That’s the average calculated in a study of 2 million websites by Ahrefs .
However, in our experience we have found that, with good SEO knowledge, it can be achieved in as little as a week.
Answer the famous questions “How long will it take to see results from my SEO campaign? ” or “ When will I rank higher in Google?” It is not as simple as we would like.
There are websites that take more than six months, others reach the first page in less than a week and there is a less fortunate group that, having been in the market for years, never reaches it (possibly due to lack of knowledge in the matter).
The truth is that there is no magic formula that allows us to be in that desired position in a given time, due to 3 main reasons:
- Hundreds of positioning factors come together :
It is estimated that there are about 200 and specifying if you have each one of them optimized for each page is an almost impossible task. The best thing you can do is apply an SEO strategy in the hands of professionals and be patient.
2. Google’s algorithm is secret:
Even when all our factors are optimized, we cannot calculate the score that Google will assign us and we cannot know the score that websites with which we compete have.
3. We do not know the SEO efforts of the rival:
The Internet is a vast and dynamic place. Every day 500 thousand new sites are created. Depending on the industry, there will be more or less competition doing SEO. Therefore, the leaderboard is always in motion.
Despite the above, we have certain statistical measurements that can tell us approximately how long it takes for a website to position itself in Google.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at that data, look at the most important factors to consider in moving up the ranks quickly, and evaluate a couple of case studies.
Let’s go there!
How long does SEO take to work? Upload and rank in Google
Ahrefs , a leading company in the SEO industry, tracked two million new sites that had never been analyzed by the company (this with the aim of not infecting or skewing the data).
Subsequently, they analyzed the performance of these web portals in Google throughout their first year.
What were the conclusions?
- Only 5.7% of the sites (114,000) reached the first page of results in the initial twelve months.
- 19.5% remained between 11th and 100th place.
- The remaining 74.8% did not make the top 100 for any keywords .
How long did it take for that 5.7% to reach the first page of Google?
The small group that managed to reach the top 10 results did so in approximately 61-182 days (2-6 months).
Now, these rankings were reached for keywords with low search volumes (less than 1,000 monthly).
The majority of this select group (68.4%) took between 305 and 365 days (1 year) to rank for keywords with high search volumes .
With these results we can observe two very important things:
1) No matter the search volume or the competition, achieving rankings for any keyword is hard work.
It almost necessarily requires knowledge about SEO.
It is true that the quality of the content prevails, but a poorly optimized text hardly reaches the first page of Google.
2) If you want to get into the top 10 fast you should attack keywords with low search volumes.
Most of the websites that were positioned between 2 and 6 months did so with terms that were not frequently consulted on Google .
If you are desperate to sell, you can make a strategy that focuses on those keywords , as long as they have a high commercial intent .
We are just a click away. Contact us and we will tell you how we can help your business grow.
Variables that determine how long it takes to position a website
1. Competition
Some keywords are more complicated than others. It all depends on your search volume. If you try to position very general words such as “marketing” or “clothes sale” you will have a hard time, because being such common queries, there are already very consolidated pages in the top positions.
This is why the popular long tail strategy is used , which we will see with an example.
The newer you are in the market, the better and fresher your content will have to be and the more authority you will have to accumulate in Google. It is normal that if your website was launched a short time ago, it takes time to reach the first page.
Example:
In Spain and according to Ubersuggest , the SEO keyword has:
- 27,100 monthly searches.
- Difficulty of 56/100.
- Cost of €1.98 per click if you want to advertise with that term.
On the other hand, the average website that appears on the first page of Google with that keyword has a domain authority of 64/100.
What does this mean?
Appearing on the first page of Google for the word SEO is complex.
What do you do in such cases? Lengthen the tail .
Since SEO was an almost impossible query for us , we went for a more specific query.
Just by adding the term “agency”, the search volume is already lower, the SEO difficulty decreases and the cost per click is cheaper:
The idea is that you test your product or service and identify those opportunities where it would take you less time to reach the first page of Google.
2. Market: Local or international?
Clearly it will be easier to compete only against your municipality than against an entire state or against an entire country.
If you are a local business, focus on dominating searches related to your area.
In other words, if you have a bicycle sale in Madrid, an excellent keyword to consider to position yourself would be, precisely, “bicycle sale in Madrid”.
If there is still too much competition at that level, you can make the query even more specific.
Why?
Because, first, the competition will be less.
Second, people who are looking for your product or service in your area are probably interested in buying there, which implies a very important commercial intention.
After dominating that market, you can grow little by little. Ideally, your position in Google grows at the same speed as your business expands.
