Search engine results page is the arena for websites to garner the top positions in order to get most traffic and visits of the users. Google as the main search engine on the internet that does various updates and changes, making the competition tighter and tighter. On the other hand, the competition between websites also continues to intensify by improving their UX/UI and the quality of the products. Everyone can witness how most of the websites thrive in the competition, considering the fact that Google is highly intuitive on its algorithm. If you’re planning to create a website, investing on a credible and well-established agency should be your first move as they will help you the basic concepts and how to fortify your domain.
Even SEO experts and marketers who offer SEO services are always in a state of shock every time Google update its algorithm. If you’re an SEO professional who handles clients, it’s no bummer that they always ask, “How long will it take to rank my website?” and it’s understandable because they are only new to the industry. If you’re a newbie in operating a website, you might as well think of how long you can rank on search engine results page. There is not exact answer to when a website would rank, and it will always depend on how you manage and optimize the domain.
Ranking
First of all, the term “ranking” used in this article refers to the process that search engines use to determine and rank a piece of content, it can be text, images, or videos on the search engine results page. This is where web owners compete by improving their website through content optimization, link building, improving the UI/ UX performance, and other significant ranking factors on a website.
There are millions of websites on the internet and you’re not the only one that offers the same content and products or services. It’s confusing for users to choose which website to visit in order to find the content and this is where Google and other search engines come into play. With the vast information available nowadays, Google in particular aims to help the people to find the most relevant and accurate results from their queries. Google ranking system is designed to sort out thousands of webpages to find relevant results in a just a second.
According to Google, in order to provide relevant and best results, the search algorithms look into the essential factors such as keywords, relevance of the content, usability of the pages, expertise of the sources, and the location and settings of the domain. To help ensure this quality, Google has a rigorous process that involves tests and trained external Search Quality Raters to assess the websites from around the world.
This goes to the thought that websites should create content not for Google and other search engines but for the users on the internet. As you can see, Google would be the culprit of your content for it to reach to your audience and even if it reaches, is it good enough to rank on the search engine results page? The answer only depends on you.
According to a study by Ahrefs, it was reported that the average age of the page to be included in the Top 10 list is more than two years, and to be on the number one ranking will take almost 3 years. This data just answered to the question to, “How long will my page rank?” Well, it doesn’t happen overnight and neither the professionals nor marketers can hasten that for you. Everyone can agree that it’s not easy to rank on SERP, even create quality content by following the standards of Google. However, new webpages only occupy more than 1% in SERP for a year while old pages occupy more than 4% a year. It means that SERP is dominated by old webpages, which is great for existing websites to continuously optimize and modify their content rather than building a new page. This is where indexation and crawling show up and play significant roles.
Indexation and Crawling
Indexation by Google is a system designed to determine the algorithm that take account from the user demand and quality checks. In other words, for Google to index your website, make sure that your content such as text, videos, images and other attributes should be easy to understand. As for Google, anyone can influence the indexing process through managing the visibility of the content and URL optimization. Google index websites to check the content and its URL. The best approach to indexation is by actively managing URLs that enhances the performance of your search results and helps drive the timeliness of the content from your domain to the search results.
Another important process is crawling. It’s a step that Google uses to determine the pages that exist on a website. Some pages are known because Google had already visited them before, thus making a presence on the search engine results page. Google will always evaluate the page and analyse both text and non-text content, including the overall visual layout of the website. The better that Google can understand your website, the higher the probability it can reach to your target audience.
These two processes- crawling and indexation alongside with ranking are the factors that everyone should be concerning about. This is not only about when to rank over a period of time, but how to rank effectively on an efficient way through meeting the standards of Google.
To go in-depth, Google has key factors that will contributes to the ranking probability of websites and these are:
Intent of the query. Not all websites can understand the intent of the query coming from their target audience, making it difficult for them to create content due to inconsistent analysis. Understanding the intent of the query is highly vital as it can be likened to understanding the language of the users. In order to get discovered by the users, the intent should be clear and direct coming from the content. This will definitely help websites to rank.
Relevance of webpages. Google and other search engines highly valued the content and other information found on a webpage, and this is why crawling and indexation happens. These search engines, specifically Google always make sure that the information provided to the people are relevant. A relevant webpage is a webpage that contains the keyword of the search query.
Quality content. “Content is king”. If there’s a reason why most of the websites are unable to rank on search engines, it’s because of their content. For Google to be able to provide relevant information, it will index and crawl the websites to assess the information and other content.
Usability of the website. When talking about usability, it pertains to the interface and programming of the website on how it can cater a level of user experience. Google evaluates the usability of a website by assessing if it’s functional and accessible on mobile devices, desktops, or laptops. It could also be about page speed and navigation experience.
Conclusion
There’s no exact answer to when your website will rank on search engines and it always depends on various factors as discussed above. Not even the brightest and the most skilled professional on SEO can determine when a website will rank. For Google, its algorithm updates made it even more difficult for websites to rank. The takeaway in this article is to understand that it’s not definitely easy to rank on a certain position and it may take quite a while to be on the top.
