There is no question I get asked more than “How long will it take me to get ranked #1 for my keywords?”
It really depends on how new your site is and what industry you’re in. if your site is brand new then it can take almost a year before you can really start seeing the true effects of SEO an begin ranking.
Now it comes to what your industry and I think this is something that a lot of people don’t think of when they are doing SEO. If you are working on a service/product that is a highly competitive industry, say plumbing, then you are going to have a long and hard road in front of you. Industries that have keywords and long tail keywords that are super competitive will make it that much harder to start seeing positive results since there are that many more people trying to rank for the keywords and terms.
The best way to take action is to have an entire plan in place. Know what keywords you want to rank for and what the competitive nature is of these keywords are. If you start to do your research and notice that the keywords are hard to rank for then you can start by ranking for long tail keywords which are keywords that are 2 words and longer. You want to plan out the blogs you are going to write, where you are going to get the information from, what are going to be on all your pages, have videos, images, and infographics ready, etc.
Because it does take time to start ranking for SEO the best approach is to step back and make an entire plan instead of jumping in.
Did our study give a definite answer to “how long does it take to rank” question?
No.
But at least we’ve shown that almost 95% of newly published pages don’t get to the Top10 within a year.
And most of the “lucky” ones, which do manage to get there, do it in about 2–6 months.
Actually, I shouldn’t be framing these pages as “lucky,” because the reason they got to the Top10 in less than a year is most likely hard work and great knowledge of SEO, not luck.
If you can’t budget for 6 to 12 months of SEO, you might be better off putting that budget somewhere else. Paying for just a few months of SEO is, in many cases, no better than throwing your money away. SEO is a long term marketing tactic, and shouldn’t be seen as a way to generate sales quickly. However, if you make the proper investment, and plan on being in it for the long haul, SEO is a marketing tactic with one of the best ROIs out there.