It’s something that we all want to achieve in order to increase web traffic, leads and conversions, but is it possible to rank on the 1st page of Google even if your website is the new kid on the block?
While nothing is impossible (especially when it comes to Google), we’re afraid that it’s probably unlikely that your new website will rank on the 1st page of Google any time soon.
How can we be so sure? Well, the hard working team at ahrefs recently investigated the age of top ranking web pages in Google. The study took 2 million random keywords and pulled data on the Top10 ranking pages for each of them.
Key Findings:
- the average Top 10 ranking page is at least 2 years old
- those ranking in the #1 position are almost 3 years old (on average)
- only 22% of pages that currently rank in the Top 10 were created within 1 year
How Long Will It Take My Website To Rank In Google?
It’s the question on every Client’s lips and while there is no exact answer that can be given due to a considerable number of variables in the SEO process, we can give a good indication, thanks to ahrefs.
Ahrefs randomly selected 2 million pages that were first seen in their crawler one year ago. Then, they tracked the position history of each page for any keyword it has ranked for – see below graph.
Key Findings:
Only 5.7% of all studied pages ranked in the Top 10 search results within 1 year for at least 1 keyword.
It also shouldn’t come as any surprise that web pages with a high Domain Authority (DA) performed much better than those with a low DA.
The study then went on to focus on the 5.7% of “lucky” pages to see how quickly they ranked from nothing to the Google Top 10. What was found, was that most of these pages managed to achieve the ranking in approximately 61–182 days.
Before you get too excited by looking at this graph, and think that, on average, it takes a page only 2–6 months to rank in Google’s top 10 – that conclusion isn’t valid here.
Reminder:
This data only represents the 5.7% of pages that were lucky enough to rank in the Top 10 within a year — while almost 95% of all the pages we studied didn’t make it to the top 10 within that time frame.
Only 5.7% of all newly published pages will get to Google Top 10 within a year
Summing Up
To sum up this analysis, we can safely conclude that it takes time to ‘earn’ page 1 rankings in Google – at least 2 years on average. But, if you’re just starting out with your new website, don’t give up hope before you even begin!
Good SEO takes time to build up, but it also takes time to go away. SEO is a long-term strategy that is built on credibility, authority and relevance.
So next time you think about ranking on the first page of Google, know that it takes time and that it definitely helps to have a solid SEO Strategy in place to help you get there (and in most cases), fast track the process.
Need quality SEO for an affordable price to fast track your Google rankings? Let’s talk!