How Long Does It Take to Rank a Website on Google?

My clients, either eCommerce website owners or service providers, or bloggers who call me for SEO help, Local SEO seekers or National SEO clients, have the same question in their mind, How long does it take to hit one of the top positions in Google and how to achieve this? What is the formula to Rank a Website on Google in a short span of time?

If you need a simple answer, I can say that it will start ranking within 3-4 months. Or if you need a broad answer to the above questions, I may say that it depends on the Keyword Research, Keyword Competition Level, Content you publish, Popularity of the Keywords, Page Rank, Engagement of the users, Website Design, Domain Authority, Page Authority, Link Building, Bounce Rate, Page Speed, Your Competitors…. Blah Blah Blah…

But in certain cases, it will happen without putting much effort. Here is an example of my friend Mr. Varun, a professional blogger, founder & editor of ByteKid. He writes about the Latest Tech Tips.

His blog was in 87th position (9th page) of Google when he approached me for SEO. Since he was not a client, I just did some basic optimization and guided him to do further. Now after three months, he is on 6th position (1st page of Google). No major OffPage SEO tactics we used at all except social media sharing.

By seeing this example, we should think that there isn’t any magic formula available to rank a website in Google. In addition to that, there isn’t anyone who can tell you the exact period in which website can enter on the first page or the top position of the Google’s search engine result page. However, from our experience and based on the research that we carried out, we have found that some important factors play a vital role in the whole ranking process. We hope that the information provided in this article might help you in your endeavor of rank a website in Google. Google has admitted that they use more than 250 factors in their algorithm for ranking different websites as per the keywords employed by the user. However, the most important factors that play an important role to rank a website in Google search page includes:

15 Major Factors to Rank A Website on Google Soon

Most Important Tip to Rank Your Web pages in Short Span of Time

I don’t know how many people are aware of this point. But I must share. Remember, you cannot rank your website just by optimizing your web pages. More than optimization, Google will give more preference to “Trust”. Trust will be calculated on the basis of User Engagement. And the User Engagement will be calculated in terms of how many people are visiting the specific page and the average time spending on the respective web page. Do Branding. Use paid platforms to drive more and more users. Your user engagement will happen. But remember, before doing branding efforts, make sure that your web pages/website must be rich with relevant content and greater user interfaces such as Page Load Time and Mobile Page Optimization.

1.Domain’s Age

If all the other factors are same, then the website that is old and is trusted by a huge number of people as compared to the new one will be ranked higher in the Google’s search result. You shouldn’t be disheartened as the above statement doesn’t mean that the newer website will never achieve good rank, the only issue here is time. It will take some time to surpass the older domain or website.

You should know that most of the search engines categorize sites that have been active for less than six months as a new domain. However, after the six months period, this status changes and you will start getting good traffic on your website from the search engine.

2.Clean Domain

This is one of the most important factors as it can either work in your favor or it can completely ruin all your efforts to rank a website in Google.

Before wasting your time and effort on ranking improvement task, you should consider checking if your domain is clean or not. Finding out whether a domain is clean or not isn’t a thing that most of the people know. There are two possible ways by which you can know whether your domain is clean or not.

First of all open Google webmaster tools and log in. Go to the dashboard and Click “Search Traffic” and click on “Manual Actions” which you can locate in the Search Traffic menu. In case if you find a message that says “No manual webspam found” then it means that your website is clean and free from any manual penalties.

In addition to manual penalties, you must also check if there are any algorithm penalties imposed on your website or not. You will have to log in to Google Analytics and read the traffic sources report. You will have to choose Google as the traffic source and after that will need to set the date range. Try to find if there is any drastic change in traffic and if there are then try to compare the dates on which these changes occurred with the help of Google algorithm change history. In case if you find any that there was a connection in the date when Google rolled out changes and the dates when your traffic dropped then you can know for sure that your site was penalized by Google. Based on the type of change you can plan your recovery strategy and start working on it.