3. Amount of content you produce
Google is becoming a place where the initial search is just the beginning to answer all the questions that exist about a topic.
Therefore, your content must be robust enough to leave your users satisfied.
In addition, you must be constant with the publication of these texts.
They are the ones that will allow you to cover more key topics, reach more people, increase your authority within the industry and increase the speed with which you climb positions.
How to upload positions in Google? The importance of link building
For Neil Patel , the game of ranking on the first page of Google has a clear name: backlinks .
This authoritative voice in the industry considers it vital that your SEO strategy includes a link building campaign .
This technique is one of the most powerful because, by getting several pages to link to your site, you are telling Google the following: competitors and/or users in the industry endorse the quality of the published content .
By having that support, you will climb positions in the ranking.
Now, what has been the big problem with link building “strategies”?
That have been lent to incur in improper practices when trying to get links.
Buying links, websites with suspicious origins and pages full of spam are some of the prohibited techniques in the SEO industry.
However, these practices have been used by many people to trick the search engine and increase the authority of their domains and pages.
For all of the above, Google announced on September 10, 2019 new features that users can implement every time they link to another website.
These three attributes are:
1.- rel = “sponsored” : it is used to identify links that were acquired via sponsorships, advertising or another form of compensation.
2.- rel = “ugc”: these acronyms mean, in English, U ser G enerated C ontent (content generated by users). This attribute, therefore, works for all those links that are published in blog comments or posts made in forums.
3.- rel = “nofollow” : It tells search engines that you do not want to grant authority to that link. It’s like saying to Google: ‘I’m going to put this here, but don’t take it into account’.
Now, why should you focus so much on links to rank up when you can buy them and put rel=”sponsored” on them?
The answer is that we don’t yet know what weight Google will give each attribute and how this may affect your overall rankings.
Therefore, the recommendation is that you get your links in the most organic way possible.
Case studies: How long does it take for Google to position a website?
First page of Google in 5 days
Let’s look at the case of ” Top 3 power tool brands in the world (2021) “, one of the articles we wrote in the content marketing stage for one of our clients: Promaker Tools.
We needed to position this article on the first page of Google as soon as possible to drive traffic to their website.
We did?
An investigation of keywords, an analysis of the results page, an evaluation of the competition and, finally, a good article that resolved the user’s search in a clear and well-founded way (in this case: the best tool brands in the world). world).
What was the results?
Performance – Top 3 Power Tool Brands in the World
As can be seen in the image, the article reached position number 7 (first page) in just 5 days.
To date, the article has generated more than 10,000 clicks and 150,000 impressions, and they remain on the first page.
Pencil case success
Something similar happened with the article on our site How much does it cost to position your website in Google? SEO prices and fees .
It was published on January 18, and by February 16 it had already reached the first page, as seen below.
How much does it cost to position your website on Google? – First page on Google
How do we achieve this?
- We are not only left with the main question and we clear as many questions as possible about the subject:
- SEO prices per hour.
- Monthly SEO prices.
- Differences between agencies and freelancers .
- Prices by region.
2. All the answers we gave in our article are based on research from the most authoritative voices in the SEO industry, such as Rand Fishkin and Ahrefs . 3. We provide a good user experience for easy reading: images, lists, charts. 4. We gave our own vision of the subject: SEO as an investment and not as an expense . Therefore, it was not a simple compilation and translation of the investigations. There are analyses, conclusions and an example of a real SEO budget .
Performance – How much does it cost to position your website in Google?
As of today, the article has reported 15,700 clicks and 827,000 impressions.
If you notice that the average position is high, it is because the page is competing for around 500 keywords.
However, for the queries we are interested in, we have the top positions:
Queries – How much does it cost to position your website in Google?
When we published this piece we still did not have backlinks , one of the priority weapons to rank according to Neil Patel, and our domain authority was 3 out of 100.
Likewise, against all odds, in less than a month we appeared on the first page of Google .
Current Rankings – Pencil Speech
How are we currently? (March 2021)
Keywords on the first page of Google – Pencil Speech
According to the free Moz Domain Analysis tool , Pencil Speech’s website has 43 keywords on the first page of Google. In addition to around 150 other keywords between positions 11 and 50.
Conclusion: How long does it take to position a website?
You can see some improvements in two months and climb to the first page of results in less than a year.
Climbing the ranks is possible if you are willing to become the best teacher in your industry.
It seems ironic, but the more you forget about Google and focus on your users, the more easily you will reach that coveted place.
Study your consumer, find out what they are looking for and have fun answering and solving their problems.
