How long does it take for a website to index and position itself on Google?

One of the biggest challenges for any business that is preparing to request SEO services is figuring out how long this optimization process can take. The SEO should be considered as any other traditional marketing tool - it can take time to get significant results. This is the number one thing you should keep in mind: " SEO  is like a marathon, not a sprint race ". And if your website is new then you will have to be even more patient.

A new website will not appear in search engines immediately after its creation without first applying some basic SEO techniques to the website.

Building an online reputation takes time to reach a solid and authoritative position in the eyes of Google and users. To get to the goal you aspire to (more visibility, more users and more customers) you need to invest in people and resources and, after the strategic phase, in an accurate measurement of results as soon as the first changes have been implemented.

Yes, but how long will you have to wait? In other words, what are Google's indexing times? There is no clear answer, but in principle, the most important search engine takes no less than a week and no more than a month to insert a site in its indexes (hence the term " indexing ") and at least two or three months to start positioning. Don’t worry, Semalt experts are going to give you more details about those aspects.

Unfortunately, in many cases, the results of this SEO process cannot be gathered immediately. There are a number of external variables that are beyond your control and can play an important part in how quickly and successfully your website climbs the search engines' ranking.

First, search engines algorithms such as Google, Yahoo and Bing are constantly updated with more or less relevant changes to continuously serve the most relevant results to their users. For this reason, it is good to refer to an SEO expert or a SEO company that deals with SEO and can continuously monitor these changes in search engine algorithms.

Secondly, the competitiveness of the industry and the search terms you are targeting can also influence your ability to easily climb the search engine rankings. Generally generic search terms such as "events", "cars" or "hotels" will be much more competitive and much more difficult to position themselves than more detailed keywords related to your business and your website, for example, "corporate events Rome "Or" car rental Milan "or" luxury hotel Bologna ". Usually, it will be easier and faster to position yourself in the search engines' ranking for specific keywords that are less competitive and more relevant to your business.

Finally, there is no way of knowing which SEO strategies or techniques your competitors are using. This is why it is vital that you use a long-term SEO strategy to ensure that your website is constantly optimized against your competitors. If you stop applying SEO to your site but your competitors, on the contrary, continue with their SEO, it won't take long before you are overtaken by them until they completely disappear from the hot positions (ie those that generate profits) of the search engines.

In general, the term “index” refers to an ordered register in which data can be found easily. It works similarly with Google: If a search query is started, all indexed websites are searched for matches with the respective keywords. In order to appear in the search results on Google, the website in question must be listed, indexed, in the index.

The indexing is usually done automatically. For websites that are still in edit mode, often are deliberately suppressed because the page should not be found before the planned publication. It is therefore important to allow indexing again when it is published. If a Google website is not found at all, a previously set indexing ban is the first indication of a possible cause.

Indexing and positioning are not the same things, as you might think. While the first term refers to the set of activities to be carried out in order for the pages of a site to end up within the Google archive, the second refers to the best practices to be applied to increase the position among the search results at the inside the SERP. Being indexed is the indispensable condition for aiming to position yourself as high as possible. The factors to be taken into consideration in order to have all the resources ready to be correctly scanned by search engines are manifold and require tools and technical training.

But apart from such careless mistakes, there can be problems with automatic indexing: This generally works via bots, the so-called “spiders” or “crawlers”, which constantly jump from one website to the next and thus index them as newly identified websites. However, the speed of this crawl depends on various, not entirely transparent factors, so the process can take between a few seconds and more than a month. But who wants to wait over a month for the new website to be found on Google?

There are actually several ways to speed up indexing:

Google provides ways that you can apply for indexing. The only requirement is a free Google account. However, this way neither guaranteed how long an indexation lasts nor carried it out.

In Search Console is a tool from Google that allows the performance of your website to be monitored. A sitemap can be entered via the menu item "Crawling", which is then crawled in the following 24 hours. You can track the status of this process in the tool and check the successful crawling. However, this service is limited to ten URLs per month.

This Google tool is actually designed for checking the mobile usability of websites, but it also makes it possible to send your own website to Google. The page in question does not even have to be mobile-optimized. In addition, you do not need your own Google account for this option.

Finally, you can increase the frequency with which the bots "crawl" your website through various aspects of your SEO strategy. These include, for example, a high number of high-quality backlinks and short update intervals for the website, as well as high website speed and a good PageRank value (a page rating based on the number and quality of incoming links).

It is easy to check whether the indexing was ultimately successful. Just search for your brand name in the Google search bar. The alternative is to use the site operator ( site: nomesito.com):  Google presents a preview of all the pages in its archives. Through Google Search Console you can request the indexing of a page. Recently, the functionality has also been added to check whether a page is correctly present in Google's archives by directly submitting the URL and, if necessary, being able to request a new analysis directly. 

