How Long Does It Take to Rank on Google?

Question: I just received your workbook in the mail and I look forward to improving my Google ranking for my fledgling business by implementing your tools and techniques. My question is — how long does it take to rank in Google? I can’t find my business anywhere. My website is ~ and the name of the site is ~. I started building the website on Sept. 3, so it’s been a month. I use SquareSpace which has a lot of SEO tools automatically built in. I’m doing my best to learn all about building websites and SEO and starting a business and I feel like I’m doing a lot of the right things — but I can’t even find myself 10 pages back in Google. I don’t expect to be on the first page yet, but it seems like I ought to be able to find the business somewhere. Am I doing something wrong?

SquareSpace says everything is set up right and it just takes time. I just want to make sure I’m on the right track. I’ve set up Google Search Console, I’ve looked on Google Analytics and my numbers are going up — but I still can’t find myself anywhere on Google. If I were on the 10th page then I could feel like if I moved to the 5th page, I’d be making progress — and then I could shoot for the 1st page and the 1st 3 rankings.

I’m afraid that the name of my business “~” is too generic, but I like it. But even so, shouldn’t I be able to find myself somewhere?

Thanks for your direction and help. I look forward to hearing from you.

Answer.

This is a common question, and you need to break it down into constituent parts. First, is your site properly set up at all? For example, the robots.txt can “block” a site inadvertently. Related to this, you want to find out if Google has “discovered” the site, “at all,” because if Google doesn’t even know you exist, obviously you can’t rank. So first tests –

1. Go to your website, and check the robots.txt file. For example, https://www.jm-seo.org/robots.txt. You want to make sure you actually have a robots.txt file, and that the “disallow” isn’t set to exclude you. If you’re not sure, then go to Google Search Console, then Crawl > Robots.txt tester.  Make sure you have a “green light” from Google.
2. Use the site: command and go to Google to verify that it is finding your site. If you see a message like “this site is being blocked” then you definitely have an indexing problem. For example, https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=site:jm-seo.org.

Ok, we’ll assume you pass these tests. Which means you are NOT being blocked by Google and you are “already” in the index.  (I checked your site, and it’s fine).  So this is NOT your problem; I just wanted to point it out in the blog post, as in terms of diagnostics, ALWAYS start at the beginning.

Do You Rank At All: Check for Your Company Name and/or VERY Focused Keywords

Now, you need to move on to Keywords and rank. So, first you need to find out here if you have a penalty against your site.  That’s doubtful if it’s a brand new site, and doubtful if you have NOT engaged in any crazy link-building. So you want to do some simple keyword tests.

1. Take your company name, and try a Google search for that, very specifically, as in quotes.  For example, JM Internet Group.  If you have a very severe penalty, you will NOT show up for your own company name. In your case, your company name is pretty generic, so that is an issue just in “finding” or “verifying” that you are being indexed and not blocked.
2. Alternatively, or in addition, take a very very specific blog post and take a very, very specific search of that blog post. You need to first use the site: command and verify that the blog post is “in” the index. As in – https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=site:https:%2F%2Fwww.jm-seo.org%2F2016%2F09%2Fnew-media-scholarned-upside-down%2F.  And then try “New Media Scholarship: 2016-2017 Winning Essay” If you see your blog post, and those very focused keywords, then you are not only indexed but able to rank. (For your site, I took a blog post on pomodoro, pasta and pizza” and then checked to see a) it IS in the index, and b) it DOES rank for that very very super specific keyword search.

So, in this case, you ARE being indexed and you ARE able to rank. So all the technical stuff is OK.  (However, I did “view source” of your home page, and it is EXTREMELY cluttered with code like this –

mask{fill:rgba(174,153,90,.4)}.social-icons-color-standard.social-icons-style-knockout [data-slice-type=”social-icons”]:hover .vsco:hover .use-mask{fill:#ae995a}.social-icons-color-standard.social-icons-style-solid [data-slice-type=”social-icons”] .vsco .use-mask{fill:#ae995a}.social-icons-color-standard.social-icons-style-solid [data-slice-type=”social-icons”] .vsco .use-icon{fill:transparent}.social-icons-color-standard.social-icons-style-solid [data-slice-type=”social-icons”] .vsco .use-background{fill:#fff}.social-icons-color-standard.social-icons-style-solid [data-slice-type=”social-icons”]:hover .vsco .use-mask{fill:rgba(174,153,90,.4)}.social-icons-color-standar

You should probably check with Squarespace and see if they can “clean up” all that garbage.  Many of these big “for profit” web designers are very heavy on images and very poor on clean code.  I doubt that is your problem, however, because you can see in your source code a TITLE tag, and H1 tag and visible content. So the content is “there.”

Keywords and Rank

Now, the rubber hits the road. You have to think in a very “competitive” way about your keywords and your possible rank. The process is:

Identify a target keyword phrase > Optimize the website with both ON PAGE and OFF PAGE tactics > check (over time) to see if you rank.

So you can go awry here in a number of ways –

• Keywords. You do not KNOW your target keywords. They’re too vague, or they are too competitive. For example, I can’t rank for SEO but I can rank for SEO Classes Chicago. The former is too generic, and the later is very focused. So, in your case – being a travel site, what are you going after? “Travel coach,” for example, is VERY generic and VERY difficult (since it is a huge volume). “Riches are in the niches,” so identify winnable BUT focused keywords that you actually care about.  For example, “Travel Coach to Italy” or “Custom Trip Itinerary Milan” or “Custom Trip PLanning to Ireland” or “Custom Trip Planning Dublin,” etc. Your main problem is that your keywords are a) very generic on your website, and b) not well communicated to Google via basic On Page tactics.
• On Page. Assuming you have identified FOCUSED, WINNABLE keywords, you can still go awry. Your “on page” can be bad. For example, let’s assume you want to rank for “Travel Coach to Italy,” then you MUST have a landing page that focuses on that topic like Progressive.com does for motorcycle insurance.  Notice how a) they have a VERY defined keyword, and b) they have a VERY defined landing page. Not to mention “one click” links FROM the footer and FROM the home page to the landing page. So in your case, you’d need to audit your site, and make sure that your ON PAGE t’s are crossed and i’s are dotted.  (You have pages on travel philosophy, trip planning, etc.) but do NOT have a page that focuses on “Travel Coach Italy” – so you can’t rank on Google for that term because you have not CLEARLY communicated to Google that you care about that phrase.
• Off Page. Here, of course, the game shifts primarily to LINKS. Using a tool like Open Site Explorer, you can check inbound links to your site.  (I did, and you essentially have ZERO inbound links). So, without inbound links, your ON PAGE can’t function very well; a toaster won’t turn “on” unless it is “plugged in,” no matter how advanced the toaster is! So your todo here is BUILD LINKS.

So, rather than just passively waiting (which, I take it is what Squarespace advises), you need to be PRO-ACTIVE –

1. Define WINNABLE, focused KEYWORDS by building a KEYWORD WORKSHEET as I recommend in the book.
2. OPTIMIZE your ON PAGE strategy with FOCUSED landing pages, and “one click” links from your home page TO your landing pages, as well as FROM blog posts TO your landing pages, and FROM your footer TO your landing pages.
3. Work on your OFF PAGE, especially inbound link building.

SEO is a game, and you CAN win at it. But you have to “be focused” and dot those i’s and cross those t’s to win! I hope this helps!