How Long Does It Take to Rank in Google?

How much time does it take to rank in Google, and how long do you have to wait before you hit one of the top positions?

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107 Comments

  1. Lukas says

    Great article! Full of useful information, as usual.
    I have one question related to content publishing frequency. I have a blog for my ecommerce store. You mentioned that if I publish content 2-3 times a week, it will be indexed by Google immediatelly. Does it mean that I can get ranked well ( low competition keywords ) in lets say two months without any external links? I will only promote it on Twitter and Facebook.

    • Alex says

      Lukas Hi

      Thank you for your nice comments.

      As mentioned in the article, indexing does not mean ranking but all it means is that Google and other search engines will take into account your pages. In order to rank well you need to take other factors into account as well.

      I understand your question, I suggest you also read this – https://www.reliablesoft.net/5-on-page-seo-techniques-thatll-boost-your-rankings-checklist-included/ and I would add the following:

      Twitter and facebook are external links too (maybe they are nofollow but they are still links). What you mean is that you are not going to build any artificial links – and that’s a good choice and keep it that way. Instead try to spread the word about your blog and ecommerce shop using social media without forgetting Google+ as well.

      Hope this helps a bit
      Alex

      • Faith Biete says

        Sir, you have the coolest blog so far. This is my first time but I am already loving it. I am following what you are saying. I have a three months old blog and so far I one of my posts has been in google page no 2 for 1 month 🙂

  2. Rimi says

    I agree with you that patience is one the most important characteristics you need to have if you want to succeed online. Otherwise you should not go for online business. Because you can not get huge traffic within short time frame.

    • Jean Aroldi says

      Patience, you’re right, it’s all about that!

      I still doesn’t have a lot of traffic from Google and I publish almost daily!

      It’s kinda frustrating sometime, but we hope it will pay soon!

  3. Dean says

    i started my website a month ago. i have not been getting huge traffic as i thought my articles are not enticing, but they actually are. my site is a technology site. After stumbling upon this page, i have gotten some good tips. seeing that my website has not been penalized using the two options above gave me some relief and at least a way to check whether Google has penalized me.
    all in all, just want to say thank you… and keep helping out guys who are just starting out, like me…
    thanks, this is an amazing article…

  4. terrycody says

    thanks Alex, learned many thing, i just start my first site journey, it’s a dating related, wish i can get some serious traffic later 🙂

  5. Leonardo says

    Hi Alex,

    Thanks for the great post ! It will do good to newbies. I think your best advice in this article is : Patience……

    The second best advice :

    Start with long tail keywords in a competitive niche and slowly build up to gain more authority. Later, when you have ‘enough’ content, start with keywords that have more traffic.

    My experience is also : It will take longer and longer for Google to rank your website or post. Just imagine : Google has to deal with MILLIONS of new websites / webpages…..it just takes time to sort those all out….

  6. Naveen Kulkarni says

    Alex,
    Excellent guide. I think patience is virtual and this has it becomes even more relevant when it comes to SEO.

  7. Mantis says

    Hi Alex, thanks for the great tips! Just one question:

    Would it help to rank my website’s original content better if I remove non-original content URLs from Google search in webmaster tools? Thanks!

  8. Hayle Trish Mendoza says

    Fascinating article, and shows that it can be done with hard work and quite quickly as well. Getting to the top can definitely be a challenge and it is not just about getting there but staying there.

    I’ve always had my sights set on ranking on the big keywords, however I think you’ve shown that starting off smaller can have similar effects, and I presume from there it can be a domino effect of sorts.

  9. Tom Bunn says

    I think I need to be a little more patient, with my SEO, I think it is easy as you say to obsess over it and make more mistakes as a result.

  10. christian says

    Your post gave me some relief. Now i got a question, should i be putting ads to my new blog site or should i wait and keep on posting new articles?

    thank you

  11. Margie says

    Great post! I currently have a site that is fairly new and was becoming impatient! Now, I see what it takes to rank and what I need to do more!

    Thank you, Margie

  12. Melissa says

    Love this site. Full of useful and valuable information. I am definitely bookmarking this site. Thank you for the information.

  13. Koos says

    Great Post. Now I know why I can not see my site with Jaaxy Site Ranker. I just have to increase my content and wait patiently

    Thanks

  14. Dustin Garness says

    Thank you for writing this article. It has a lot of very good tips and most importantly it is very encouraging, especially for a new blogger/business owner like myself.

