SEO Results Take Time
By Scott Van Achte (c) 2009 Senior SEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.
There is one important factor to remember whenever you are involved in improving the organic rankings of a website, and that factor is time. One of the most common questions I receive as an SEO is How long till I start to see results? This article is dedicated to anyone who has ever asked that question.
It doesn't matter what industry you are involved in, or what techniques you follow, in all cases you will be a prisoner of time. In the vast majority of cases search engine rankings don't come over night.
Regardless of the scope of the SEO campaign you are undertaking, you will have to wait for results. It doesn't matter if you are undertaking a massive link building & social media campaign combined with extreme content development - you will still have to wait for those results. Just how long you need to wait however, will depend on a large number of factors.
In this article I will discuss some of these factors and give a few scenarios to help you gauge how long you may need to wait to start seeing results.
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Factors to Consider
How long it will take for rankings starts with a few key factors:
How optimized is your site before SEO?
If your established site has no optimization in place at all, and has navigation that is blocking search engine spiders, sometimes opening the site up can result in a rather quick turn-around for results.
How many inbound links does your site have?
If you have an old site with no links, this will add to the time you need to wait. If you have a number of links already, Google will probably be in to check out things within a week or so of updating.
How new is your website?
A brand new site with no links has to wait. Google may find you, but probably not. If you do nothing, your site may not ever be indexed - you must get a few links, and an XML sitemap if you want to stand a chance with a new site. Go here for info on how to install and set up an XML site map.
How flexible is your site?
If your site utilizes a content management system, how flexible is this system for customization? If your current back end will not allow for SEO based changes, this will drastically slow down your ranking progress.
How competitive is your target phrase?
This is huge. The more competitive a target phrase is, the longer you will likely have to wait, and the more links, pages, and fresh content you will probably need. Picking a target phrase that has searches, but modest competition is your best bet to get started. As long as your "dream phrase" is relevant, you can go after the bigger fish once your site has some links, content, and has started to find its place on the map.
Is your site positioned to be able to compete?
Take a look at the top 10 sites for your target phrase. If on average the ranking sites have 10,000 inbound links and 1,000 plus pages, and your site has 7 links and 12 pages, you're likely doomed. You don't need to match the numbers of the top 10, but you do need to be in the ball park. If the top 10 is littered with all the big guys like Amazon, eBay, and the dreaded Wikipedia, you might just want to consider reevaluating your goals. If your site is not in a comparable position with the rest of the top 10, then you need to either step up your efforts in order to compete, or plan on waiting a very long time.
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Get Google to Visit Your Site
How long it takes to start seeing results starts with Google. Once Google spiders your site you will still have to wait for the updated cache to appear in Google's index, and in most cases, you will have to wait longer still to see any impact in the search rankings.
In most cases getting Google to your site is relatively easy, but it can sometimes take a month or longer. Even a site with some inbound links and an XML sitemap, may have to wait a while.
Typically an established active website will seldom have to wait more than a month to get Google's eyes; however, if your site has been sitting stagnant for several years, it may take longer.
How Long Will it Take For Rankings?
You now know some of the determining factors, but how long will it take for your site to see an improvement in its organic rankings? I really wish there was a solid answer to this question, but with such a vast array of variables there is no way to know for sure. I can say however, that from experience, the timelines below are fairly accurate.
Niche Industry
A niche industry is represented by phrases that are relatively specific, such as "widgets Bellingham". While they don't require a geographic modifier, phrases focused on a very specific area often are considered niche. Phrases used for a niche site will also often return less than 100,000 results in a Google search. The top 10 ranking sites will also often have less than 100 inbound links each.
Timeline:
- Brand New Site: Possibly as little as a few months
- Established Site: Potentially it could literally be over night, but most likely around 6 weeks.
Medium Industry
Medium Industry terms are slightly more general, but still include some kind of modifier, such as a state or color; "Washington Widgets" or "Blue Widgets". These phrases often represent no more than a few million results in a typical Google search with the top 10 ranking sites having between 100-1,000 inbound links.
Timeline:
- Brand New Site: 6 months to a year
- Established Site: 2-4 months
Highly Competitive Industry
These pages are those with phrases that are rather broad and seldom have any modifiers, such as simply "widgets". You will often find tens or even hundreds of millions of competing pages in Google for your target phrase. Often the links required for the top 10 will be in the thousands, or tens of thousands (sometimes even in the millions).
Timeline:
- Brand New Site: Anywhere from 1 to 5 years
- Established Site: Could be as long as a year or more
For a brand new site, starting with nothing, in most cases you will be looking at around a year before you start to see significant ranking changes. You may get the odd ranking here and there, and start to see some traffic, but for any phrases that are remotely competitive, it can take quite a while. Unless you have a very tight niche, expect to wait at least 6 months before you see any movement at all. This is not to say that you can't get quick results, but in the majority of cases it is quite rare.
