How long does it take for a post to rank?

When it came to SEO, you gave everything for your contribution: from keyword research to technical search engine optimization. Your content meets the search intention of the user, the post offers everything that the currently ranking pages have up their sleeve and even more. But how long does it take for the post to rank on google?

Google “how long does it take for my post to rank”. It’s ironic to ask Google a question that only Google can answer. The search engine only spits out posts from others who basically have the same question. But let’s look at the age of the posts:

The latest post is six months old, which is unusually young — but more on that later. The reason is quickly found: The search volume for this long-tail keyword is so low that it cannot be estimated.

Keywords with low search volume rank much easier on the first SERP.

How old is the average post?

A study by ahrefs has now come to the conclusion that topicality is not a ranking factor that tends to bring a post to the top.

The study used 2 million random keywords to examine how long it takes for a post to rank. The data shows that the higher the pages rank for these keywords, the older they are, on average. The pages that occupy position 1 of the SERP are around 940 days old on average. If you add up all the top ten results, you get an average age of around two years. Even more shocking: Not even a quarter of the sites ranking in the top ten are less than a year old.

Old pages still dominate search results

The picture that emerges from the study is quite devastating for anyone who has just made the final point in a hard researched post. Who have considered all the SEO techniques, the user experience and the dos and don’ts. Now, of course , conversions should be generated through organic traffic. However, according to the ahrefs study, you will have to wait for some time. (This may also be because the older domains have had quite a bit of time for link building.)

But what would marketing be without a silver lining on the horizon: For some websites and articles – I explicitly scold them “niche performers” – the placement in the top ten comes earlier than expected. 5.7% of new posts make the first page of Google search results in a year or less. 19.5% make it into the top 100. The rest does not rank during this time.

Ranking duration: The search volume of the keyword is decisive

But there is one decisive factor for success: the search volume of the keyword. You’ll remember I referred to the lucky ranking winners as “niche performers”. And there is a reason for that: More than three quarters (4.8% of 5.7%) of the posts that ranked in the top ten within a year focused on keywords with low search volume (less than 1000 searches per month). Lucky for all B2B marketers, because we usually operate in niches.

In comparison, only 0.3% of these posts with high-volume keywords (more than 50,000 searches per month) rank on the first Google search results page in less than a year.

The study also shows that pages with a focus on keywords with a high search volume need to be more resilient. This is illustrated by an exact breakdown of the distribution of the 5.7% of the top performers (94.3% of all sites perform worse).

Explanation of the graphic: Only the 5.7% that ranked on the first Google page within a year were examined here. The lower the search volume, the faster a post ranks.

There is no explicit answer to the question “How long does it take for a post to rank”, because it always depends on various factors such as

• content
• quality of the content
• content format
• Favorite Keywords
• site authority

at. But according to this study, we can say that around 95% of pages take more than a year to rank in Google’s top 10 list. My advice: don’t get discouraged. In our white paper “B2B Search Engine Optimization” you will find numerous tips and tricks on how to accelerate a good ranking. We also have a few tips up our sleeve on how you can be in the 5.7% of niche performers.

Quick tips for better rankings:

“How long does it take for a post to rank” is an important question, but more important is how long does it take for YOUR post to rank! You can definitely influence some ranking factors: The basic building block for successful ranking results is of course a well-programmed website as well as sufficient backlinks and a high level of authority.

Some factors under your control:

• High content quality
• Focus on niche keywords with low search volume
• Timeless items
• Always optimize each page for ONE keyword (topic).
• Quality outbound links
• Put lots of relevant internal links on the page
• Information about the author who wrote the blog article
• No content redundancies
• High user-friendliness: structured structure of the site
• Do thorough research on your keywords and competition
• Meet the user intent
• Topicality (trends, topics, etc.)
• Locality (Local SEO)