How long does it take to position a website?

How long does positioning take?

No wonder it is a popular question among people who have decided to optimize their own website. After all, effective positioning equals the beginning of potential large profits, and the outlays for this process are also not small. We would love to hear an answer in the form of a concrete assurance: “two months”, “five months”, etc. However, really the most appropriate answer is only one thing: it depends.

Although it sounds evasive, if we take into account all the factors that successively make up this process – it is the only rational explanation. To fully understand the complexity of the issue, we will break it down into individual elements and explain why it is impossible to estimate in advance how long positioning will take.

Aspects of positioning, i.e. what affects time

It is important to draw from this formula the reasoning about positioning as a process that is continuous. It is a continuum of activities that will bring measurable and lasting benefits over time. After how long? It depends on where we start from.

There are a number of factors that affect the “difficulty” of optimizing a given page. They may concern both the technical condition itself and the characteristics of our activities and other environmental factors. Below we will present the most important aspects that determine the amount of time and effort that should be devoted to positioning.

Site status

Did we take over the site from someone or was it created from scratch? If this is the first case, check her history. Google has special algorithms that verify the content of a given page. In the case where the presence of content definitely deviating from the standards imposed by the search engine was once registered, the website could be “punished” – i.e. its reach was significantly reduced. Positioning such a page will be a much more problematic task.

The best situation is presented to us by pages that have been operating for a long time – thanks to which they have been repeatedly noted during indexing – but which have a “clean slate” when it comes to offenses.

Equally important is the architecture of the site itself, and specifically its adaptation to the guidelines for creating pages contained in Google Search Console. They cover all aspects, including a clear internal structure (easily accessible to Google robots), appropriate linking and original, quality content. There are a lot of elements, so this aspect alone can require a lot of work.

The industry in which we operate

This is an equally extensive issue, if not even more extensive, as it requires us to specify our business model, willingness to expand, audience groups, etc.

First of all, let’s talk about our competition. We are talking about companies that rank for the same keywords as we do. They can be bigger than us, run longer, offer more content, have better technical conditions (a better website – see above), a larger budget and a wider reach. As you can see, there is really a lot to take into account. At the beginning, we should start by specifying the phrases for which we want to position ourselves (also long-tail). It will be necessary to understand who we are addressing our offer to and who we want to be perceived as (what is the profile of our company). The more phrases with different levels of competitiveness, the better.

If we offer our services locally, it will also be necessary to establish coverage. What geo-location phrases do we want to position ourselves for? Adding city names to keywords is a popular and effective procedure, but isn’t there competition for us in the target place that outperforms us in many respects?

The industries themselves are also characterized by different competitiveness. Buying catalysts in a given area is unlikely to be too many, but there may be many more shoe stores or companies offering loans. For this reason, from the very beginning, we may face an easier or more difficult task.

Outbound link profile

Does our website already have a position in the hierarchy thanks to appropriate external linking? This is one of the most important factors affecting trust in the website, so this action cannot be underestimated. Again, we return to our site – if it already has a well-established place, it will require less effort to do so. However, getting outbound links to larger sites is harder if you’re just starting out – which is quite natural as we haven’t proven our credibility yet.

Budget

And finally, a word about money. It’s not hard to see why the budget plays an important role – as shown above, there can be quite a lot of action to take right from the start. The more financial resources we have, the faster and more effectively we will make satisfactory changes. What’s more, you should be prepared for regular expenses – we emphasized from the very beginning that positioning is a process that cannot be artificially accelerated. It is impossible to pay more at once and enjoy the effects after a shorter time.

Is it possible to predict how long it will take to position the website?

Perhaps, in conclusion, it is worth asking one more question – what is our goal when it comes to positioning? If we want to jump up only a few (a dozen or so) positions in the search engine for a given term, it can probably be achieved in a fairly short time. However, most often it is about reaching the top ten, i.e. the first page in Google for a given phrase. Only then can you talk about achieving your goal. As can be seen from the above information:

Everything depends on individual factors. It can be very indicative that after 3 months the first effects of our activities should appear. However, it might as well take twice as long. For the most popular key phrases – even a year.