We often get asked how long it will take for a website to get listed in Google. We use Google as our benchmark here mainly due to the fact that Google has by far the largest share in the search engine market with latest figures showing they are currently around 73% of the Global search market share – (https://www.netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx)
The answer is normally that it is impossible to say as there are many factors that will influence the result. Google actually states that it can take anywhere between 4 days and 4 weeks and sometimes even longer (https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/aaT9SBrE6l4)
Some of the factors include:
We recently worked with a new company called Waves Exterior Property Cleaning who was having difficulty even finding their own website when searching in Google – not a good start!. Although we never like to make any promises we were fairly certain that we could rebuild the website with better and more ‘searchable’ content (point 2 above), to be search engine friendly (point 4 above) and take the necessary measures to get Google to index the site as soon as possible (point 5 above).
With all this in mind we created a plan for the website structure to maximise the services and unique selling points of our client. We gave them a list of page titles and asked them to write some content in a style that they would use if they were speaking to a prospective client face-to-face. We think this is an often overlooked factor when writing really good website content. Always remember people like to buy from people so the more personable and friendly you can make your website content the better chance you will have of engaging the person who is reading your page.
So, the site was rebuilt using our favourite website content management system – WordPress, what else – and filled with new content and images that the client had been collecting over the preceding months. The site was built, tested and launched within 2 weeks on the 16th July 2016. We immediately made sure that the website was submitted to Google via the Google Search Console and that is contained all the appropriate files such as a sitemap.xml file, a robots.txt file, Google Analytics code etc.
We are able to report that the site is now indexed and searchable. In fact we have even managed to get listed in the top 4 positions for one of the most popular search term ‘exterior property cleaning, cornwall‘ (See below). Needless to say both our client and us are very pleased with the results and will continue to update the website with fresh and useful content for the foreseeable future.
We never guarantee 1st page on Google and in many cases getting on the first page for the ideal search phrases will not be possible due to the service or products that the site is offering and what online competition it has. However, there are some things that we can do for you to help make sure that your website stands the best possible chance of getting to where it needs to be.
The whole area of rankings and SEO is a very fast moving and technical area but with a few simple steps and working with people like us, your chances will be greatly increased – that we CAN promise!