What’s up readers! This blog has gotten more attention than I originally guessed. So I’m going to break this down for you real fast. If you want to scroll and get some more info, I’d appreciate it because I make a tad bit of money when you scroll past my ads. Here we go!
How long does it take Google to rank me higher?
So glad you asked. With Snowmad’s writing optimizations and “SEO science”, it only takes me (personally) takes about 1-3 days now for my new or rewritten content to rank higher for my clients. Yeah, you read that right. And time matters when it comes to ranking faster. So how do I do it?
And what’s the deal with ranking on Google these days? Well, if you don’t follow these steps, it can take six months to a year before your new content even shows up. I can’t give away ALL my secrets, but I can show you enough to get you ranking higher if you put in the work. So keep reading!
Nowadays, ranking on Google is a lot more complicated. You have to know how many links point to your site and what the PageRank of those sites are for you to rank higher than other companies using shady SEO tactics or paying bloggers for backlinks.
If I were still running my old business from 10 years ago, then it would’ve been easy to get this website at least into some of the first page results when someone types “wedding venue web design” into Google’s search bar. But I’m a little too busy building wedding venue websites & working on SEO for wedding venues – thank god for referrals because my website is buried somewhere on the 1,000th page of Google – such a paradox, I know.
Well, in the old days, AKA early 2000s, the competition was less intense, and search engine algorithms relied on keyword quantity with links having a 50-50 chance of ranking your webpage. If you added TONS of relevant keywords to your page and built some hyperlinks, then there’s no doubt that it would rank pretty quickly. We could go into great detail about how life used to be MUCH easier back then, but it would bore your socks off ;)
But if it were still that easy, wedding venues wouldn’t pay me monthly money to improve their SEO! And maybe my website would rank higher cause I’d have so much time without all the work – another paradox…
In the not-so-distant past, link farms and keyword stuffing were all you needed to rank well in search engines. But this doesn’t work today. I suppose there are some ways that things could be worse – at least I don’t have a boss breathing down my neck every time Google changes their algorithm (on average 8.9x per day in 2018, for instance) – but SEO was much easier back when it used to take links from high PR pages!
Unfortunately, there is no easy button. It takes a year and some change if you want it done right. Maybe even two years.
Most marketers know over 200 ranking factors are in place for determining a website’s online success. Let us explain what you need to know if you want your site to move higher up on Google faster than anything else.
“It’s all about the user metrics!” – a quote by me. If you have high brand queries (people searching directly for your company name) or impressive user metrics, then in most cases, your site will rank within a few months! But if not, be prepared for an extended wait time of 12+ months depending on how much competition there is in your market. It comes down to a few things here. Let’s dive deeper.
Request Google to Index Your Content
Log into the Google Search Console. Submit the new or updated URL. Request indexing. Battabing, battaboom.
Get More Page Views to the Content
Plain and simple. Page views are when someone visits your website and lands on one of the pages. If any visitor goes from Page A to B, that would be one view for both pages. A Google Analytics Report will show all this information in detail, which is helpful if you want more info about how people use your site – excellent stuff, right!?
The higher the number of page views, the more important a webpage becomes. It means that people visit it because they find what’s on there quite helpful! For your website to rank higher, you want its total pages visited (probably by comparison) to be way higher than other competing websites. This is why when clients come to me seeking help on SEO and ranking their website higher, I always diagnose the root of the issue: the website.
Total Website Traffic
Total Traffic: This is the best way of measuring your website’s success. It can come from any channel, including organic search engine optimization, paid Ads (SEM), social media marketing, direct or referral conversions. It’s an excellent indicator of how well you do with SEO. For example, suppose one company has 2k monthly visits while another has 25k monthly visits. In that case, the site with 25k visits will rank higher than their competitor for keywords with high volume searches…meaning less work for these….meaning more profits!
Scroll Depth: This is an essential factor for a webpage that wants to rank well with Google and other popular search engine providers such as Bing or Yahoo. The higher people scroll through your site content means that they’re engaged enough by what was there up until now to keep going further into the depths of your pages.
Time on Page/Site: The amount of time a visitor spends on your website can tell you how interested they are in what’s going on. If someone stays for a while, it means that the page is worth reading!
Unique Site Visitors: This measures the number of unique IP addresses visitors are coming from when visiting your website. In other words, it totals the number of individuals who visit your site and have never been there before! A higher amount indicates a popular website and therefore deserves a better ranking.
Your Domain Authority matters; I don’t care what Google “officially” says.
