I constantly get this question from new or prospective clients. When I hear this, I know the client who is signing up may be unhappy soon when they’re not ranking on the first page.
The answer is not simple.
You have probably seen sites peddling “Climb To The Top Of Google Search Engine” programs promising to get your business ranked #1 in the Google search term rankings for just three secure payments of $xxx dollars. You know, the ones with the garish banners and a thousand pop-up windows that immediately freeze up your web browser. They all promise to deliver “Guaranteed SEO Services!”
Sadly, all of these offers are a scam. They are the equivalent of 21st-century snake oil salesmen trying to take your money. Even worse than that – not only do they not work but using shady SEO practices can hurt your business. Using unethical SEO practices (or hiring someone to do so on your company’s behalf) can get your website penalized by any search ranking system.
And this could prevent your site from showing up in any of the search pages altogether. Scary, right?
If you want to rank at the top of Google in 2019, it is complicated.
We’re not Google
In addition to Google updating their search algorithm all the time, one very common question everyone wants to know is ‘how do I get my website ranking on Google?’ Marketing agencies are probably used to hearing this question and responding with the same answers that there’s not a 100% chance of ranking on Google even if you do everything right.
Only 22% of pages that currently rank in the top 10 were created within 1 year, with the majority of pages being 3 years and older.
There is no magic formula for ranking a website in Google neither there is anyone that can tell you how long it will take to get to the first pages.
According to several studies, if you are starting a website now then you may have to wait for 3-4 months until you see your first visits from Google. After 6-7 months and provided that you are working in the right direction you can start getting some serious traffic from Google.
To avoid any confusion, the above estimates are for getting any ranking in Google that can get you some organic traffic and not necessarily one of the top 5 positions.
To rank higher on Google and reach the top spots, you may have to wait more than a year.
A Websites Quality Affects It’s Success
From experience though, when it comes to Google rankings, there are some factors that are more important than others.
Google has repeatedly said that they are using more than 255 factors in their ranking algorithm but the most important factors that are also related with how long it takes to rank in Google are the following:
Age of the domain – A website that is old and trusted is more likely to rank higher in Google search results than a newer website, provided that other factors remain equal. This does not mean that a new website cannot achieve good rankings but it simply means it will take more time.
Clean domain – This is another factor that can work in favor or against your efforts to rank in Google. A clean domain is a website that has not been penalized by Google either by a manual or algorithmic penalty.
Keyword competition – There is strong competition especially for the most popular keywords, so you should be selective of the keywords you want to rank for. If you try to go after popular keywords believing that this way you will get more traffic, chances are you are not going to achieve much, unless you have a very strong and trusted website. What you should do instead is to target low competition keywords until you get high rankings for those and then try to go after popular keywords.
And a few other important factors.
We Don’t Control Your Competition
By designing a game plan to increase your rankings and bring in traffic and sales, we know that your competitors will be pushed down since not everyone can be at the top. However, it’s very likely your competitors aren’t just going to stand there and watch you trample over them.
Well, What If I Don’t Want To Wait For Results?
I understand you want to see an instant ROI on your investment, but that doesn’t happen when you’re doing SEO for your website/business. It takes a technical know how of the search engines to push it to the top.
Conclusion
If you put in the effort, write quality content that offers real value, and market your content effectively, you can reasonably expect to see your article on the first page of Google. I’m going to say it one more time: You can’t trick Google. Instead, you’ve got to put in the long hours. You have to feel the sore fingers and the exhausted brain. This is hard work. There are no shortcuts.
Delivering real solutions to real people is the key to success. Your content must be better than everyone else’s. That’s all there is to it.
