This is one of the most common questions that I get asked and the answer isn’t simple. The time it takes to rank depends on many variables.

So let’s look at the main factors that contribute to this and how you can get a fairly accurate answer of how long it should take your website to rank in Google.

1. You have a lot of competitors

The more competitors you have, the longer it will take to rank. And if all of those competitors have been doing SEO for years, this will add more time.

2. You’re targeting a large geography

Do you want to rank in your local suburb? Or do you want to rank worldwide? The broader you go, the longer it will take.

3. The nature of your industry

Certain industries (usually high priced products, high specialisation – think legal, plastic surgery) are full of companies who spend big dollars on SEO. Enter these markets with a long term view and deep pockets!

4. The design of your website

Google places a high value on how a visitor ‘uses’ a website. Is the information on the site easily found? Do visitors ‘bounce’ off the site and go back or do they spend time and read the content? Does the site take forever to load? Google measures all of this and it determines how your site ranks.

5. The content on your website

There’s no point trying to rank for ‘kitchen builder’ and all your website talks about is ‘bathroom renovations’. Create the best content you can on the topics you want to be found for.

6. The keywords that you’re targeting

Did you know that most traffic (~70%) comes to a website from keywords that get less than 10 searches per month? Sometimes, fixating on a high volume, highly competitive keyword can take you away from the bigger picture. Make sure you write high quality and in depth content – it will bring in 100’s of lower volume keywords to your site, but usually highly highly targeted leads. The lower the search volume of a keyword, the easier it is to rank.

7.You haven’t claimed your listing on Google My Business

If you want to do well in Google, you need to show them that you’re a real business. Sounds like common sense but many don’t do this fundamental step of getting trust from Google. Sign up at https://www.google.com/business/ to claim your listing.

Will Mullins

So you’ve got a great website, you’re in a good industry, a great product and excellent customer service. But one thing’s missing. You don’t get and customers (or very few) from Google.

There could be multiple issues holding you back but the good news is is that you can identify them and fix them for good. It may take a while but here’s where to start looking.

If you need an SEO audit to see exactly what’s holding you back, fill out this form and I’ll get back to you with the answers.

1. Your Site is set to ‘No Index!’

All too common but the easiest to fix. Your website was built and has been left in a no index mode, in other words, it won’t show in Google.

It’s amazing how often I see this and hopefully it’s just an oversight by the web developer (albeit a costly one). Your website is built or updated and it’s been left in a no-index mode, in other words, your site won’t be in Google.

2. Your Site has poor Code or Structure

Does that cheap website builder sound great? Just drag and drop and make a great site. Well it comes at a price. The code that those things output is horrendous and confuses the hell out of Google.

E.g. sites build with free website builder tools like Google Sites, Weebly, Wix or some other drag and drop builder. 

3. Your Site Is Hard To Navigate

Does your site look unprofessional? Is it hard to find information or navigate? A poor site will affect how users interact with it.

And a site with poor engagement won’t rank well.

If it’s hard for users of your site to find what they need, it’s likely that Google will have the same problem.

Make everything less than 3 clicks from the homepage and keep the layout easy and simple.

4. There’s a Problem with Your Backlinks

Backlinks (links from other sites) can help or hurt your website.

Do you have enough quality backlinks compared to your competitors? Are they from relevant sites or spammy sites? Is the backlink anchor text diversified? Have you engaged in Black hat SEO in the past?

5. Your website doesn’t have any information…

There’s a fine line between a clean looking website and a websites that has no information on it. Google still isn’t great at reading images and videos –  your website needs to have enough textual content on it so Google knows exactly what you do. Also, you don’t want people getting to your site and clicking away because there’s no information on it.

Put yourself in your customers shoes and give them the best answers to their Google search queries. Understand and find out what they need and give it to them – make them engaged with your content.

6. Your Google My Business Page is Vacant and not optimised

Are you a local business? Do you show up on Google Maps? Showing up in the ‘3 pack’ on maps means you’ll get quality traffic.

This is especially important for local businesses and businesses who operate in a specified geography.

Google want to show search results for people in a certain location.

So it makes sense to let Google know exactly which area your business serves.

Filling out your Google my business page fully will go a long way to helping you rank for local search terms such as ‘your service brisbane’.

The Google map listing itself can bring in a lot of good traffic so make sure you have plenty of reviews in there by setting up a system in your business to get such reviews.

7. You’ve had a Bad SEO provider in the past

You’re not the only one. A lot of SEO providers still haven’t moved on from using automation tools to do their work. As a result, they get their client’s sites into a real mess and get them penalised by Google.