Backlinks, am I right? These are a great way to rank high on the search engine. The number of votes (backlinks) you get for your site can help increase or decrease how well it ranks in Google’s algorithm, and different kinds of links have various effects: High-quality linking is done naturally over time; they’re earned from being relevant with other sites which take more work than just buying them outright.
On the flip side, low-quality, spammy paid outbound links don’t necessarily go anywhere else and can damage your website’s ranking. Not going to name any names here, but I’ve had to spend a lot of time undoing bad backlinks (think foreign languages, Rated R content, etc.) for clients who wanted to try to get more backlinks faster.
As soon as my article about The Knot got mentioned on Business Insider, my page views shot up.
For the love of God, please do not hire anyone on Fiverr.
Is your site ugly and user un-friendly?
Web Design: Your website design can make or break your online presence. When ranking a site and pop-ups and Ads, Google considers factors such as mobile responsiveness and page loading speed. If there are too many clunky ads above the fold, you risk having your site’s rankings go down in rank. This is because users are forced to search for content on an already cluttered page, wasting their time with difficult navigation instead of being able to find what they’re looking for right away!
Your Competition: Trying to rank for a keyword that has high competition? Before you start building your SEO strategy, it is best to know who your competitors are and how they might be doing something better than you. Analyzing their weaknesses can help you turn those into your strengths! Therefore, it is crucial to focus on creating the best content you can. It will help build trust with your target audience, which in turn will increase your click-through rate and decrease your bounce rate.
Google rankings are affected by high click-through rates and low bounce rates, so make sure that before publishing something new or updating an old post – keep this information in mind when deciding what works best for you!
Budget: You know what they say, you have to spend money to make money. And the budget is a significant factor in where your site ranks on Google! If you have the cash for it, then:
- You can add lots of new pages and improve quality online content.
- You’ll also get better UX by improving things like navigation menus or website design features that facilitate user flow through your page’s various sections
- Plus, there are all sorts of ways to acquire high authority links from PR websites and influencers – and those will help boost rankings too!
Content Marketing: Is it something that you should invest in? What will the payoff be like two years from now if I do decide to take this route? Content marketing is all over social media these days. People are raving about how lucrative it can be, but what does content marketing entail for someone who wants to get into it full-time versus somebody who occasionally publishes an article on LinkedIn or Facebook when they have time off work?
I started writing content for Mountain House Estate just under a year ago to give you an idea. Within that time, they’ve gone from having <1,000 site visitors per month to having over 9,000 site visitors per month. They pay me about $1,000-$1,500 a month to optimize their site, add content, add pages and do other SEO-related work. I also run all of their digital Ads.
So yes, it can pay off. It just takes a little TLC. In the interim, while you’re waiting for your organic search results to pay off, you can invest heavily in Google Ads.
Why #1 Ranking on Google Is Life or Death for Your Business
I don’t have to explain this, do I? Okay, maybe I do :) In short, 55% of people go to the first three results, whether it’s local listings or website listings. Only 8% make it past the first page. So if you’re not on the first page, you practically don’t even exist.
So how do you speed up your Google rankings?
- Look at your website. Is it performing as well as it should? You might have hired someone to design it in the last year or two years, and it’s a pain point. But if it’s not working for you, you’re losing money every day because of it. Redesign your website immediately with a trusted web designer to see immediate improvements
- Make sure you have a great hosting plan to keep your site speed up and optimized. This is not something you want to skimp on. You can pay around $24 a month for good hosting, or $410 a year for a GREAT hosting plan with Snowmad. I refuse to open up another support ticket or speak to a robot when my website is down (super common with average hosts like Bluehost, GoDaddy, HostGator, HostPapa…).
- Figure out what pages you are ranking higher for and keep improving them.
- Install a Hotjar pixel so you can see where your website visitors are clicking. This will let you know what is essential to your website visitors and what content you should embellish on or remove.
- Use internal links. I use a WordPress plugin called Internal Links Manager.
- Manage redirects, 404s, and other page errors. To err is human nature, but Google isn’t human, so they don’t care :(. Luckily, a WordPress plugin called Redirection will automatically fix any broken links and redirect them.
- Finally, more content equals more potential rankings, so use Jasper AI or some other AI writing assistant to help you publish more quality content faster.
- Instead of relying on limited Google Search Console Date, purchase SEOGets, which gives you MUCH more valuable insights, reporting, and an easy-to-use console.
It’s a lot of work, but your website is one of your best-selling tools, so invest in it and make sure it’s outperforming your competitors!