How Long Does it Take to Rank Well in the Search Engines?
Updated: April 2012.
I often get asked the question “How long does it take to rank well in the search engines?” Unfortunately his is one of these questions with the answer “it depends“!
There are so many factors that are taken into account by search engines when they rank other websites including:
- On page optimization – in particular the TITLE tag and the keywords throughout the body of the page
- How many backlinks are pointing to the site
- The quality of the backlinks pointing to the site
- The keywords contained within the anchor text of your backlinks
- The age of your domain
These are just a few of the factors, but it gives you an idea of why this question is not so easy to answer.
Regardless of this, before you embark on an SEO campaign it makes sense for you to have in mind a timescale. Like all goals, it is good to be specific about the results that you want to achieve and the time frame that you want to achieve them in. For example “I want to be in the top 3 sites in Google for keyword phrase xyz and abc withn 4 months”.
Before you set yourself a goal, you need to make sure it is realistic. The best way to do this in my opinion is to check out your competition. You’ll probably already have a couple of keyword phrases in mind, so you need to take each keyword individually and do the following:
1) Go to Google and enter your keyword in the search box without quotes
2) You’ll see a number of website pages returned in the results. Don’t freak out if this number is high – although it is typical for more competitive terms to have a higher number of pages returned in the results, you are only really competing with the sites that are on the first page. If you can beat them, you are at the top.
3) Take a note of the domain names of the top 4 websites and use a backlink checking tool to see how many backlinks they have.
4) Compare the number of backlinks that these sites have with the number of backlinks that your own site has. This will give you a rough indication of how long it is likely to take you to beat your competition. For example if your site has 300 backlinks and the number one site has 2000 backlinks, you need to work out roughly how long it will take you to exceed 2000 backlinks. Bear in mind that this is a rough indication only as the quality of the backlinks also plays a large factor in ranking.
5) Take a closer look at the sites you are competing with. If you are trying to rank your home page and you are competing against a site that has a sub page or blog page ranked, it should be easier to beat them. If the site you are competing with does not have the keywords in the TITLE tag or mentioned throughout the page it may also be easier to beat them.
Although there is not an exact scientific answer for the question how long does it take to rank well in the search engines, hopfully these steps will help to give you an idea of the length of time it takes.
You may have to repeat this process a few times until you find a keyword that allows you to acheive a good ranking in as short a time as possible.
You can find more tips like this in my EBook – 3 Steps to Search Engine Success.
Incoming search terms:- how long does it take backlikes
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Hello Suzanne,
Thank you for an excellent article on how to rank well in the search engines. Your advice on all matters relating to SEO is a valuable resource to anyone looking to increase their site presence on the Internet.
As a result of applying your methods, my first site has been on Google page 1 for several months for best home business ideas and I will using them again for my new site because I know from results that they work.
regards,
Mal Tindle
Work From Home Gems
Hello Suzanne,
I read your blog articles all the time, are so valuable and practical, You make thinks more simple to me all the time.
I really liked this one about Seo, It really made me understand a lot more what I need to do.
As always thank you for your constructive help and support.
Cheers from Peru!
Fanny Rodriguez
hi Suzanne,
what a great article
thanks a lot
again I see my problem: poor backlinks
I have to work to obtain lots of backlinks
this is the most important activity for me and my site
to your success
Behrooz,
The most difficult part for most website owners is they expect results to quickly. Seo takes time and you need to allow you website to mature.
Keep building content and backlinks and do it consistently and you will see results. Be prepared to sometimes wait 6-12 months for your efforts to start to show, especially in competitive markets.
Hi Suzanne.
Well said. There is no easy answer for you to give. The bit I find hard is choosing the best keywords as often it is hard to understand the criteria for choosing one, especially when you get conflicting information. I haven’t found many good resources on choosing keywords apart from your book I purchased and another from a different author which told me something a bit different. He said that you have to do a keyword search in quotation marks to know your competition. However I still don’t fully know if I am targeting the right words. I think I am but it seems to take a while. I struggle in getting good backlinks as I find i hard to find lots of active article directories to submit to and get backlinks. Other than that I try to comment in 1 or 2 forums and on blogs. I don’t know how many backlinks I should be aiming for daily. It is a good tip that you have given to check out the backlinks for the top 3 results. I am not sure if that backlink tool is accurate though.
Hi Chris,
Doing a keyword search in Google with quotes around it will tell you the number of pages that have that exact keyword phrase on it. However, to check out your real competition you need to search without quotes (this is because users of search engines usually do not use quotes). Once you’ve done this, you’ll see the exact websites on page one that you need to beat!
The backlink checker tool is not going to be 100% accurate as it only shows that backlinks that the search engines publicly display. BUT, this will give you a very good indication of backlinks and will help you to understand roughly how many links you need to get to page one.
There are lots of great ways to build links including forum marketing, article marketing, press relase submission, directory submission, blog commenting, profile creation, link swapping, social bookmarking and more, so if you can build a variety of links from different sources (at a faster rate than your competitor) you should be able to increase your ranking.
Cheers
Suzanne
Thanks for the helpful reply Suzanne. You have clarified something for me re the quotation marks for searches. I think your answer has helped me a bit and I will use it. I am not sure how to go about directory submission and which ones are free and good to use but I will give it a try.
I have website and blogs(sub-domain) in same domain. But according to my experience, my main site is getting indexed immediately, but my blogs is not getting indexed as soon as my site. However I am regularly updating my blogs with new contents, but still it take long time to get indexed in google. I think google gives more priority to main site than that of subdomain. If I am wrong please correct me.
Hi Biren,
I always go for a sub directory rather than a sub domain as sub domains are almost viewed like completely different sites by Google and other search engines.
You probably need to build some more links to that sub domain to get it to index faster and get ranked. Also, be sure to link from your domain to your sub domain as well to pass on some link juice.
Cheers,
Suzanne
Hello Suzanne,
Another great article of yours. I like your articles because they are not only helpful but easy and clear to understand. I have followed your advice in your 3 Steps to Search Engine Success and I am currently on Page 12 in Google with my keyword phrase Extra Income Ideas and about 1100 backlinks. So more work is required. I have been on page 1 with this keyword phrase but only for a couple of days and slowly moved back to page 12. Don’t know why.
Take care,
Martin