SEO Case Study 2025: How Long Does It Take to Rank for a Keyword?

Curious to know how long it takes for a new keyword to attract thousands of visitors from Google in 2025?

We recently worked on an interesting SEO case study and found some amazing things that are involved in improving Google rankings. So if you’re someone who’s interested in knowing how long does it take for a new keyword to generate thousands of visitors from search, this case study is just for you.

Are you curious to find out the results of our case study? Let’s jump into the details without further ado.

Want to Rank Faster? Learn from Our SEO Case Study!

Let’s break down the key findings from our case study:

• Discover the exact keyword we targeted and its search volume
• Learn when we published the post that generated lots of search traffic
• See how much search traffic this post has generated so far
• Find out how many additional keywords this post is currently ranking for
• Current keyword position for the keyword (along with position changes)
• And other interesting and important details along with screenshots

Important data of the keyword we ranked for

Here’s the post used for this case study: Pinterest alternatives which is currently ranking at FIFTH position in Google search.

The keyword we targeted (i.e Pinterest alternatives) has a global monthly search volume of 3300 searches.

So here is some interesting data that gives you a better idea about how long it takes to rank for a keyword in the first page results on Google.

• Monthly search volume of the keyword: 3300 searches
• Date of publishing the post: 16th July 2023
• Total visitors the post received (so far): 13,200+ visitors
• How long did it take to get into the first page results of Google: 52 days

Now, let’s dive into further details so you can understand this case study even better to improve keyword rankings on Google.

The date of publishing the blog post

The date of publishing the blog post that we used for this Google ranking case study was: 16th July 2023.

In Google Search Console, first time traffic was noticed on the same day i.e 16th July 2023.

As you can see above the date was: 16th July 2023, when we got 35 impressions.

In the first 3 months of publishing the post, it only generated 243 clicks.

After 6 months, the traffic is slowly going up and the post generated over 1800 visits.

Surprisingly, the post generated over 9000 visits after 1 year of publishing the post.

Fast forward to September 2024 i.e after 14 months of first publishing the post, it attracted over 13,200 visitors and 9,99,900 total impressions!

Interesting thing to notice

You can’t get #1 ranking for keywords with decent search volume within a day or two unless you’ve an authority site with a lot of quality links.

The traffic grows consistently over time – it takes at least an year to see significant results for most keywords!

How many keywords the post is currently getting traffic from?

If you’re curious to find out the number of keywords the post is currently getting traffic from Google, it is ranking for 132 keywords.

Here’s the screenshot from Semrush, Google.com (worldwide) Ranking for its targeted terms:

If you observe the above screenshot carefully (which was taken from Semrush), you’ll notice a couple of important things about this case study for 2025 to improve Google rankings.

• The number of keywords: As you can clearly see from the above screenshot from Semrush, the blog post we are using for this case study is ranking for 132 keywords. This is important to know because we mainly focused on just ONE primary keyword (although we used several LSI relevant keywords and sprinkled them nicely within the post).
• The average positions for each keyword: Most of the keywords are ranking on the first 5 top search results (see the above screenshot) which is the primary reason for generating more traffic from search.

Important thing to notice

If you’re ranking #1 for a keyword, you’ll tend to rank for a ton of other relevant keywords as well.

In fact, Ahrefs did an interesting case study on how many keywords can you rank for one page and revealed some of the amazing facts.

Here’s the illustration of Ahrefs case study.

What did you learn from it? The average #1 ranking page will also rank in the top 10 for nearly 1,000 other relevant keywords while the median value is more than two times smaller which is around 400 keywords. That’s a great news, right?

How awesome it is to rank #1 for a keyword and get search traffic from a ton of other keywords as well. That’s why it’s so important for you to get #1 ranking for a keyword that you’re targeting.

How long did it take to get into the first page for our target keyword?

So here comes the most important question of this case study: how long does it take to rank on the first page for a keyword in Google search?

It took only a couple of days to get into the second page ranking for our target keyword. We got into the 2nd page of Google in the same month we published the post (i.e July 2023).

It took exactly 5 months to get into the top 3 search results and rank #1 for several keywords.

So, what’s the bottomline?

While it took only a few days to enter the second page, consistent efforts and proper optimizations led to a first-page ranking within five months. This shows the importance of proper keyword research, effective SEO techniques, etc to drive organic traffic.