As mentioned above if your domain isn’t clean then you shouldn’t attempt to improve its ranking as Google won’t let you do it because of the imposed penalties. The best course of action in such situation will be switching to a new domain.

3.High Competition for Keywords

Almost all the sites use SEO strategies to improve the ranking of their websites, and this is the reason because of which it is of utmost importance to be selective for the keywords that you choose. Unless and until you have a trusted and older domain you won’t be able to use the popular keywords in your favor as the chances of using popular keywords for improving your site’s ranking on Google will be very less and will not yield expected result.

The best way to use keywords is to target the keywords that are in a way low competition keywords after improving your ranking and gaining the trust of users using popular keywords can do the trick.

You may use SEOQuake and install to chrome for identifying the competition level of each keyword. It’s absolutely free! Anything below 40% is good for newbies.

4.Type of Content

Type of content that you use can also affect the time required to rank a website in Google. Breaking latest and sizzling news is a way by which you can improve the ranking of your website, but using normal contents which aren’t news won’t do the same magic for you.

The more unique and hot the topic will be the better chances of that post appearing on the top position.

5.Selection of Right Title

SEO optimized titles are way more important than you might think it to be. Know this fact that SEO optimized titles will rank faster as compared to a non-optimized title. Even if your content is of great quality, the posy or the article will not rank in the top position unless you use SEO optimized title. It is important to include keywords in the title itself as it will increase your chances of getting on the search engine result’s first page.

6.Content’s Length

Most of the people don’t agree with this, but content’s length is also an important ranking factor. We have learned about that the hard way and this is the reason we know about it. Lengthy and relative articles will have more information thus people will prefer reading such articles.

I suggest you write minimum 800+ words content but it must be informative.

7.Quality of Content and Number of Posts

The quality of content and the number of posts on a website are also a crucial factor that one shouldn’t ignore. Regular posting high-quality contents can help you improve your site’s ranking.

I suggest publishing at least 3-4 articles in a week if you are a newbie.

8.Original Content

There is no need to explain this but posting original content is of great importance. Just think why would anyone visit your site and read your content on a less popular website when they can get the same information in popular and well-trusted sites.

9.Search Engine Optimization is Important

SEO optimization is one of the most valuable tools which can help you improve your website’s ranking. Correctly devised SEO campaign can minimize the time required for achieving good ranking on Google.

Read more on;

On-Page & Off-Page SEO – A Complete Guide for Beginners

10.External Reference Links

A page with a large number of natural links can improve the ranking of the website on the search engine result page faster.

11.Frequency of Publishing New Contents

By maintaining a good frequency of publishing new contents you will be able to make your website visible to popular search engines which in turn will help you improve your site’s ranking.

12.Be Patient

If you have a desire to succeed in the highly competitive online world then being patient is an important characteristic that you will need to poses.

Giving all hopes and dropping your SEO campaign in the middle because of slower or no improvement in ranking will not be a good idea. Know this fact that ranking your website in Google will require time and patience.

Read more on 6 Reason Why Your SEO Fail & How to Solve It

13.Find a Reliable SEO Agency

It is better to leave the task of Search engine optimization to the professionals. Finding and outsourcing the task of search engine optimization to a good and reliable SEO firm can help you reduce the time required to rank your website in Google.

14.Use Social Media

Social media nowadays are considered to be the biggest and the best platform to reach out to a larger group of people. You can use Social media as a tool for gaining more exposure and for improving your visibility online.

15.Forget about Google after initiating Your SEO campaign

Checking search engine page for your sites ranking every hour won’t do any good for you. Consider using the time and energy to create better contents.

Final conclusion

It requires time to gain good ranking on Google. If you have started a new site, then you will have to wait for 3-4 months minimum for seeing any improvement. After 6 to 7 months you will start getting good traffic from Google and an improvement in your site’s ranking. Never give up in the very first month, be patient and keep working.