HOW LONG SHOULD I WAIT FOR MY WEBSITE TO START RANKING ON SEARCH ENGINES

This is by far one of the most frequent questions asked on the internet.

“Hey, my website is new and I’m still not seeing a lot of visitors, how long before I can start seeing results from my SEO efforts?”

When you are putting all the time and effort into making your website get to the top you’re anxious, you want to see results right away don’t you?

Hey, welcome to another of my informative posts and in this article, I’m going to be breaking down the question of how long does SEO take to work for a new website?

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INTRODUCTION

SEO used to be very easy and following a specific formula would get you to the top of page one and in many cases when people I presently know started their SEO journey back in the day, you could get top page one in a few months maybe even 6 months at the latest for ahead terms that were like Auto Insurance and Credit cards.

But nowadays SEO is super competitive, there are over a billion blogs on the web that’s roughly one blog for 7 people and there are even more websites on the web.

So when you combine all that, it makes sense why SEO is so hard, because now Google has its prime pickings to figure out which website they want to place at the top. In other words, they can be super picky while 5-10 years ago they couldn’t be as picky.

So first, let’s start with how SEO has changed over the years.

KEYWORD RESEARCH

This is one of the big areas; it wasn’t nearly as a competitive market as it used to be. There are thousands of websites if not millions created every single day.

As of 1st January, there were over 1.7 billion websites online. That’s a lot of competition.

It used to be that you could focus on 5-6 keywords maybe even 10 and these keywords would bring in most of your site's traffic. Companies used to be able to focus on small groups of generic keywords and see great results.

The reality now is it’s a lot different. Websites now must have a list of 50-100 keywords or more depending on the site, and at the bare minimum, each page on your site is going to need to be targeting at least one keyword, however in most cases three or more per page.

CONTENT

It used to be that you could simply write an article and implement the keyword a fair number of times and Google will rank you, aka keyword density right, the more you put a keyword in your page, the more they know about that page s around that topic and then you’ll rank.

Now, that doesn’t necessarily flow naturally and it didn’t really work well for users, hence Google doesn’t look at density the same way anymore.

Google has gotten smarter and they’ve changed their expectations a bit, they’re not just looking at sites shoving in the same keywords and stuffing it and ruining the searcher's experience, they made some big changes to improving their rankings by not showing low-quality content as high.

So now when you are writing content it’s not about putting that keyword in there, naturally, it’ll be in there, other synonyms will be which Google can tell because think of them as a big dictionary and thesaurus.

So they’ll know what the article is about even if you don’t have that keyword in there.

Their main priority is to deliver high-quality content and keeping the search intent in mind, remember when someone types in a search query, it usually is a question, it’s necessarily specifically a question with a question mark.

When someone does a Google search looking for answers to whatever they typed in, and if your page does that, providing an answer with that content, you are in the good graces, if you don’t you’re not going to do well.

So don’t just shove in keywords within your content and write long pieces of an article because ”Hey, people say Google wants a two thousand word article ranked at the top”, its not about word count, it’s about providing what the users are looking for as quickly as possible.

It could be 500 words, 2000 words, 5000 words, whatever it may be, whoever does it in the easiest form for the user without shoving in keywords and creating the best experience is who is going to do well and the best in the long run.

SO HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO RANK ON GOOGLE?

Well, are you ready for this?

The answer is; it depends.

I know, it’s frustrating right, according to Forbes, the average it takes for a new site is 4-6 months to start seeing some traction and surfs.

However, because they’re so many SEO factors, there is no definitive answer, every industry is different as well. It’s easier to rank for a plumber in a localized city than it is to rank for Auto insurance naturally.

On average, based on my experience even if you are starting a new website and you are actively working on your content on-page SEO and link building, it could take roughly 6 months before you start seeing results.

It doesn’t mean in 6 months you are going to rank at the top in Google and get what you want, but it usually takes 6 months to start seeing traction. And the best way to start seeing traction faster is going after long-tail phrases that convert better than head terms.

So if you want to rank faster there are some important SEO factors that you need to know if you want to rank.

The first thing that we should look at is your site and is it;

• Secure and accessible to Google crawlers

• Using HTTPS

• Robort.txt blocking the right pages and allowing access to the right ones

• Using a site map and submitting it to the Google webmaster tool, so Google can call all your pages

• Fast in load time: if it is fast, not only is it going to boost your rankings because that’s a part of their algorithm and you use Google page speed to see how fast your website loads, but on mobile and desktop devices. It will tell you what to fix as well. But mobile speed tie and desktop speed time affect conversions as well.

The other thing you’ll need to look at is,

Is your site mobile-friendly?

Did you know that over half of the searches on Google are done by mobile-friendly devices, if your website doesn’t look nice on a mobile device like an iPhone and Android devices don’t expect them to rank high up.

The other thing you have to look at is, do you have authoritative content? If you just have me too content, it won’t cut it.

Google doesn’t want the same regulative content over and over again, they want you to create something unique that people haven’t read before.

Every time I blog on something new, we’re seeing on average 47.6% more traffic than when we blog on something that has been regurgitated and is old.

So in other words, try to blog on something new that people haven’t seen before.

I know it’s frustrating, but the world has changed and yes there still is new stuff that people are learning about, not everything has been written even though there are over a billion blogs on the web.

Another thing you need to look at is;

QUALITY BACKLINKS

Getting links from authoritative sites is one thing, but if those sites aren’t related, you’re not going to do that well. Are you creating amazing enough content to attract the right type of links, are you creating an amazing product and service to get more links.

Remember Google wants to rank pages at the top that people love. So if people love a page, they are more likely to link to it, they are more likely to share it on the social web right, they wouldn’t just say “hey I’m going to link to it but ill never share it.” They go hand in hand.

The last thing you need to look at is;

DO YOU HAVE YOUR BUSINESS INFORMATION LISTED?

Especially if you are a local business, you need to claim a Google business Profile, you need Yelp reviews, Google reviews, have a good and better Bureau page. The more reviews you can attract the better off you are.

The Big Takeaway is when you do the right things ad you go above and beyond and put the users first, you’re going to rank faster than if you just try to optimize your page for Google and not put the users first.

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If you are still in the woods and need more help in SEO, check out my other posts on SEO where I breakdown the topic in simple term.

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