One of the most common question website owners, bloggers, and digital writers ask is how long it takes for a web page to rank on Google.
There is no straightforward answer to this question.
It depends on your SEO strategy, website niche, and several other factors that Google considers when ranking a page.
We bring the opinions of top SEO specialists and case studies of successful websites to understand how long it might take for a website to rank on Google.
Experts Opinion on How Long a Website Takes to Rank on SERP?
The top SEO experts have learned through the trial-and-error method and understand the ranking factor based on their experience.
Some of the world’s top brands use expert SEO services to bring traffic and boost their ranking on Google.
Here are opinions of the world’s top SEO experts on how long does it take to rank on Google for a webpage.
1. Neil Patel on How Long it Takes to Rank?
Neil Patel is the ‘SEO guru’ helping top brands like Amazon, General Motors (GM), NBC, HP, and Viacom generate revenue through SEO traffic.
According to him, there is no proper answer because SEO depends on an ocean of non-technical and technical factors.
He recommends link building to rank your website within 3-6 months.
We often misunderstand link building as the spammy practice of black hat SEO, where people buy and sell links. However, organic, ethical, solid link building is still one of the best ways to rank your website on SERP (Search Engine Results Pages).
The one thing no one tells you about organic link building is that it takes time. It can take anywhere between 6-12 months for effective link building.
Thus, if you emphasize long-term revenue over short-term traffic, technical link building can help rank your website on the top and generate leads and conversions.
Based on his analysis of over 20,000 URLs and 20 data points: Here are the takeaways to rank your website.
A. Large websites Rank Faster Than Smaller Ones
Large websites have a DR score (Domain Rank) above 55. These sites generate twice as many links as a website with a DA score between 45-55.
B. Unique Content Has The Potential to Rank Faster
Authentic content refers to fresh content that other websites in your niche are not publishing. Even content sharing half-truths and not catering to the complete user intent does not make the cut.
C. Link Building is Stil Essential For SEO
Link building is a continuous process. You need to do it for at least three months to see some actionable results.
Build a pattern of high-quality internal and external links across your content pillars to help Google recognize your website authority.
D. Start Building Links as Quickly as Possible
You should start link-building after a month of publishing your content.
E. Try to Rank For Your Competitor Keywords And Also Related Keywords
Don’t chase a single long-tail or short-tail keyword. Instead, rank for a combination of both. It can help you generate new topics and a series of low-competition keywords which can be answered as sub-headings.
2. Evan Bailyn – The CEO of The First Page
Evan Bailyn runs the largest SEO firm in the U.S. with clients like Microsoft, the US Bank, and Salesforce.
He says it takes around 4-6 months to generate traffic and start ranking on SERP after a successful SEO campaign.
According to him, three factors contribute to ranking a website page:
A. The SEO Quality
Quality SEO includes:
- Traffic generating keyword research
- Technical SEO
- Authentic content
Try ranking for different keywords for different pages on your websites. Don’t target too competitive keywords or keywords with no competition. Find keywords suitable for your website and stick with it for a few months.
Improving your technical SEO, for example, website speed, user experience, schema markup, HTML tags, and website accessibility, affects how long it takes to rank.
Create content with analysis from experts, and provide links and data to prove the authenticity of your content. Post consistently, at least twice a week, to boost your domain rank.
B. The Trustworthiness of A Website
Google’s trustworthiness of a website determines your domain authority.
There are two ways to earn Google’s trust:
- Gaining backlinks from high domain websites
- Publishing high-quality content consistently for four months.
The average domain authority you need to appear on SERPs depends on your target industry.
For example, in B2B industries, a website with 150+ backlinks has the potential to rank higher for most of the keywords it’s targeting.
Similarly, websites that publish content regularly, at least twice a week for 18 months, can rank as high as a website with 150+ backlinks to its website.
C. The Competitiveness of The Website Niche
How long it takes to rank can differ for various industries.
A highly competitive niche like travel, college education, or loans can take as long as 12-18 months to appear on SERP, whereas an average-level competitive niche like medicine or B2B SaaS can generate a ranking within 4-5 months.
3. Josh Steimle – The Founder of MWI- A Marketing Agency, And a Forbes Writer
Josh Steimle helps entrepreneurs and CMOs (Chief marketing officers) in lead generation and conversion.
He believes ‘’how long does it take to rank’’ is a tricky question, considering Google’s frequent tweaks to their ranking algorithms and SEO’s rapidly developing demands.
SEO is changing quickly, as Google frequently rolls out new content updates, and the audience’s search behavior changes with time.
There is a concept of old vs. new SEO. Earlier, you could target a few keywords and generate results because there was less competition.
Today, SEO is driven by natural language and drifting towards a zero-click search.
Hence, website owners should ask how long it takes for SEO to generate leads and sales.
Many factors determine how quickly you rank, but if you apply the right SEO strategies, target correct keywords, and create quality inbound links, you can start owning your rank and conversions in about six months.
According to Josh, here is how you can rank and generate leads in six months.
- Month 1: Conduct a website audit and start keyword planning and content generation.
- Month 2: Ace your technical SEO.
- Month 3: Generate content consistently as articles, blogs, FAQs, white papers, surveys, etc. You will notice an increase in traffic to your website.
- Month 4: Continue content creation and SEO along with quality backlinks. You can expect an increase in traffic and leads.
- Month 5: Incorporate your social media account and focus on marketing your blog.
- Month 6: If you can bring around 5000 visitors a month, your website will continue to grow.
