The short answer: 3-6 months.
The long answer: It depends on the keyword difficulty, your topical authority and domain authority, and backlinks.
Therefore, give Google a few weeks to see the incredible value of your article and give it the rank it deserves.
At Rank Lyx, we make sure to write content that Google and readers love. We have extensive internal guidelines that help us craft original and helpful articles.
However, a few things are beyond our control.
Table of Contents
1. Keyword Difficulty
Keywords are the search terms people type into Google. Some keywords are harder to rank for because lots of websites target them, while others are less competitive.
Before writing your content, we assess the keyword difficulty and set reasonable expectations.
Typically, here is how long it takes to rank in the top 10:
- Easy Keywords: 1–3 months if the site has authority and the post is well-optimized.
- Medium Keywords: 3–6 months with consistent SEO efforts, content updates, and quality backlinks.
- Hard Keywords: 6–12+ months, requiring a complete content strategy, strong backlinks, and domain authority.
Please check the Topical Map (if we created one for you). We indicate the keyword difficulty (KD) taken from Ahrefs.
If you don’t have a topical map, you can use free tools like Ahrefs Keyword Generator to assess the difficulty of the keyword.
Now that you know your keyword difficulty, let’s view another reason why you are not ranking.
Recommended Reading
2. Topical Authority
Topical Authority is when your website covers all the topics and subtopics related to a main keyword or subject.
For example, if your main keyword is “customer service,” how many articles did you write about it? 2? 10? 20?
Did you cover important articles like:
- What is a Customer Support Manager?
- What is a Customer Service Agent?
- What Are Customer Support Operations?
- Best Customer Service Tools
- Customer Support vs Customer Service
- What is Automated Customer Service?
- And 100+ more.
These are essential articles to write and prove your website is an authority in the “customer service” niche. If you only have 10 or 20 articles covering your main keyword, the latest post we wrote for you might not rank.
Simply put, when you write many articles around your main keyword, Google considers you an authority and rewards you with traffic.
The latest article we wrote for you is one of the many to achieve topical authority. Once achieved, you’ll drive more traffic than you ever dreamed.
3. A High Number of Low-Quality Articles
A low-quality article is poorly researched and lacks originality. It doesn’t provide value to readers because it just copies or paraphrases material from other sites.
It’s usually an article you write using AI (500-1000 words). You simply copied and used the content without adding substantial and original value.
Why are we talking about this?
On March 5th, 2024, Google attacked websites that had low-quality content.
As a result, tens of thousands of websites were affected by this core update. In fact, Google manually deindexed hundreds of websites.
Does your website have dozens of articles created with AI or created without originality? Do these articles rank and drive traffic?
If the answer is no, they are probably low-quality content that Google doesn’t like.
This doesn’t mean these low-quality articles prevent the good ones from ranking. After all, Search engines evaluate individual pages.
However, the overall quality of your site influences its authority and trustworthiness. Therefore, a high amount of low-quality content can affect your entire website.
Action: 1) Audit your existing articles. 2) Update or remove low-quality content. 3) Focus on creating unique content only.
4. Irregular Publishing Schedule
Before publishing the latest post, when was the last time you published an article?
Search engines often prioritize regularly updated websites. When a site has a long period of inactivity, Google may not frequently crawl it. It may also reduce your site’s visibility in search results.
Therefore, if your last post was published weeks or months ago, the new post might take longer to be indexed and rank in the top 10.
However, this does not mean your new post is doomed to underperform. If your site has strong domain authority, such as a good backlink profile, solid on-page SEO practices, and a history of ranking well, the new post will eventually rank.
5. Domain Authority or Rating
Domain Authority measures the credibility and trustworthiness of your website. Websites with many links from other trusted sites have higher authority.
SEO tools use a scale of 0 to 100 to measure your site’s authority.
In simple terms, how many websites link to your website? What is their credibility?
Use tools like Ahrefs Authority Checker to assess your website authority.
Let’s say you published a blog post about ‘automated customer service.’ What websites are you competing against?
The image below shows that you compete against Salesforce, Zendesk, Hiver, Intercom, and Hubspot. 100,000+ sites link to these competitors, which increased their Domain Authority.
Though Domain Authority is not a direct ranking factor, we encourage you to build more good links to your site (especially the homepage).
We’ve talked about building links to your site homepage to build authority. Let’s now talk about sending links to articles.
6. Good Backlinks
Building backlinks—links from other websites to your article (not the homepage)—can significantly boost its position on Google.
Here are two reasons:
- When reputable websites link to your article, search engines see this as a sign that your content is trustworthy and valuable.
- Search engines use links to find new content. Links from other sites will take Google to your article, and it will index it quickly. As such, it will appear in search results.
Let’s go back to the “automated customer service” example.
According to Ahrefs’s data, Zendesk, Salesforce, and Intercom have 30+ websites linking to their article.
These backlinks + topical authority + domain authority help these sites rank high for the “automated customer service” query.
To Sum Up
At Rank Lyx, we write quality content that Google and visitors love. Let me ask you a question:
“Do you doubt the quality of our content? Is there anything that makes you feel it’s low quality?”
If the answer is yes, please let us know. We will be happy to hear your feedback and explain our approach.
If the answer is no, please rest assured that we went above and beyond to write helpful and optimized content.
We recommend that you give the article 1-3 months, depending on the five factors mentioned in this guide. If you still have concerns, kindly contact us. We will be happy to help.
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