    I’ve been working on creating content for about a month now and have been getting some traffic. I have one post that’s ranked 16th for a targeted keyword. So with a few more months of steady work I hope to really see my traffic increase!

    I look forward to reading more of your content to see what else I can learn!

    Dustin

  15. Abhijit says

    Thanks a lot alex for publishing this wonderful post, now I know why my new site which is based on iPhone info not ranking well in google.

    It’s been 1 month with 12 posts I’m getting only 90 pageview /day.

  16. Zak Cagaros says

    Excellent article, I think this article was written for me! I have just launched my new site and I kept wondering how long it will take to see the fruits of my work! For me the most important aspect to getting traffic is that you need to be patient, this is something that I need to work on.

  17. lemektoub says

    Thank you for this wonderful article.it is so frustrating to build a website build wonderful content and not seing trafic.i was even depressed.a lot of expert says it takes 6 month to achieve good ranking.thank you for reminding us to be patient.the thing is that when you are a newbie it is pretty hard to wait cause you don t know if what you are doing is good or not.

  18. Paul chapman says

    You say it takes 3-4 months before a visit from Google. You didn’t mention Webmaster Tools. One of the first things a website owner should do is register on Google Webmaster Tools and submit an xml sitemap. When I want a page to be visited by Google quickly I go to the Fetch As Googlebot page and enter the URL there. This gets the link into Google quicker than just waiting for it.

    Many other issues at play too:

    Page Load speed
    What content loads first on your page
    use free webpage checker SEO tests

    In my opinion, original content works better than most other things

  19. Katherine says

    I think Google authorship no longer have any effect on Google ranking. It was spreading very quickly and a lot of websites were after this. I have watched some authorship verified websites were doing well too but now the thing is different now. I do not see any influence of this anymore.

  20. Gaurav dutt says

    Overall, it means produce quality content, don’t overdo the SEO and stay natural. Seems I am on the right track. Awesome post though

  21. John Snyder says

    Thank you Alex! I have bookmarked this page as a resource to get my head straight when I’m caught up in the daily insanity of SEO! I have been very fortunate. I launched a site almost a year ago and have manage to get decent ranking on low comp keys just as you mentioned in the article. Google PR still hasn’t appeared but I look forward to the day I get a little PR. Time is a huge factor. I have sites with little to now traffic that have PR of 3 and 4 but on the newer sites I have developed zero PR and they are fairly high traffic sites. Just like Google said. Forget about PR and focus on content. Same with linking and all the other tactics that will suppose to increase rank.

    Work long and hard and the PR will come. Forget about the quicky. Not gonna happen unless maybe you work for Google.

  22. Shivani says

    Hi There!!! Looks like you have done a hell lot of research on Google ranking and indexing factors. Well Thanks for sharing such great article on how to rank on google.

  23. Florin says

    I want to ask what happens when the main page is static and you only update portofolio / blog pages ? Do they count as well as new content ? I have a wedding videography site and it`s kinda ugly to put all my new videos right on the first page just to have new content.

  24. Sreekant says

    Your article is really impressive and helped me out a lot. I am a newbie in blogging and I ranked by website using your methods.. Thanks a lot.. 🙂

  25. jennifer harry says

    The google authorship is not relevant any more and it has been replaced by rich snippets. Could you do a post about rich snippets. But otherwise, there is some really good advice given, but you have got to understand that not all people can afford to hire an SEO company when they are starting out.

  26. Sunny says

    Dear Alex,

    It was a fantastic and informative article. I really liked all the points you mentioned.

    I have been into SEO since 2005. And have seen lot of changes of google algo. But since the begining, one and only most proir factor is unique & good quality content. Google still focusing on unique and good quality informative content. And i have seen a lot of website who only do onsite SEO, means they are only writing informative unique content they are ranking very well with high competetive keywords; just for the sake of content. So i believe content will play the major roll forever to achive ranking on google.

    I must read your other articles too. As i believe i can get more useful info ftom those.

    Thank you alex once again.

  27. Arnab Satapathi says

    First thanks Alex sharing this useful information, I feel I’m reading a case study.