To obtain appreciable positioning results, there is a need for a strategy set not only on the short term but also on the medium and long term: therefore, a strategic perspective is essential, by virtue of which it is possible to plan in advance the objectives to be achieved in a certain period of time (for example, one year). When it comes to organic positioning, therefore, not the paid one, various factors come into play: each project has its difficulties and the times are never replicable.

In general, however, it can be assumed that if you work in an uncompetitive market it will certainly be faster, easier and cheaper to position yourself, while for highly competitive projects the times could also extend beyond the 12 months of processing before being able to have a good feedback in terms of visibility and turnover. Taking into account the time taken to obtain  SEO results, an effective program could be to publish the pages of the site in the course of work, as the project is developed. 

A site that has been active for some time will speed up the indexing process of new pages that will be added over time. To obtain results in shorter times it is possible to resort to the use of paid campaigns, or a service that ensures a good number of visits in a couple of weeks. It is also true that, with the SEO activity, once you reach the position in the search engines it fluctuates with certain gradualness while using the Google Ads platform once the budget is over, you no longer appear and in the long run the investment could become important. 

At this point, you may wonder what is the reason why it takes so long to get results. And, perhaps, you might think that there is a shortcut to go, an alternative way that speeds everything up.

Unfortunately, this is not the case, because the positioning results do not depend only on the success of the web marketing strategy, but also on the dynamics of Google: the search engines, in fact, need time to understand if a site is reliable or not. To do this, it must assess the originality and validity of the content that has been published, understand if it is a spam portal and identify any content copied from other sites.

The Google crawler, which is the tool with which the Net is explored and browsed, takes action and makes sure that a site is forfeited with its links. After that, once the site is indexed, a daily spider visits it periodically, integrating new content.

Some of What You See Is What You Get. Tools like Wix have basic SEO functionality, but what you can do on these sites is extremely limited. There is a risk of having a site that is also aesthetically pleasing, but which is not recognized correctly by Google. Creating and maintaining a website requires a set of skills that can hardly be found in a single person like in a single tool. 

Even famous WordPress plug-ins like Yoast, while presenting useful features, are likely to confuse the occasional user by making them make unnecessary if not even harmful efforts. In the case of a professional website designed to generate contacts, present services or sell products, in-depth SEO analysis is essential to understand if all the resources are carefully valued so that users from search engines find easily and fast what they are looking for.

In particular, in the case of a site makeover or a restyling, the help of a specialized consultant can make the transition infinitely easier, allowing you to seize all the commercial opportunities that open up for a properly optimized site.

The first option is to focus less on short-term keywords with a lot of competition and more on long-term keywords with little competition. So instead of "bake cake" with 22,000 monthly search volumes, use a longer phrase that is searched less frequently. “Baking cakes without an oven” is only searched for 50 times a month, for example, but it also has less competition. The probability of ranking on page one with this keyword is much higher.

The second option, which is far more inefficient, would be to have a good backlink profile. Building good backlinks takes time. Content marketing is best suited for this. Publish regular content with keywords that don't bring much competition. With high-quality content, you can then try to generate backlinks to these pages and to the homepage. This can strengthen the authority of the page, that is to say, the page gets more relevance for Google because it is recommended by other pages.

Basically, it definitely takes time for a good ranking, but a coordinated SEO strategy can shorten the duration or make a top-ranking more likely. Nevertheless, timeliness is extremely important, especially online. Accordingly, Google is under increasing pressure to evaluate positive signals from user behaviour as quickly as possible. Changes that affect loading times, titles, meta descriptions or redirects, for example, now have an impact on the ranking after weeks, not months.

On the other hand, more time needs to be taken into account when it comes to user-friendliness and its optimization. Changes in the design, the page structure or the logo have a very slow effect since Google includes a broad database over a long period of time - you can, therefore, pursue from the past longer here.

Various tools that determine a visibility index can also serve as little helpers on the way to the wish ring. He usually places the ranking in relation to the search volume and takes the click rates into account. For example, a ranking for a keyword with a high search volume is given more value than the same ranking for a keyword with a low search volume. If you keep an eye on such factors, you can work on the best possible Google ranking easier, faster and more effectively based on the corresponding feedback. 

In most cases, SEO will not give immediate results and the reason for this is that there are a number of variables that cannot be controlled. However, by making the appropriate strategies and maintaining a continuous long-term SEO strategy, you will begin to see valid and meaningful results and continue to add more and more value to your business

As a matter of fact, modification and control work can give the first visible results, at least two or three months could pass: if you expect immediate positioning results, you risk being disappointed. This does not mean that it is never possible to see short-term results, it only means that in order to evaluate the goodness of business on the web it is necessary not to be in a hurry.