SEO results grow over time, and you can expect revenue and top ranking anywhere between 6-12 months.
4. Erica Varagouli at SEM Rush
Erica is an SEO specialist and head of the brand at SEM rush, one of the world’s most popular marketing services and platforms.
According to her, a website takes around four months to one year to show potential ranking on SERP.
She believes that the three factors affecting your ranking are:
A. Website History
A new domain can show SEO results in 9-12 months, whereas you may need only six months to rank an existing domain.
B. Competition
Targeting low-volume keywords can boost your ranking faster than high-volume keywords.
If your competition at the top of SERP ranks for high-volume keywords, you can try ranking for a keyword variation of the original keyword to improve your SEO results.
Use the keyword gap tool to identify missing keywords in your niche and create content that ranks for them.
C. Resources
You cannot control your website ranking, but you can invest in resources that can boost your ranking.
Create a competitor analysis using a keyword tool like Ubersuggest and understand how your competition ranks better.
Two metrics define successfully ranking on SERP:
- Goals: The outcome you want to achieve by improving your ranking.
- KPI (Key Performance Indicator): KPIs show the growth of your site in terms of organic traffic, impressions, visibility, and rankings.
5. Brian Dean – The Founder of Backlinko
Brian is one of the most successful SEO experts in the world, and he analyzed more than 11 million Google search results to conclude what matters in ranking.
According to him, the overall domain rating (DR) of websites strongly relates to their ranking on SERP.
- In-depth content outperforms superficial or incomplete content.
- Pages with backlinks from multiple websites can increase website ranking.
- Websites with an above-average engagement rate rank higher than those with a higher bounce rate.
Backlinks are one of the essential SEO metrics, and if you can generate at least 100 backlinks in the first six months, your chance of ranking on SERP increases.
Further, comprehensive content with proper H1 and H2 tags is seen as valuable content for the reader.
Therefore, quality backlinks, content development, and technical SEO practices can drive organic growth to your website in the first six months.
Case Studies of Successful Websites & How They Rank on Google?
Websites can quickly scale their rankings if they offer something unique, crack the backlink strategy and provide content that adds value to the SERP and reader.
Here are the case studies of some popular websites and how they landed on top of the SERP.
1. HubSpot – Ranking on Top For More Than 30,000 Keywords
HubSpot is one of the top CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools for sales and marketing.
The HubSpot blog is one of the most popular blogs on the web with a DR of 83 and generates 100% organic traffic.
Here’s how they do it:
A. Focus on Topics, Not Keywords
HubSpot understood how search engines process a result. Google algorithms are getting smarter, and you cannot rely alone on keywords for ranking.
Today, if you search ‘Jack Dawson,’ the first search on your screen is the movie ‘Titanic’.
This shows how Google comprehends a query. A user does not need exact keywords to find the data they are looking for. A related term can display the desired results.
HubSpot focuses on a topic, searches for related keywords, and generates comprehensive content that satisfies the search engine and the user. Most often, the inclusion of topical lingo helps in covering valuable and relevant keyword variations.
B. Write For Featured Snippets
Google and other search engines are showing snippets that answer a user query without clicking on a link.
The snippet does not always appear from the top results on SERP results, Google selects a snippet based on the question a user asks, and it can be from the top five results.
HubSpot is writing for the snippet and targeting exact user questions in its posts to appear on SERP.
2. Case Study of Two million Keywords By Ahrefs
The SEO software suite, Ahrefs, analyzed around two million keywords and the top 10 ranking pages to understand how long does it take to rank.
The study shows that more than half of the top-ranking pages are at least two years old and only 22% are a year old.
Altogether, 95% of pages on the SERP take at least a year or more to rank on SERP, and only 5% of them rank within a year.
The study concludes that we can rank for the low-volume keywords within 4-6 months, whereas high-volume keywords can take 12-36 months to rank on SERP.
3. The Guestographic Case Study of Here Pup
Here Pup is a dog blog started by Perrin Carrel.
When Perrin bought a dog and searched for the best dog food, he did not find any authentic content that guided his buying decisions, leading to Here Pup’s start.
Here Pup is a dog blog for dog owners, but a handful of websites already dominated blogs about dogs.
However, Perrin used the Guestographic method to boost his traffic by 900% in just seven weeks.
Guestographic, as the name suggests, is asking high-ranking websites to use your infographic on their site to increase the visual appeal of their content.
Now, many top-ranking websites have comprehensive content without infographics, and this is leverage for new websites.
Infographics can make content consumption easy for the reader and decrease the website’s bounce rate.
Perrin started cold pitching websites ranking higher in the dog niche to use his infographic about dog health on their website.
Along with the infographic, websites will also insert your blog link to mention the source, which can generate backlinks.
Here Pup was on SERPs within 4-5 months of its creation with the help of Guestographic strategy.
The case study proves we can rank a webpage as long as we have valuable content and an SEO marketing strategy.
Verdict
There is no definite answer for how long does it takes to rank on Google’s search result pages. It can take six to nine months or even two years to rank on SERP.
Google wants to deliver authentic content for the 4.3 billion Google users worldwide, and the Google algorithm is always on the run to crawl, index, and find high-authority websites for its users.
Website owners or those who want to rank their page need to understand the algorithm and their SEO strategy and bring unique content that can provide value to their audience and stay consistent for a year to rank on SERP.
SEO and ranking are long-term gains if you want to use the internet to scale your business.
