Recently Entrepreneur writer Nina Zipkin covered a fascinating infographic put together by The Website Group, a U.K. – based digital marketing agency, Ahrefs, an SEO tool platform. The infographic looks at data collected and analyzed by Ahrefs based on two million random keywords. By looking at the top ten ranking pages for each of those keywords, they pulled together some great insights on how long it takes to get to that coveted top-ten spot.
Search engine optimization (SEO) has become an essential part of any online marketing effort. For those who are not familiar with SEO (cringe), here’s how Search Engine Watch describes the practice: “Quite simply, SEO is the umbrella term for all the methods you can use to ensure the visibility of your website and its content on search engine results pages (SERPs). The methods vary from technical practices you can achieve behind the scenes on your website (we tend to refer to this as ‘on-page SEO’) to all the promotional ’off-page’ approaches you can use to raise your site’s visibility (link-building, social media marketing).”
In many ways, having a website appear in the top 10 search results on Google is the holy grail of SEO. That’s because Google is the search engine that powers roughly two thirds of searches – nearly double the share of all other search engines – i.e., Yahoo, Bing, etc. – combined.
Here are some of the key insights from the infographic.
Age of Top Ten Pages
Based on the data collected from analyzing search results of the two million random keywords, the study found that the average age of the number one result was roughly 950 days – a little over 2.5 years. Nearly 60 percent of pages in the top ten were 3 years old or more. There is a steady decline in average age as we go further down the rankings, with the average age of the tenth result around 650 days, a little less than two years.
Percentage of Pages Less Than One Year Old in Top Ten
The graphic for this is pretty striking. Just over one percent of pages less than a year old show up in Google’s top spot. The percentage more or less grows as we move down the top ten, but even for the tenth-place spot, which has the highest percentage of pages less than one year old, only about four percent of pages in that spot have been around less than a year.
High Volume Versus Low Volume Key Words
The study also compared the time to reach a top ten spot for high volume versus low volume keywords. The infographic doesn’t go into the specifics of how that is defined; however, there are obviously some words that are searched for more frequently than others. In any event, the study found that only 0.3% of pages found their way into the top ten for a high-volume keyword in less than one year.
The infographic contains a lot more information than we covered here, and it’s worth a look. It should provide some insights or at least interesting information for anyone interested in online marketing or SEO. One key takeaway for impatient business owners and business leaders: achieving success in SEO takes time!
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Strategic Communications, LLC, works with B2B clients to help them achieve their goals through effective content marketing and management with both internal and external audiences. We are adept at evaluating and analyzing communication efforts and working with clients to plan, create and publish high-quality, unique content, through both on- and offline media to achieve desired results. Our background in business journalism, marketing, PR/media relations and online communications makes us well-positioned to serve the needs of 21st-century marketers.
We serve clients who are looking for help creating content for a wide array of channels—from social media posts to full-length manuscripts, and everything in between. We focus primarily on service-related B2B topics and work with a number of independent consultants interested in building their thought leadership through online channels. For ongoing content management, our first step is to fully understand your goals, objectives and competitive landscape.
Then we’ll conduct a thorough analysis and assessment of your digital presence, compared to competitors, and recommend a communication strategy to achieve your goals. But, we also regularly take on individual projects – white papers, blog posts, contributed articles, etc. If you’re interested in learning more, let us know!
(Strategic Communications is certified as a Woman-Owned Business Enterprise through the Wisconsin Department of Administration.)
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Tags: Adwords, Google algorithms, Google Analytics, Google search, Google+, keywords, long tail search, optimizing your website, search engine optimization, SEO, web site optimization, website optimization