For more established sites, rankings tend to come much more quickly. One significant factor in determining time is links. If your established site has lots, but the site itself is simply lacking fundamental SEO or proper navigation, then you can sometimes see results rather quickly. If you have no links and need to build them, it significantly increases the wait time. Even for an established site, achieving links in a competitive industry can still take some time.
Rankings Are Taking Forever
There are a number of reasons why your site may not achieve results. If you find that your campaign has been going on for a long time and you have seen no movement what-so-ever, it is possible that one of the following is hindering your efforts.
Spamming & Penalties
In some cases your site may take forever to achieve rankings, or the rankings may not come at all. If your site has been previously penalized for spamming, you absolutely must clean up all traces of the past dirtiness.
Once the site is entirely cleaned up, then you can apply for re-inclusion. This is certainly no assurance that Google will ever pay your site any attention again, but it's the first step to the land of maybe.
Duplicate Content
If your site has utilized mass amounts of duplicate content, chances are you will not ever see rankings until you replace it all with something original and meaningful. There is no "duplicate content" penalty per-se, but you are essentially penalizing yourself if you copy content. Google tends to look at the first instance it finds online for a piece of content as the official source (not always the case).
If you copy content that is already out there and indexed by Google, they will discount your content as it is already indexed somewhere else, and your site or page will simply not get any rankings for it - and rightfully so.
Links (or lack thereof)
If your site has no links, you probably will not get any rankings, even after you are fully indexed. This is not always the case, I have seen sites rank well for various phrases with zero inbound links - but it is rare, and should not be relied on. Build up your links – period.
On the flip side of this, let's say your site has thousands of links, but they are from free for all sites, link farms, or "bad neighborhoods", and so on - they won't help you. These links won't necessarily hurt you, but will be essentially ignored. You need quality, relevant links.
Competition
You just may be out of your league. If you have a small operation, and are competing for a major ultra competitive term, chances are you won't ever see the light of day. Not to say it is not possible, but if you are competing in a well established industry where literally 10's of thousands of links are required, and your target phrase is experiencing millions of searches a month, you need to weigh your targets. Chances are your keywords need to be re-evaluated as your chances of success are slim.
Not Listening
If your SEO gives you actionable recommendations, follow them. Recommendations are given for a reason, to help you achieve rankings. If you are not willing to implement what is suggested, then your campaign may go nowhere. I have seen websites fail to rank simply because clients ignored recommendations. Your SEO will not be able to help you if you refuse to implement their advice.
A Little Success Story
I have seen rankings come literally within hours. It is very rare but it happens. In one specific example a blog post was put up on a very specific niche topic that had almost no coverage online. Google coincidently spidered the blog within an hour or so of posting, and within an hour from that, the blog post was #1 in the organic results for the most relevant phrase. The site saw a giant spike in traffic for the next couple days while the phrase was a hot topic. (The search phrase was very specific and localized: "election results"). This shows that for a site with an established link base, and a good reputation in Google, rankings can sometimes come extremely quickly.
Regardless of industry and target phrases, you will have to wait for your search results. Just how long you will wait varies on far too many factors to give a solid number, but expect to wait for results anywhere from a few days to several years. It's the best time frame I can give without knowing specific details of your site and project.
About The Author
Scott Van Achte at news.stepforth.com
6 tricks do more with Bing
6 quick useful tips and tricks that will help you do more with Bing.com.
1. Use the full version of Bing
If you are using Bing outside North America, chances are that you seeing a localized version of Bing that may be missing some features. For instance, the Indian version of Bing.com doesn’t have search history and the image on the Bing home page here is not interactive as in the US version.
To explore the full version of Bing, go to this page and set English – US as your default region. You can now enjoy all the Bing features from anywhere.
2. Track Companies from the IE Favorites Bar
If you search for a company stock (e.g. GOOG or MSFT), Bing will automatically create a web slice for that company which you may then add to IE 8 and track the performance directly from the favorites bar. You need Internet Explorer 8 to try this feature.
3. Watch Preview of Hulu Videos outside US
Hulu hosts some popular popular TV shows but the problem is that you can only watch these videos if your computer has US based IP address.
However, Bing lets you watch shot previews of Hulu video even outside US. Just search for any TV show episode on Bing Videos (see example) and hover the mouse over any of the video thumbnail to watch a short clip.
4. Save and Email search results
With Bing, you can save your search history on to a local folder inside Bing or to your Windows Skydrive account. Alternatively, you may send your search queries to a friend via email or publish them on your Facebook wall via Bing. You’ll need Silverlight to share queries in Bing.
