sign that you’re ranking faster than usual. This often happens in local SEO niches, where smaller websites target only those keywords.
Again, the Keyword Tool can help you determine whether an opportunity exists. You can see the average by looking at the keyword difficulty, which includes a combination of average content performance and domain performance.
When large websites do not target keywords directly in the title, there are two possible reasons:
They are incredibly authoritative (likely to also have backlinks with the keyword as their anchor text) and will likely be very difficult to rank for. If you don’t see any other “small” sites listed there, it’s probably a good idea to leave them.
There is no relevant content that directly targets that keyword, so it is likely to rank in the morning.
SEO Budget
Budget is really important when it comes to setting a time frame to rank a website. This determines everything from the speed of implementing technical improvements to the quality of the written material.
Technical Budget:
Depending on how well or poorly optimized the website is, the required technical budget can be small or large. There may also be situations where the best solution is to build the website from scratch.
This increases the budget, but also the time. When you need to start a new website, you can’t start publishing content right away. It is better to wait till its completion.
For example, I worked with a client who had a custom website. It was a turnoff for me because I knew we were going to be in trouble. Not only did it take longer because programmers were slow to respond and we had to constantly chat to fix things, but it also cost customers more money.
Another client (actually my lowest budget client, who also had a huge website, but didn’t really want to invest that much) didn’t do so well. They had a really bad href lang content duplication problem that they didn’t know how to fix (from a programming perspective) and didn’t want to spend a lot of time learning how to do it, especially for this budget.
In any case, they knew from the very beginning what it can and cannot do and how much effort it is willing to put in for the amount invested.
Budget for writing content:
Content creation is the slowest and most expensive part in the long run. However, it is the best investment you can make. Without content, you have no basis to play with. You may not receive communications or links to anything that does not exist. Your customers can’t read an article you never published.
If you can only spend $10 on an item, it probably isn’t the best, at least in the U.S. Not in the market. Pay $50 to $100 instead and you can have changed.
Of course, you also need to consider the other factors mentioned above, such as competition. If your content looks like $5, a $10 article might suffice.
Budget reach and backlinks:
Sometimes you can do a lot of things with materials. When all the other competitors are building links, you may feel like you’re not making any progress. No problem if you buy ads on other sites, but do your best to make it worthwhile in terms of clicks as well. Don’t just buy a link that no one will see.
Again, if someone is asking you $1000 for a backlink, you are better off spending it on quality content, reach, and relationship building. It’s not easy to do everything yourself but try as much as possible to come up with an outreach strategy that you or someone else can easily implement.
You can also use the CognitiveSEO tool to easily determine the link opportunities you can reach. For example, you can go into the competitive analysis (once your campaign is built) and look for common domains. Then find those that are not already near your site (Site 1). This saves time as you are not writing emails blindly. Instead, reach out to webmasters you already know are interested in the topic.
Social media budget:
Social media is a great way to initially push your content. If the signals are good and the content is getting traffic, it means it is doing well and people want to see it in search results as well.
Managing social media accounts is not easy. It’s not about sharing your latest article on just one page. Their main focus is engagement. If you’re interested, here’s an article on building a great social media strategy. You will see that it is not child’s play and you have to do it well to be effective.
Google dance and CTR
Once you start ranking on the second or first page, you may find that Google occasionally ranks your site as #1 or #2 on top, but only for short periods of time. Don’t party just yet because it’s probably just a Google dance.
This is when Google looks at algorithmic signals like quality content and backlinks, but they also have to check it with real-time rank brain signals like CTR. Will users like your content? You can’t tell without sending him some traffic, right?
If Google Dance keeps pushing you up, that’s a good sign. That means it will rank at position n. 25 For a while, then he will not go in. #2 for a day and then go back to #2. #13. After a week or two, it’ll be at #3 for a day, then it’ll go back to #9, and so on.
To get a quick idea, I made this graph to show how long it would take to qualify in different scenarios. If your site is brand new and the content you are going to publish is of very high quality, then the above graph is valid.
You have to “add up” the ranks, which means if you have a poorly optimized website, it will take 6-12 months to fix it before you can start writing quality content. Then, he will focus on the content and performance of the domain.
If your domain performance is also high, you can “cancel” the domain performance metric and treat your competition as “low.” It is also not available for content as it contains more UX and CTR metrics.
Speed it up!
You really only have 3 options that can really speed up the process of ranking a page in Google. And no, they are not quick and easy. It is what it is. SEO takes time. If you want short-term profit then take advantage of PPC.
Get a Big SEO Budget
A really simple way to increase your ranking chances is to increase your budget. Better content, professional design, increased reach efforts, and promotion of the article on social media once published will certainly help it rank better.
However, publication costs for the materials mentioned above can be as high as $500, if not more. But it will be worth it if it is done correctly. Starting things now may pay off in the long run.
There is also an option to buy backlinks. This can save a lot of time. However, it is risky and can get you in trouble. The safe way is to buy Nofollow backlinks. You may think that it is not useful, but in fact, Nofollow backlinks help in SEO.
Either way, you should focus on finding relevant quality backlinks. The link should reach an interested audience. This is ideal if you can bring in some traffic as well. If it costs more than $250, you’re probably better off spending it on creating or spreading quality content.
A bigger budget also means improving your sales potential. If your client keeps asking about deadlines, be prepared to explain how you can speed it up and that it requires more budget.
write great content
When I say really good stuff I don’t mean “quality stuff”. I mean very, very good stuff, where you spend weeks, even months, developing it, planning the scope, and designing it.
To be honest, this material doesn’t fit into that category. While it’s very qualitative (hopefully), we haven’t spent months designing it, and while we do outreach (since I’m probably contacting Nathan to let him know I submitted his video) is), I haven’t spent months developing it. a list.
A good example of really good stuff is what Nathan Gotch did with his “Blogspot” article. It ranks for that keyword even though it is a branded keyword and most people search blogspot.com directly, not your article.
His twist was to look at the subject from another angle and write something that hasn’t been written yet. In this case, the results were full of “how-tos,” but instead, they decided to write “11 great reasons to avoid Blogspot.”
Writing this type of content can make it go viral, which means people will start sharing and linking to it, making it rank very quickly on its own. However, you probably need to start your growth on social media somewhere.