How Long Does It Take To Hit Page 1?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

Inevitably, people will often ask how long it takes to reach page 1 for their important keywords. I’ll have to defer to the now cliche, “It depends”.

There is no definitive answer to this question. I’ve seen websites rank for their important keywords within a couple of weeks and I’ve seen it take up to a couple of years. There are several factors that influence whether a website reaches significant rankings for its keywords, among them:

• Are you using a static website or a blog?
• How aggressive is your link building?
• How many keywords are you targeting at one time?
• How embedded is the competition at the top of the ranking chart?
• How much competition do you have to content with?
• How well is the competition staying on top of its own SEO strategy?

These are just a few of the criteria that can influence how long it takes you to reach significant rankings for your keywords. Note that these are not the only criteria that influence rankings across the board. We are simply answering the question on length of time it takes to rank on page 1 for your keywords. One rule of thumb is the more competition you have targeting the same keyword, the longer you can expect for it to take to achieve significant rankings yourself.

Why is the competitive question so important? Because if you have 1 million websites targeting the same keyword and trying to climb into the same 10-spot window, it will be more challenging than competing against 100,000 websites for the same 10-spot window. Beyond that, it’s all about effort.