How long before my website gets to the top of Google?
As a website owner you’ve probably wondered about this on more than one occasion. And like most people, you’ve also probably taken your problem to the experts—web developers and those who do client SEO—for some answers.
As for the experts…they’ve heard your question before. In fact, web developers and SEO specialists have had to deal with this question so often; they’ve come up with a clear-cut, tacit, out-of-the-box response for it:
It Depends.
Yeah, a bit of a downer…hardly the reassuring response you were probably looking forward to; but it is what it is: SEO is a complex exercise, based on hundreds of obscure and overt factors, which makes it pretty hard to accurately pin down to a fixed set of numbers and figures.
Not to be daunted by this fact, our friends at Ahrefs set out to craft a more compelling response and, to this end, carried out the sort of studies they have become famous for over the years. 2 million random keywords were pulled out for the study, and then the data on the top 10 ranking keywords for each was compiled and analysed to reveals some astonishing results:
- Pages that rank in the top 10 of Google SERPs tend to be about 2+ years old on average.
- Pages that rank in the number one spot of Google SERPs tend to be 3 years old on average.
- Only 22% pages that rank in the top 10 were created within the last year.
- Almost 60% of pages in the top 10 ranking of Google SERPs, are on average, 3 years old.
- Only 5.7% of all studied pages could be classified as newly created pages that got ranked in the top 10 within one year for at least a keyword.
- Pages with high domain authority fare much better on Google results pages than pages with low domain authority.
- Interestingly, the 5.7% that do make it to the top of Google search engine results pages within a year manage to do so within 61 days to 182 days or 2-6 months of being published.
- Only 0.3% of pages ranked in the top 10 position for a high volume keyword.
So did Ahrefs give a definite answer to the familiar query about how long it will take you to get to the top of Google?
No.
But at least you now know that almost 95% of newly created pages will not rise to the top within a year.
And also, your page has a much stronger chance of rising to the top when you target low volume keywords than it would have if you target large volume keywords.
At the very least, don’t give up your SEO efforts like link building after just a few months. The search engine results pages are a very competitive field, and while you have a very slight chance at the top spots within a year of publishing, you’re more likely to get the nod later than you had previously imagined.
We would love to chat with you about how to effectively strategize getting your website ranked in the top 10.
