Every business dipping their toe into Search Engine Marketing will always ask the same question:
“How long will it take my website to rank on top of Google?”
The most common response will obviously be “It depends”. There are far too many variables to consider such as website strength, the competition, your budget etc. Google has repeatedly stated that they use more than 255 factors in their ranking algorithm. But what factors does Google consider ranking pages?
How old are the Top-Ranking Pages?
A site that is older and trusted is much more likely to rank higher on Google than newer websites, provided other SEO factors remain equal. This doesn’t mean that a new website won’t achieve good rankings, it simply means that it would take more time.
A site is considered new when it is active for less than 6 months. After that 6-month period, you could potentially gain some major traffic.
Research done by ahrefs first identified how old the current top-ranking pages are. They used 2 million random keywords and extracted the data on the top 10 ranking pages for each of them. It showed that on average, the highest-ranking pages for those keywords were older than 850 days old (the age was calculated from the date when the Search Engine Crawlers first saw the page).
Less than 2% of pages that were ranked No. 1 were less than 1 year old. So, it is obvious that the SERP is dominated by “older” pages.
They also discovered that 5.7% of newly published pages will get to the Google Top 10 within a year.
The Panda Factor
Content fuels Googles organic traffic. Their site quality algorithms are aimed at making sure people find “high-quality” sites by reducing the rankings of low-quality content. In-fact, all the major search engines are focusing on creating the best possible experience for the user, meaning that sites that offer relevant information stand to gain the most visibility.
By hitting the ground running with original, quality content creation you effectively are increasing your chances of being in, or near the 5.7% of new pages in the top position on Google.
Social is SEO
27 million pieces of online content is shared daily. 1 in 5 social media messages include links to content and 60% of content-sharing messages specific to an industry mention a product or brand by name. 44% of B2B marketers say that the impact of social media on SEO is a massive contributing factor to SEO.
If you share regular, high-quality content and engage with your social media audience from the get-go, you’re going to see a notable increase in visitors to your site. Now this may not necessarily get you to the top of the SERPs, but you will be building that trust and authority that your site needs to do so.
So… How Long?
Honestly? It depends. Unfortunately, there is no definitive answer. While there are content driven methods that, if executed correctly, can go a long way to making your site an authority in your niche, but there’s no way of predicting when you will see a noticeable increase in the search results.
Ascensor can help you formulate a content-driven SEO plan that can have a dramatic effect on your Search Engine ranking.