Search engine optimization (SEO) makes it easier for people to find you in search results, without you having to pay for each click on your search result.
This visibility is crucial for a company’s success in a highly competitive market. The online world moves fast, which is why companies want to see results quickly. But how long does it actually take to reach the first page on Google?
Google uses various factors to assess how well your website or page performs, and then assigns it a ranking in the search results. Naturally, your website has the best competitive position when it appears at the top of the search results. That’s why you want to be as easy to find as possible for a selection of keywords.
The following three pillars of SEO contribute to this:
Include specific keywords (and their synonyms) that you want people to find you by in your content.
SEO specialists know that the real story is just a bit more complicated and detailed. Google is getting smarter and smarter at ranking web pages, so the bar keeps getting set higher. In addition, competition is always lurking, and it’s crucial to continuously work on improving discoverability.
Tip: Want to know what link building is? Then read this blog post.
Ahrefs conducted a study to determine a realistic timeframe for a company to rise to a spot in the top 10 of search results. The study found that most of the top-ranked web pages are 2 years old or older. Only 22% of the web pages in the top 10 were created just one year ago.
Table 1: The average age of web pages in Google’s top 10 results.
Table 2 presents the results from Table 1 in greater detail. Here you can see that web pages created less than a year ago are almost entirely absent from Google’s top 10. Furthermore, only 1.2% of these new pages ranked in first place.
Table 2: The number of web pages that were created less than 1 year ago and rank in Google’s top 10.
This is one of the most frequently asked questions by our clients. Understandably, a company wants to see results as quickly as possible from the services we provide. SEO takes a lot of time and energy because so many factors contribute to search rankings, and these factors must be continuously updated. Since the process depends so heavily on these factors, it’s not possible to give a definitive answer here.
Ahrefs reaches the same conclusion. They state that pages with keywords that aren’t popular can rank in the top 10 within 2 to 6 months. Pages with highly searched keywords often take at least a year to achieve this. These are the pages where an SEO team works hard to achieve these results.
Predicting your success on Google remains a difficult question. Ahrefs’ research reveals several interesting findings, which also demonstrate that search engine optimization is a long-term process.
If you want to rank on competitive pages, you should expect it to take at least one year. To reach the top position, it can even take two to three years. We can say with certainty that an SEO agency with specialists adds value, and that patience and knowledge are the keys to success.
Source: https://ahrefs.com/blog/how-long-does-it-take-to-rank/
Jarik Oosting is one of the Netherlands’ best-known SEO and GEO specialists and is the founder of SmartRanking. With more than 15 years of experience, he has worked on over 150 SEO and GEO projects for Dutch and international companies. His expertise ranges from technical SEO and complex migrations to strategies and visibility in AI models.
In January 2025, Jarik introduced GEO (also called AEO) to the Netherlands. He wrote the Dutch book “GEO – Zichtbaar zijn in de antwoorden van AI” about AEO, is an author and editor at Frankwatching, and a contributor to Marketingfacts. As a speaker at events, he shares his knowledge about SEO, GEO, and the search landscape.