Google has become the most important search engine in the world––and for good reason. With over 2 billion searches per day, it’s the largest search engine. If you want your business to be found by people searching online, then ranking high in Google is critical.
The question that gets asked all the time is “how long does it take to rank on Google?” The answer is a bit complicated because there are many factors involved. But if we break down the process into steps, we can better understand how things work.
Why is Ranking on Google so Important?
There are two main reasons why ranking on Google is so important:
1) Data suggests that the large majority of people use Google as their primary source for information.
2) Google owns about 90% of the search market share.
If you don’t rank well on Google, you won’t get much traffic. This means fewer sales, leads, and customers.
So how long is a realistic timeframe for ranking on Google? And why is ranking on Google so important? Let’s find out! We’ll start by outlining the different levels of keyword competition.
Low, Medium, and High Keyword Competition
Keywords are important because they determine where your site appears in Google searches. The higher the number of keywords, the better chance you have at ranking high. Part of the equation here is how much competition does your keyword have and how long does it take to rank on Google?
In the most ideal sense, you want to rank for a combination of low, medium, or high competition keywords. Low competition means fewer sites are competing for those terms. Medium competition means there are several sites competing for those terms. And high competition means there are lots of other websites vying for those same keywords.
A study that was done by Neil Patel at NP digital said that it takes the following average times for each of these types to rank:
- Low Competition Keywords: 121 Days
- Medium Competition Keywords: 304 Days
- High Competition Keywords: 365 days
Now that you have a better idea of a timeframe for ranking on Google, let’s get into the importance of relevant keywords.
Why Are Keywords Crucial for Google Ranking?
This is probably one of the most overlooked parts of SEO. Most companies start out with keyword research but don’t do any follow-up. This is where you need to find keywords that have low competition and high monthly searches. You also want to make sure they are relevant to your niche.
Target keyword research is not just about finding keywords. It’s about understanding how search engines work and how you can optimize your website to rank higher.
The first step to keyword research is to determine which keywords you want to target. Once you know these keywords, you can create a list of related terms. These are called long-tail keywords.
Once you have a list of keywords, you can start researching each one individually.
The next step is to analyze the competition. How many websites are competing for those keywords? What are their rankings?
Once you understand the competition, you can choose a few keywords that aren’t as competitive to start with. Then, you can write blog posts focused on those keywords.
Keywords are crucial for domain rating, as well as SEO which we’ll discuss in the following section.
Our VOD Approach:
Our primary strategy is called VOD, which stands for Visibility over Difficulty. In essence, we search for keywords that have a high search volume, but low competition and keyword difficulty scores as determined by our software. Instead of investing a significant amount of time and resources in trying to rank for highly competitive, high search volume keywords, we focus on identifying keywords that we can quickly and efficiently rank for. By targeting multiple such keywords, we can make up for the search volume and ultimately drive more traffic to our website.
For a more indepth looking into our keyword process check out the following chapter in our Unique Process. This content answers the following:
- Local SEO Basics
- Definitive Local SEO Ranking Factors
- Organic SEO Critical Tactics
- Our VOD Approach
- Our SEO Case Study for Rothman Orthopedics
- Keywords that Convert
- How to show ROI with SEO in dollars and cents
How does SEO play a role in Google ranking factors?
Search engine optimization (SEO) plays an important part in getting ranked on Google. SEO is the process of optimizing a website to improve its visibility and ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). It involves making changes to the content, structure, and code of a website to make it more attractive to search engines.
The amount of time it takes for a website to rank on Google has a lot to do with what we’ll call its “SEO juice”.
Here are eight major components of SEO improvement to investigate when it comes to your content and website functionality:
1) Create unique content. Make sure your content is original and not just copied from another site.
2) Use social media to promote your content. Share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.
3) Get more backlinks. Backlinks refer to links pointing toward your website from other websites. You can do this through guest posting, link building, etc.
4) Build trust. Do reviews, ask questions, and provide value.
5) Be active on social media. Comment on blogs, post comments, like others’ posts, etc.
6) Improve your website’s speed. Speed matters. If your website isn’t fast enough, people will leave before even reading what you have to say.