5. RSS Feeds of Search Results
Unlike Google or Yahoo, Bing offers RSS feeds for their web search results that you can subscribe to inside any feed reader. Your browser should be able to auto-detect the RSS feed of Bing pages or you can append &format=rss to any Bing search URL and convert it into a feed.
This RSS feature is not available for Image or Video search in Bing.
6. Find Pages That Link to MP3 Files or Documents
Bing (and Live Search) supports a unique “contains” search operator that lets you find web pages that contain links to particular file types.
1. Use the full version of Bing
If you are using Bing outside North America, chances are that you seeing a localized version of Bing that may be missing some features. For instance, the Indian version of Bing.com doesn’t have search history and the image on the Bing home page here is not interactive as in the US version.
To explore the full version of Bing, go to this page and set English – US as your default region. You can now enjoy all the Bing features from anywhere.
2. Track Companies from the IE Favorites Bar
If you search for a company stock (e.g. GOOG or MSFT), Bing will automatically create a web slice for that company which you may then add to IE 8 and track the performance directly from the favorites bar. You need Internet Explorer 8 to try this feature.
3. Watch Preview of Hulu Videos outside US
Hulu hosts some popular popular TV shows but the problem is that you can only watch these videos if your computer has US based IP address.
However, Bing lets you watch shot previews of Hulu video even outside US. Just search for any TV show episode on Bing Videos (see example) and hover the mouse over any of the video thumbnail to watch a short clip.
4. Save and Email search results
With Bing, you can save your search history on to a local folder inside Bing or to your Windows Skydrive account. Alternatively, you may send your search queries to a friend via email or publish them on your Facebook wall via Bing. You’ll need Silverlight to share queries in Bing.
5. RSS Feeds of Search Results
Unlike Google or Yahoo, Bing offers RSS feeds for their web search results that you can subscribe to inside any feed reader. Your browser should be able to auto-detect the RSS feed of Bing pages or you can append &format=rss to any Bing search URL and convert it into a feed.
This RSS feature is not available for Image or Video search in Bing.
6. Find Pages That Link to MP3 Files or Documents
Bing (and Live Search) supports a unique “contains” search operator that lets you find web pages that contain links to particular file types.
PageRank And Subdomain effect on seo
PageRank is on a page-by-page basis.
PageRank will flow immediately
Domain and Subdom-ain
.and /
If a sub domain got high Page Rank, how far it will contribute to the main domain?
PageRank is on a page-by-page basis. The PageRank of a page (on a subdomain or not) is based on the links to it.
PageRank will flow immediately
Sub-Domains are considered as a new site for Search Engines, if a 5 years old site which uses forums.domain.com, www.domain.com now plans to add shop.domain.com and download.domain.com will this take another few years for both new domains to get rank...
Matt Cutts: PageRank is purely at a page level, so if you forums.domain.com has a high PageRank and links to new urls such as download.domain.com, that PageRank will flow immediately.
Domain and Subdom-ain
.and /
Is abc.com/def better or def.abc.com better in terms of Search Engine Positioning?
From a search engine standpoint, both are good - it really is a matter of preference. Depending on what you're trying to do, it may be easier to manage one over the other.
Languages and regional SEO question Answer
Languages and region
Google might not treat original content for different languages content it the same way
Regarding international websites, if you have sites in about 10 different languages, yet they have very different rankings with nearly identical content. Does the googlebot struggle with some languages? What can be done?
Google look at content on a URL by URL basis, so even if you have translated top content from one language to another, Google might not treat it the same way as Google would treat the original content. It's also possible that the translated content is not as relevant as other original content in that language. Generally speaking, making sure that your content is as unique and compelling as possible for the users in that target market is the best thing to do.
Content shows only to certain geolocation
If you have 2 sites, one is domain.com and the other one is domain.au. They share a lot of their content, is there a way to keep the content on both sites without blocking it on either, while ensuring they only show on their respective geo locations?
Answer By Maile Ohye from Google: Hi MG, you're situation sounds pretty good for targeting users globally and specifically in Australia (is that au?). It's helpful that you have separate TLDs. While you can't "ensure" that your content shows only to certain geolocation, you can use some of our features to help. Here are more resources in case you missed them:
So for Australia, domain.au will help with targeting and Webmaster Tools will not be needed.
For other areas -- say Canada, you can use geolation in Webmaster Tools for canada.domain.com or www.domain.com/ca or www.domain.com/canada...
Rank in the various regions
Does a multi-language site have any positive or negative impact in terms of rankings?
Multi-language sites attract a larger group of users, so over time they'll help your site to rank in the various regions that your users come from.
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