    I have a question, my blog contains few really informative and high quality article, I think they deserve atleast 1st-3rd position, but currently ranked at 7th position. After reading this article I can understand the post titles are not SEO perfect, keywords placed in wrong position.
    So I’m thinking about rewriting the post titles, is doing so google think I posting duplicate articles ? Does rewriting the post title have the potential to improve ranking position ? Hope you will help me.

  28. Pankaj Prakash says

    Hey Alex, that was a really nice article. Since I am new to blogging every new visitors, comments to my blog and articles like this excites me to give more and more time to my blog. Thanks for this article.

  29. Amit says

    Hi Sir,

    I have purchased old domain and started blogging upto 5 posts daily. After 3 months I am getting 60-70 visitors from google, 250-300 from yahoo and same from bing.

    All my posts index immediately within second when post.

    But in webmaster showing 404 error for 800 posts which not belongs to me, since it is older blog it belongs to old admin.

    When i copy paste full address of my site in google search it showing domain time, address and description only not showing pages /posts below this but I see all other domain showing site url and posts url too.

    Will i get ranked in future if post quality content and links or I am doing time waste please tell me

  30. Brandon Phipps says

    Really liked the comment about ignoring Google for a while. I think, to often, we forget that we don’t actually work for Google and focusing strictly on SERP for traffic is a poor marketing strategy.

  31. Avijit says

    hey alex, the article. is really great….as I am new in blogging so this gonna help me a lot…. thanks buddy.

  32. Samantha says

    I strongly believe that age of domain does makes a lot of difference when it comes to ranking. Older than domain more easily it will rank. That’s what I think technically.

  33. Anil Verma says

    the article very beautifully explains the answers of those questions which are almost in everyone’s mind who is new to online business. thanks for a such knowledgeable article.

  34. bellajones says

    Fantastic article, Thanks for sharing your ideas with your readers,This is most probably the best step-by-step guide.

  35. Paul says

    Thanks for this great article. Been working overtime on our new website and it seems like nothing is happening yet. This is an eye opener for us, we just got to wait it out and all will be well. Do you think it most always be six months?

    • Alex says

      Hi Paul

      It can be six months or more, it depends on many things. What is important is to have progress and not to give up.

      Thanks
      Alex

  36. jack says

    Really a Great Article..My Blog is of 2 months old and not have any ranking on Google, i was sad but after reading ur article i am really happy..Thank u so much

  37. Vineeth Mungath says

    Very Informative article Alex Chris, Patience is the most important thing, It usually take more than 3 months for new websites with maximum optimizations and link building because the domain age and trust is important to google.

    I have been watching one of my competitor with 3 month old website, but he ranks in top 3 in SERP for keywords having search volume more than 25000 per month.

    The most important factors he considered are reliable quality content and link building. Updating blogs more than 2 times per week also helped him to get top positions within short span of time.

    • Alex says

      Hi Vineeth

      Watching your competitors rankings and practices is a good approach. You may follow what they are doing and do it better.

      Thanks
      Alex

  38. elisabeth hemmet says

    Anyone else noticed the honeymoon period Google gives new domains? they appear pretty high up for target terms for a week to two weeks and then disappear, interesting!

    • Alex says

      Hi Elisabeth

      That’s true. There is some sort of honeymoon period for new domains but that’s just for a few weeks. You should always aim for long term success.

      Thanks
      Alex

  39. Jiya says

    I have a couple of sites I am trying to rank, make money while I sleep, and manage. I am learning pretty much everything of seo by digitalmarketingpro. Alex you have showed your 12 years experience of seo in this post. Now i know what mistakes i did in my past seo campaigns, and yes it need patience to rank a website.

    This is great idea that increasing awareness on social media while doing seo side by side.

  40. elisabeth hemmet says

    There is no formula for rank your website in Google neither there is anyone that will tell you how long it takes to get to the first pages.

    • Alex says

      Hi Elisabeth

      That’s true, that was exactly the introduction of this article. Nevertheless, there are some things that play a role and this is what this article is about.

      Thanks
      Alex

  41. Praan Kumar says

    Hey, Alex Useful Article, i am newbie to blog, i have so little content on my website, i am increasing it, but if i were late, then after how many days google would penalyzed my site. Thanks

    • Alex says

      Hi Praan

      Google will not penalize you for not updating your website. There is no such penalty. If you increase your content, you are making your website better.