7) Add videos to your website. Videos are great for increasing engagement and improving conversions.
8) Have a mobile-friendly website. A website that works on a desktop and a mobile device creates better user experience.
Now let’s dive into each of these in more detail to provide some solutions to our question of “how long does it take to rank on Google?”.
Create Unique Content
Content marketing has become a crucial part of every company’s strategy. The key to success lies in creating high-quality content that engages readers and encourages them to share it.
The primary objective of generating unique content is to generate links to the content. These links enhance your domain authority with Google, thereby making it easier to rank your future content.
According to studies conducted by Orbit Media, content that receives the most links typically falls into two categories:
- Content that presents a strong personal opinion,
- Content that incorporates robust internal research and data.
- Creating a web tool that can effectively solve a problem and inspire users to return repeatedly. For example see the web utility we created for Youtube Time Stamping: https://farotech.com/youtube-timestamp-link-generator/
Be Patient:
The first thing you need to know about creating unique content is that it takes time. It may take months or years to create something truly unique. But if you’re willing to put in the work, you’ll be rewarded with a steady stream of organic traffic.
Original content matters:
Original content is different from rehashed material. Rehashing content is when you simply repackage another author’s article or blog post. While this type of content may be useful, it doesn’t necessarily meet Google’s standards for quality. Instead, focus on writing original content that provides value to your audience.
Editorial Calendar:
One way to consistently produce high-quality, original content is by implementing an editorial calendar. By utilizing an editorial calendar, your company can shift from being reactive to proactive in your marketing efforts. This calendar allows your team to plan content for the upcoming 30, 60, 90 days, or even a year in advance, taking into account crucial events like trade shows, conventions, and seasonal changes that may impact your business. (see graphic above)
Creating unique content is just one step that helps you rank on Google, let’s see how this can work with social media and content marketing.
Using Social Media to Promote Your Content
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc., are great tools for businesses to connect with their customers. They also provide a way for companies to share information and engage with their audience.
When using social media, it’s important to remember that sharing too much information could hurt your brand instead of helping it grow. When you share too much information, you risk annoying your followers by flooding them with useless updates.
Instead, share only relevant information. For example, if you sell shoes, you might want to share an update about a special sale. Or, if you sell makeup, you might share a new product review.
You can also use social media to generate leads. Posting offers on Facebook or Instagram can help you attract potential clients who are interested in what you offer.
Promoting your content on social media can be elevated with the use of backlinks.
The Importance of Backlinks
Let’s state the obvious first. What are backlinks?
Backlinks are links that point back to your website. They are very important because they help Google rank your site higher. When other sites link to yours, this tells Google that your content is relevant and valuable. This increases your chances of being ranked highly on Google.
Backlinks are essential to SEO (search engine optimization). In order to optimize your website, you should focus on building quality backlinks. The problem is that some sites are better at generating backlinks than others.
There are several ways to generate backlinks, such as guest posting, link exchanges, social media marketing, etc. Some methods are easier than others, but none of them are free. You must invest money into these strategies in order to see results.
In addition to investing money into backlink generation, you must also spend time developing relationships with other websites. If you build strong relationships with other websites, you can ask them to link to your website.
This method is called reciprocal linking. Reciprocal linking helps search engines understand which pages are more important than others, which can also help build trust for your business.
If you are interested in knowing more about backlinking check out our more in-depth content called Link Building: An Essential Part Of The SEO Process in this article we cover:
- Internal Linking vs. Backlinking
- Why Do Quality Backlinks Improve Your Rankings?
- How to Get Backlinks
- Not All SEO Backlinks Are Created Equal: How to Identify High-Quality Backlinks
- Taking Advantage of Quality SEO Backlinks in Your Business
Building Trust
Trust is one of the most important aspects of any business. It’s not enough to just have a good product; people need to trust you as a company before they buy from you.
One way to increase trust is through customer reviews. People tend to trust online reviews more than they do traditional ones. So, if you’re looking to improve your reputation, you should start collecting online reviews.
