When attempting to hire an SEO internet marketing company, the number one question a lot of folks have is “How long will it take me to rank on the first page of Google?”. The truth of the matter is that it is difficult to give an exact answer. There are numerous amounts of factors that play into how long it will take a website or webpage to rank in Google. Without further ado let’s jump into those factors to better understand how long it can take to rank in Google.
Strength of Current Website
One of the most basic factors relating to how quickly one can climb Google rankings is how well optimized their site is from an SEO standpoint. The thought here is simple, the stronger your site is initially, the higher you already rank, which in turn lessens the amount of work required to jump to the top of rankings. Correspondingly, if your website is not strong one of the first courses of actions to take is to fix the technical aspect of your website.
The size of your current website can also play a rather large role in determining how long it takes to rank. Generally speaking, the larger your website the better it will rank, as there is more backlinking opportunities as well as more content that google might deem important to its users.
Speaking of backlinks, these are essential to ranking a website. A site with no backlinks will take a lot longer to rank than a site with hundreds of backlinks pointing back to it.
Assessing Competition
Competitors play a major role in determining Google rankings. You’ll mostly want to observe competition to seek out advantages. Maybe there is something that your competitor is doing that you are not, causing you to miss out on climbing the rankings. Conversely, it’s possible that you notice that your competitor is neglecting a ranking factor that you are hammering home, and therefore you’d want to continue what you are doing moving forward.
The Importance of Relevant Content
Content is key when trying to rank for certain keywords. Much like what we discussed in the paragraph above, it’s a good idea to look around to see what content is ranking well for particular keywords. This can help you determine the optimal length your content should be as well.
Review Competitor’s Website Strength
Another way to seek out competitive advantages is to review your competitiors’ websites for certain keywords and exploit the weaker ones. If you find that your competition has sub-standard websites for a particular keyword then focus your efforts there, as it should be easier and quicker to rank. This is especially relevant for companies or websites that have local affiliation, as there is a higher likelihood that smaller, less-developed websites are targeting local keywords.
Overall Budget
Perhaps the single most important factor in determining the amount of time it takes to rank in Google is how much people are willing to spend on their budget. After all, your budget controls the number of resources that can be poured into helping you rank faster. For example, if you have an established website that ranks fairly for your industry but are looking for something to push you over the top, then you could focus your budget on content creation in order to add some extra juice to the site. Correspondingly, if a site is poorly built it will take a bigger chunk out of the budget to redesign the site, therefore taking budget money away from other essential ranking factors such as content creation, time spent on social media, and outreach/backlinks.
Dispersion of Links
The way in which you decide to spread out your links across your website will play a major role in determining where you will rank. If you hyperfocus your links to one singular page then that page should in theory rank well. However the down side to such a strategy is that you are sacrificing your other pages that will therefore lack links to prop up the one page you selected. While this may not be a great way to attain a well-balanced website, linking to one page that is tied to a specific keyword is a fantastic way to rank higher for that target.