A lot of SEO providers still haven’t moved from using automation tools to do their work.  And as a result, they get their client’s sites into a real mess by getting penalised by Google.

Usually in this case, we have to make a decision to either start again on new domain or disavow all the links and wait for the shackles to be lifted.

8. You Have Multiple Websites for the Same Business

In the old days, businesses did quite well with multiple sites all targeting a different location or service. These days Google like seeing just one site for a business.

re </span> the take way is just make the one site, structure it intelligently for all your services and put great content all in the one place.

9. Your Content is Plagiarised

“Don’t scrape your entire site’s content from another site or multiple sites. For your blog posts it’s ok to post an article from another site and credit it appropriately.”

10. Your ‘On Page SEO’ is Not Optimised

Getting technical here but this includes setting up your pages and posts correctly with titles, meta descriptions, image tags, H tags…the list goes on.

11. You Might be Getting Traffic!

You may be getting traffic but people aren’t contacting you for many reasons – does the content put them off? Does your site give the impression of an unreliable business? Make sure your traffic is converting.

Are you sure there aren’t people coming to the site?

Have you installed Google analytics that tells you how much traffic you have?

You may be getting some traffic but people aren’t contacting you for many reasons – does the content put them off? 

Does your site give the impression of an unreliable business?

Have you got bad reviews?

Is it hard to find your contact details?

Is your USP (unique selling proposition) unclear?

Is your pricing too expensive?

Is it too cheap?

Conclusion

There’s a lot of reasons why you may not being getting traffic from Google.

But it’s important to know the cause otherwise you’ll spend a lot of time and money fixing something that may not be broken.

My free SEO audit service will tell you exactly why you’re not getting traffic to your site. You can get your free SEO audit by me here.

SEO is not a one-off activity but rather a marketing channel that should be monitored and optimised over time. This infographic outlines some compelling facts as to why you need to think of SEO as an essential ongoing part of your marketing plan.

1. SEO is Always Changing

Google changes it’s algorithm 500-600 times a year. If you don’t have anyone looking after it and keeping up with or anticipating the changes, your website will be left in the dark.

2. Google Rankings Don’t Happen Overnight

According to Google’s own video entitled ‘How to hire an SEO’ you’ll need to around 4 months to a year to see potential benefits from SEO implementations. This will depend on your industry, competitiveness and other factors.

3. Your Competitors are Doing SEO

Most competitive industries have full time SEO agencies or in-house staff optimising their web presence. In fact, in 2016, companies spent more than $65 billion on SEO. You’ll need to keep doing SEO to stay competitive in your market.

4. SEO Compounds Over Time

Like a good investment, the returns on SEO will compound over time.

Traffic will slowly build, then new keywords and opportunities will be discovered and the whole thing snow balls. If you keep up a good SEO campaign, you’ll find that with the familiarity and constant testing and tweaking by your (good) SEO consultant, will enable many more wins to occur than short term changes.

Your SEO expert will learn your industry and your competitors and this cumulative knowledge will help your business in the long run.

“Whatever results you’re getting at 6 months should be considerably less than what you’re getting at 12 months.” – Forbes

5. SEO is a Marketing Channel

If you stop marketing, you lose customers. Google traffic is still the number one lead source for many businesses – if most of your business or a good chunk of it comes from Google organic search, you need a qualified SEO specialist to look after it, maintain it and continually optimise this channel.

6. Google Loves Updated Content

There are many examples of how Google looks favourably at updated content. Studies show that updating your content can help boost your rankings and traffic. Conversely, deleting content and thin pages can aid your ‘crawl budget’ and help Google take notice of the best pages on your site rather than worrying about pages that have no purpose.

7. Stopping Prematurely is a Waste of Money

If you stop after 3 months because of poor results then your expectations were wrong at the outset.

The reality is, it takes around 3 months for your SEO to fix past mistakes. And the SEO you do today won’t take effect for a month or 2. Do proper research, technical SEO and develop an ongoing SEO plan.

8. Stopping and Starting Can Raise Alarm Bells to Google

Link velocity is the rate at which links are pointed at your site. If your SEO is helping you build links and then you stop, this will ring alarm bells for Google and tell them that either your site is losing credibility.

Update: Link velocity isn’t a problem in 2020. As long as the links you get are legitimate, it really doesn’t matter how fast you get them, it all counts. 

Credits

Moz Google Algorithm Changes
Media Post – $65 billion Spent on SEO
Go Blogging Tips – Link Velocity
Romu Gaboriau – The Compound Effect of SEO
Search Engine Land – SEO is a Marketing Channel
Moz – Fresh Content May Affect Rankings