SEO Timeline – How Long Does it Take to Get on Page 1 of Google
While it is not possible to give exact time frames for your web site, it is possible to give you some rough estimates. I am using Google here, but it is equally true for Bing and Yahoo.
photo credit: stefanopa
A few days to 1 Month
Google discovers your site and starts to index a handful pages. If your page can not be found in Google after a month, you must have committed some serious blunders.
2 to 3 Months
In the first few months Google starts to index your web site. Not all pages are indexed yet. Google determines a crawl schedule. It is very important that you add fresh, unique content at least on a weekly basis and add backlinks from relevant pages. Depending on your niche and on your efforts, the PageRank should be between 0 and 4 by now. Yes, it is true, PR4 is possible after 3 months.
6 Months
By the end of the 6th months, all your pages should be indexed completely and Google digests your backlinks to determine your ranking. Some of your keywords start to nip from the first page. You should continue to add relevant backlinks and unique content on a regular basis. The Pagerank can improve slightly.
12 – 24 Months
Now you should see a marked increase in traffic, as well as a much improved PageRank and some stable ranks for your keywords. A PageRank of 5 to 6 is possible now. If you are doing at least some things right, Google should trust your site now. But careful: don’t stop the engines now or your site will crash badly.
Another thing: Don’t expect to get a page one listing for any meaningful keyword by “investing” a couple hundred dollars. That will not happen! For any industry you will find some guys with very deep pockets. That means you are competing against real SEO budgets.
Brilliantly time-lined the SEO life process. Most of us forget that patience is the key especially with SEO’ing ones website. Too many links in too short time is a real blunder, but again nobody can draw the line between too many and average
When it comes to optimizing one should take immense care and track the entire campaign proceedings and review it periodically. Only then we can identify whether we are on the right track or not. According to me the “2-3 Months” time zone is the most crucial part than any. If done wrongly everything will go for toss. Another important factor is the level of competitiveness we deal with. A highly competitive search phrase definitely takes more time than normal ones. If you are the only meat vendor in Chicago, you can easily gain top position 
This is a great explanation of what most people can expect with their websites, although there are always exceptions. Some people set up a website and after 4 or 5 months of not making money or not getting that much traffic they simply quit instead of waiting out the process. It definitely does take some time to start seeing some real revenue from sites until they start showing up higher in the search engines.
I’ve been looking for something like this. I understand, of course, that many factors come into play, and there’s no one size fits all schedule for all blogs or sites. But it’s still quite helpful to read about what typically happens, based on other people’s experiences with their sites. It can be rather discouraging when there doesn’t seem to be much progress taking place, even after working on a site for several months, so it helps to know that, in the general course of things, months do have to pass in order for a site to eventually move up the rankings.
I think it really depends as to how competitive your keywords are. If you spot a trend that no one else does, the benefits of SEO can be a lot more rapid. I don’t think Pagerank is a very good indicator for anything – Google seem to be completing major updates on Pagerank a lot less frequently than they used to.
What Rick said is true. I playfully made a website using an extremely niche (but still has demand) keyword last week. It’s #10 in Google now without much work. In comparison, I’ve been doing SEO on another site since late last year and I only got to the top 10 last week.
I’ve seen it at both ends of the scale really. I’ve built websites in not so competitive niches, that have ranked on page 1 for many keywords instantly, as soon as Google indexed them. On the other hand I’ve performed SEO on a website in a more competitive market, where it’s taken over a year to get to page 1. I think a lot of it has to do with how competitive the market you are entering is, and I tend to price SEO jobs this way too.
I’ve been working on this one site for 7 months, got PR3 and #10-9-8 on Google and about #7-6-5 on Yahoo. Keyword Difficulty (SEOMOZ) shows 55% for the terms I’m targeting. I started working on three other websites parallel to optimizing the original website and was able to jump from PR0 to 3 in less than three months by getting backlinks from pr4+ only. I disagree with you on the budget part. I’m running a $700-$1000 budget per site. Budget is spread among various link building platforms. I’m competing against companies that spend over $100,000/moth just on their CPC platforms. I can imagine that they would have to pay at least 5-10K for their links and SEO. Yet I was able to get way ahead of them in SERPs. I think the most important thing is to find most relevant sources for backlinks. Also, never underestimate the on-page part. As much as everyone was pushing the idea that google and others no longer pay attention to your and other on-page optimization features. At the end of the day, algorithms will still compare you on-page keywords to the ones coming in from backlinks. Once I realized that, I jumped about 2 positions on Google and 3-4 on Yahoo. Good luck!
really interesting post. As a complete newbie to SEO, ive been wondering how long it take to get a site up the rankings. I’ve been working on highly contested markets to no avail, but recently i’ve started identifying some rarely touched niches. Thanks for sharing
Yeah, you are right about PR 4 in the first three months, I even saw a PR5 site after exactly 3 months. As for the first page in Google…it all depends on the keyword and competition, you can get on fist page in the first week, in some cases you may never get. In the end it all depends on your competition, so choose your niche and you keywords wisely!
I was listed for about a week on almost every keyword on a top 3 place – but it was only because of the “newbie bonus” which seems to be fact. (And it was hard to fall back in the deep black hole …)
An interesting read, we are in the process of getting our website SEO’d and if I get a pagerank of 3 in 3 months I would be over the moon – but estate agency isnt really a niche!
I have a question, my site started out at the number 5 position a few days after I made it but there is this crappy made for adsense site that keeps out ranking me even tho I have more backlinks. How can this site be beating me in the serps with only 4 backlinks compared to my 50 from pagerank 1-5 sites?
SEO is paramount to any successful internet business, be it retail, blogs, or service. However, when Google does it’s little dance from time to time with sites, it does make a person a little nervous. Thanks.
The post brings me back down to earth. I certainly am not a professional SEO, but I do learn. I suppose many of the claims of Google in 48 hours are true. My guess is they don’t tell you about their (team)in most of those cases. I back link 0 to 6 links a day. My best sites took two + months to make pg 1. I tend to choose niches with some competition making this a tad more difficult. I don’t article market. By backlinking my way I learn things in place of sharing what I think I know.
This is really great information. Seo is a very tricky process. Yes patience is key because if you don’t have that you will quit before your reap the benefits.