      Hope this helps
      Alex

  42. James Bubb says

    Thanks Alex!
    I was curious to know for a new site how long it might take for articles i’m writing to start showing up (somewhere) in search results.
    With regards to a ‘new site’ being one that hasn’t yet been active for 6 months – are there any sources you used to come to this number? Or is it just from experience?

  43. Bassem says

    it is very interested article. i built my website two months ago and i had also built some back links by using web 2.0 and web blogging strategy . i see the backlinks are in google webmaster tools but still have not received a ranking in google at all , i have done as much as i can in SEO and website optimizations, everytime i check my page rank and domain rank i still find it set to 1.
    as you said it takes sometimes for the new domains to rank in google and it is better for me to focuse to improve the SEO more and forget about the ranking for now

  44. Johan John says

    Hello Alex,
    I am seriously trying to rank my newly created website. It’s only 2 months old now. Can I really rank it before 6 months if I put some serious effort in quality content and good backlinks? The domain profile is clean and never registered before.

    • Alex says

      Hi Johan

      It depends what you mean by rank…in just 2 months you can get some traffic but for serious results you need to put in more effort and that naturally takes time. If you consider this to be a long term business, then you don’t have to worry about the time factor. Work on your website and aim for long term success.

      Hope this helps
      Alex

  45. Sascha Rutledge says

    Thanks for this great piece of information! You have gave me a much better insight into the world of SEO. I will definitely be referring back to this article in the future for my new blog.

  46. Dipak Patil says

    I have one question, all blog comments are no follow and are not followed by google so how they are counted by google as a backlink. If some URL is not crawled or read how can its counting be possible. I am bit confused. Can anyone help me out

    • Alex says

      Hi Dipak

      No Follow links are crawled by Google and they are also shown in your Google search console. The difference is that nofollow links do not pass any page rank value (aka link juice), while ‘normal’ links do.

      Hope this helps
      Alex

  47. Vishnu Vardhan says

    great piece of article. I have a new blog with a few posts (each around 2000 words). but none of them show up in google results. my blog is only 28 days old. do you think this is because my website is in google sandbox (I checked and confirmed with the tool). how long it takes to come out of sandbox? also, I don’t have any back links point to my website. if I don’t have any back links I won’t rank at all? I do have quality outbound links in my posts pointing out to relevant sites. Please advice.

    • Alex says

      Hi Vardhan

      You need to be patient, a month is a very short time to expect any kind of results (especially with a few published posts).

      Thanks

  48. Prathap Sunkara says

    Hi Alex,

    I’am following you for a few weeks, and studied some of your articles which are simply amazing for Newbies.

    Really Great Articles for beginners. One thing I did like in your articles is that one should have the Patience to get a lot of traffic from search engines.

    I have increased my website’s traffic to some extent by following your tips.

    Keep writing such kind of articles.

    Thank you.

  49. Amna Sheikh says

    I don’t get why one need to wait for 3 -4 month to see first visits from Google. I mean it’s look stupid when one is adding quality content on website every 2 to 3 days but just because your website is new in the market you need to wait for 3 – 4 month of see visits from search engines. Google need to think about that I believe!!!

    • Alex says

      Hi Amna
      You need to prove to Google that your website is worth getting more visits. The competition is huge and there are a lot of websites with good quality content competing each other of a place in the Google Serps. Also, the volume of website’s that Google needs to process is big and that’s another factor that slows down the process.

      Thanks
      Alex

  50. Adnan says

    Thank you so much for your wonderful article. You have answered my question. I was worried about waiting way too many days without getting a single search engine hit, maybe two or three in total at max.

    However, it’s been almost 40 days since the domain purchase and approx a month since site launch. I’ve been adding at least 3 articles a week or otherwise 4-5 generally per week. So I was suspicious about the search engine traffic. I thought maybe I was penalized or something. I thought so maybe because the domain was used approx 10 years earlier by someone.

    However, I’ve been doing everything whitehat plus guest posting at reputed sites too for example medium, ezine articles etc.

    Thank you.

  51. Kevin says

    I think its better to use https-SSL for website, as it shows website is secure for user levels. You have described all its advantages perfectly. Thanks.

  52. Kozco says

    Hi Alex,

    Indeed, there is no magic formula for ranking a website in Google. It takes effort and patience. There are a lot of factors to consider to get high rankings and you’ve explained it well here. Thanks for the informative article.

