How long does it take to achieve targeted rankings in Google? That’s probably the most popular SEO question. And to an exoerienced SEO it may seem naive: really, is any other answer except "it depends" possible here?
Well, generally, there are plenty of "it depends"-type of answers but some common consistent patterns can be singled out:
So, how long would you give a new site to rank? There is a really good thread at WebmasterWorld forums discussing exactly that topic. Usually the scenario is as follows:
- There is a short period of early high rankings (it’s like a testing period);
- Most websites do not pass the test and the high rankings drop in about 2 weeks;
- After that come from 6 to 18 months of low rankings before the site really starts to get solid search referrals.
So is it usually so? Let’s discuss:
Great article; I hope lots of people vote. My vote is that you can never tell, it’s always different from site to site. A lot is going to depend on the competitiveness of the industry or keyword phrase that they’re aiming for. Wanting to be found for “japanese candlestick charting techniques” is going to be much easier than “search engine optimization”.
6 days… check the one youmoz post that got approved.. LOL
from purchase of domain to ranking..
Great article, I agree with Kandi, you can never tell. The question is how do you explain this to your customers?
The numbers seem to be all over the place now. Need some more votes. And Janette brings up a very good point.
good article, i woted, and it is interesting to see the votes from other webmasters
6 to 18 months? For most keywords no more than 6 to 9 months. If the keyword is extremely competitive maybe 18 months but try and tell that to a customer :)
Right way to know the different people & webmasters opinion regarding ranking of a new website. Thanks for the post and for the poll.
One other factor to take into consideration is the domain name itself. New sites that are using a domain that was purchased many years ago but never had a website attached tend to rank faster than new sites with a new domain.
my option is no way to tell. I am sure that it depends up on site optimization, keyword density and other things…
Great article. I believe it takes up to 6 months to start seeing results. The only problem is explaining this to clients that are both SEO novices and impatient.
I tend to lean more towards the “no way to tell” angle…mainly because it depends on how dug in the competition is.
I didn’t really like your choices (there are SO MANY possible variations) but I went with 3 to 8 months. As you note, it really does depend on a lot of factors.
@Michael, agreed, there are TOO many possible variations, I tried to limit them to make the poll more usable. I did include “None of the above” to see how bad my choices were :)
Based on my experience, there is no exact amount of time to rank a website. It depends on the competitiveness of the keywords and on site SEO.
But Google used to change the SEO algorithm frequently. There is one thing I know to success in serps is.. be patient.
i’ve found about 2 weeks, i am working mostly with low competition categories. I have found the rankings drop only in one case.
Great article, my vote is with you..
It will depend.
I have 2 different blogs, that are totally different niche. One started on the Jan 09, the other started on Apr 09, but the later one, now has a page rank of 2, whereas the former is still 0, and its getting a lot of traffic everyday.
It will depend on what your niche is, and how tight your blog or website is.
depends on what u mean by rank as well… i have had sites based on 1 keyword with little comp rank in under a month…. granted i bought an aged domain…used a good linking strategy… and know how to hide footprint… i know there are people here saying bs.. but if u really dont belive me tim from take over page one ranked a site to pr4 in under a month…. they have full video but im not posting site because i dont work for them just siting it can be done…
i do also want to say it does depend on your phrase vs broad match, total comp, how many links, are they optimized, can you out optimize them, are they in yahoo directory? there are many things they could be doing wrong that you could blow them out of the water if u just do research :) gl