Asking questions and providing value are also great ways to build trust for your company. By asking questions, you show that you care about your customers’ needs. And when you provide value, you prove that you know how to solve problems.
These actions will make your customers feel like they’ve made a good decision by buying from you. Many of the best companies develop trust with their fans on social media.
Increase Your Website Speed
A slow website makes users frustrated and unhappy. Users expect fast websites, so anything slower than 10 seconds is unacceptable.
But, even though users expect fast websites, they still prefer faster websites over slower ones. This is because users think that a faster site will load quicker.
And, since users are impatient, they won’t wait around for a slow website to load. They’ll leave and find another website instead.
To avoid this, you should try to reduce the amount of data that your website sends to the server. You can do this by using compression or caching.
You can also use CDNs (content delivery networks) to help deliver content quickly. A CDN stores copies of your website’s files across multiple servers.
When someone visits your website, the CDN delivers the file directly from the closest server. This speeds up the process significantly.
Add Videos to Your Website
Video marketing is becoming increasingly popular. In fact, video accounts for almost 80% of all consumer internet traffic.
Video can be a valuable addition to your SEO strategy. By creating high-quality video content and optimizing it for search engines, you can improve engagement, click-through rates, backlinks, and other important SEO metrics.
Here are ways that video helps you with your SEO.
- Increased engagement: Videos tend to engage users more than plain text, and they can keep users on your site longer. This increased engagement can improve metrics like bounce rate, time on site, and pages per session, which are all signals that search engines use to determine the quality of your website.
- Improved click-through rates: Including video in your search results can increase click-through rates, which can improve your search engine rankings. Videos also tend to stand out in search results, which can attract more attention from users.
- Backlinks: If your video content is high quality, other websites may link to it, which can improve your website’s backlink profile. Backlinks are an important factor in SEO, and they can help your website rank higher in search engine results pages.
- Optimized metadata: By optimizing the title, description, and tags of your video, you can improve its visibility in search results. This can help users find your video content more easily and improve your search engine rankings.
Another benefit of adding videos to your website is that they can drive additional sales. According to HubSpot, 60% of consumers say that seeing a video influences them to buy something.
So, if your business offers products or services, then videos are an excellent way to promote.
Have a Mobile-Friendly Website
Mobile devices are rapidly gaining popularity. Today, more than 50% of online activity takes place on mobile devices.
As such, having a mobile-friendly website is essential. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile, then it could hurt your conversions.
Plus, if your website doesn’t look good on mobile, then potential customers may decide against visiting your website at all.
If you don’t have a mobile-optimized website yet, then now is the time to get one.
The Relationship Between Google and SEO
Google has become the world’s largest search engine. As such, it plays a huge role in determining whether your website ranks well.
To be successful, you must ensure that your site appears in the top results when users perform a search. However, this is easier said than done. There are several factors that influence Google ranking, as mentioned above.
You should always keep up with new trends and updates so that you can stay ahead of the game and keep your content marketing strategies fresh.
Farotech’s Organic Search Approach for Lead Generation
At Farotech, we like to call Search Engine Optimization a science as well as an art. Your website’s performance on top search engines relies on strong foundational SEO methods which we’ve helped develop for our clients over the last 21+ years.
The key to success here is that SEO setup and growth need to be done in phases. The first is also the most intensive––building trust with Google. Building trust with Google is the most time-consuming step, but is the most important for success and growth.
To Sum it Up
Google is constantly changing its algorithm. As such, it is difficult to predict how long it takes to rank on Google. However, there are some things you can do to increase your chances of ranking that we covered in this feature.
These things mentioned above include:
1) Create unique content.
2) Using social media to promote your content.
3) The importance of backlinks.
4) Building trust.
5) Be active on social media.
6) Increase your website speed.
7) Add videos to your website.
8) Have a mobile-friendly website.
In conclusion, there are no guarantees when it comes to SEO. But, by following the tips above, you should be able to improve your chances of ranking.
Remember, SEO is a process, not an overnight fix. So, take your time and enjoy the journey!
If you would like to learn more about how Farotech’s services can radically transform your company with Google rankings, please schedule a consultation here.