  53. Alvin says

    Hey Alex, I just started a new website which will be filled with multiple niches. Assuming a few articles get churned out daily, is it possible to see more Google traffic soon?

  54. Salman says

    Hi,
    Thanks for such information rich article about ranking a page on google, you have made several points cleared about which i was confused, but i still want to know if changing title of an existing post will affect its google traffic??
    waiting for your response.

  55. Upendra says

    Thanks alot for such useful article. I have just started my blog and learning how to improve it ranking ASAP.

    Thanks for information.

  56. Sarae says

    Great information!! Helped calm me down that my new website isn’t ranking on google yet. Got to practice some of that patience stuff you were talking about…. 😉

    Thank you for this post!

  57. Tobias says

    Thanks very much for such cool article. I have just started my blog and learning how to improve it ranking in Google search results

    Thanks for sharing this post

  58. Melanie says

    Much easier to have a ‘thriving community’ on an SEO / Social Marketing site, than most other types of business. Does Google take than into account for the rest of us in the non sexy industries where the chances of getting any kind of user engagement are about zero?

    • Alex Chris says

      Hi Melanie

      Yes it does but it depends on the industry. If it’s difficult to get any kind of engagement for you then this means it’s difficult for all the websites in your niche. Google can identify this so you are not in a disadvantage.

      Hope this helps
      Alex

  59. Meet Mahal says

    thanks for this useful information this will help me to get good rank in google. I really need this type of information which clear my doubt regarding google rank.

  60. Sarah Kneitinger says

    Google needs not long to give a domain a rank if you increase your website traffic much. But Bing and the other Search Engines needs long time 🙂

  61. Daniel says

    Hey Alex

    Awesome post, thanks for sharing!

    Even though this is a tough question to answer, I would say that it really depends on the industry and niche you are competing in. Once you have a well on-page optimized website it would be a good idea to keep generating content in order to rank for new keywords and let Google know you add fresh pages to your site.

    However there are many ways to increase your organic traffic, I think content marketing for SEO purposes are one of the most effective.

  62. Atul Bansal says

    I would say that age of the domain is one of the most important factor while ranking but if you would like to rank for low-competition keywords then doing little on page seo can also help

  63. Glenn B says

    Does it matter if you’re trying to rank for local search? For example, there’s a local keyword I’m after. The competition is low and has about 2-3k searches a month.

    How long do you think it will take to rank for that keyword?

  64. Andrew Lediaev says

    Brilliant post..Being a business owner and that too from a very competitive niche i was always worried and cautious about google SEO rankings of my website. This indepth post solved all my doubts.

  65. Kundan Sharma says

    Hi, Alex
    It’s a great article for the peoples who want to know how long its take to get rank in google.
    You have explained almost everything with solutions.
    I also believe that 95% of webpages do not get top 10 rank in google search with in a year.
    Thanks

  66. Adhyansh Jadli says

    Hey Alex, thanks a lot for having such a nice article for newbie like me. It helped a lot to understand certain factor and answered lot of query of a new blogger like me.
    Keep up the good work.
    Stay Blessed
    Adhyansh

  67. Pankaj Saini says

    Hey Alex, thats a very nice article it helped me a lot to understand what i am lacking for my website though i am new to this blogging world ,i hope to work hard to improve myself day by day..
    Keep up the good work.
    Stay Blessed
    Pankaj Saini

  68. Airkay Klose says

    Hello Alex,

    You know I had to skip most of the top pages to arrive at this golden rundown. This post is exactly the drive I needed.

    I’ve had a website for over a year with almost no traffic. I decided to deploy SEO knowledge. I got access to MOZ and did some keyword research.

    I optimized my already existing posts and was expecting results immediately. Haha. Now I understand that it might take some time to rank depending on the factors you’ve listed. I just need to be consistent right?

    My discouragement came because I didn’t see quick results. Now I understand better. I’ll also try and integrate the guest posting on high DA sites tips.

    Thanks a lot.

  69. Sonika Sharma says

    Hello Alex,
    Thanks for the well-explained article on SEO, I am an SEO content writer and enjoyed and learned many features from this article. Indeed SEO takes time, as it is well said Rome cannot be built in a day.

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