At Webahead Internet, we are proud to offer a range of SEO services into which business owners can tap to strengthen their online presence. However, as we implement our SEO packages, our clients often pose the worthy question of how long it will be before their site reaches Google’s first page.
Frankly, SEO’s success can be affected by so many variables that it is practically impossible to answer this question with precision. Still, analysis of historical ranking data provides some intriguing insights.
A long road or just a brief walk?
Data about Google’s first-page rankings has revealed that most of the web pages in these rankings are at least two-and-a-half years old. This might strike you as a rather sobering statistic, as it means that, if you start a new site now, you could have to wait nearly three years for it to be so ranked.
That would be the theory, anyway. It’s true that, of the web pages making the top 10 on Google’s most prominent SERP (search engine results page), just 22% were created less than a year ago. However, this would still give you a 1-in-5 chance of reaching that first page within a year.
Reasons to cut out the weakest link
Evidence suggests that your site’s link profile could prove crucial to the rapidity of your SEO success. It seems that backlinks particularly powerfully affect a site’s placing on SERPs. For your site, a backlink would be defined as a hyperlink that points from another site towards yours.
Still, you shouldn’t simply rush to add to your site’s tally of backlinks, as you very much need to prioritise quality over quantity. To be more exact, you should carefully assess the reputation and authority of a particular web page before you seek to get a backlink from it.
A well-reputed website that features highly in Google’s search results would strengthen your site’s backlink profile more effectively than the site of a local electrician, for example.
The keyword to the SEO kingdom
Contrary to murmurs you might have heard from some quarters, keywords aren’t dead. To see one reason why, we can take notice of how carefully-selected keywords can accelerate a particular web page’s journey through the search ranks of Google.
You should be particularly diligent in researching which keywords are “high-volume” for your industry. In other words, what keywords feature particularly often in search terms used by people looking for the products or services that you offer?
If you run a local business, don’t be afraid to use locally relevant terms such as “ice creams in Middlesbrough” or “Durham plumbers”. This bears emphasis because, if you are specifically targeting a local audience, such terms can still be classed as high-volume keywords.
We can keep such knowledge in mind as we carefully tailor your site’s SEO profile. While we can’t put a specific timeframe on when these efforts will bear fruit, we can still educate you on the influential factors when you dial our Darlington-based company on 01325 582112.