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3 Important Things Helped Us Improve Google Rankings for Our Target Keyword

Here are some of the important things we learnt from this case study. If you want to improve Google rankings for any keyword, make sure to focus on following 3 things and you’ll be getting amazing results for sure.

1. Spend quality time in coming up with better keyword ideas

If you’ve gone through this SEO case study carefully, you’ve probably noticed the #1 reason for getting #1 rankings for our target keyword on Google: we did smart keyword research.

If you want to improve Google rankings, start with keyword research. Spend quality time in coming up with better keyword ideas so you can bring more visitors from search engines like Google.

Make sure to focus on using long tail keywords while doing keyword research. Do you know why? Long tail keywords are often easier to rank for and help you get traffic from multiple keywords.

Here’s an illustration that tells you the importance of using long tail keywords.

You will observe from the above image that, there’s a low search frequency and competition for long tail keywords. That’s the reason why you should only pick long tail keywords no matter what your blog topics are.

If you look at our keyword research process, you’ll notice that we always find two types of keywords which are listed below.

1. A primary keyword (along with monthly searches)
2. Couple of secondary keywords (along with monthly searches)

A primary keyword is what we pick with around 1000 to 1500 monthly searches and this primary keyword will be used in prominent places such as;

• Page title
• Meta description
• Sub headings (h2, h3)
• Image alt tag
• URL
• Within body (multiple times)

We also spend decent amount of time to find couple of secondary keywords which are highly relevant to the primary keyword we’re trying to rank for. We carefully include these secondary keywords all over the blog post to get search traffic from multiple keywords. This is the reason why we’ve ranked for 69 relevant keywords which are generating traffic to just one page.

Use the same keyword research strategy if you want to rank for any keyword quickly on Google search.

That being said, here are 2 major SEO tools we use for keyword research and optimization.

1. Semrush: Hands down, Semrush is one of the best SEO tools which can be used for finding a ton of profitable and low volume keywords no matter what industry you are in. It can also be used for finding and fixing your website issues, domain comparison, competitor research and so on.

So what about the cost of Semrush?

Try Semrush free for 14 days

Semrush has 3 pricing plans which are listed below.

• Pro account which costs you $129.95 per month which is a perfect plan for starters who wants to get more search traffic.
• Guru account costs you $249.95 per month and perfect fit for small business owners who wants to grow their websites using SEO where you’ll get all the Pro features plus: branded reports, historical data and extended limits
• Business account costs you $499.95 per month and perfect for agencies and big brands which are looking to grow their websites using SEO where you’ll get all the Guru features along with White label reports, API access and extended limits with sharing options and so on.

Here, we’re evaluating Semrush to learn about its complete plans and features.

2. Rank Math SEO: Keyword research is one thing and keyword optimization is another thing. Using your primary and secondary keywords within your content is the difference between getting first page and 10th page rankings on Google search.

Here’s where Rank Math SEO plugin helps you easily optimize your content for your target keywords. We also recently moved from Yoast SEO premium to RankMath plugin because of its amazing features.

So how much does the Rank Math SEO plugin cost you?

It’s completely FREE to use. Although it has a premium version, its free plan is enough for most beginners. 

Suggested Reading: Rank Math SEO: Why We Ditched Yoast?

2. Informative blog posts rank well in Google 

The post we used in our case study is an informative blog post that discusses various alternatives to Pinterest.

Informative blog posts ALWAYS rank well in Google search.

Google always tries to give better experiences to the searchers. If it finds people are spending more time (dwell time) on a web page, it is considered as a positive user experience and gives it top rankings on Google searches.

Try to make your content as informative and detailed as possible. Our case study post has over 2000 words.

So what can you take away from the study? If you want to get first page rankings for a keyword, try to create a 2000+ word blog post so you can increase your odds of getting first page rankings.

Longer blog posts are also helpful for so many reasons such as;

• Longer blog posts tend to get more social shares
• Longer blog posts attract more backlinks from other websites
• Longer blog posts remain valuable over time
• Longer blog posts are usually considered as authoritative posts
• Longer blog posts immediately grab people’s attention (who doesn’t love to spend more time on reading something informative)

Just make sure NOT to use filler content in order to hit the 2000+ word mark. After all, no one likes to read a generic piece of content that doesn’t add any value.

3. Backlinks are vital

We also learned the importance of backlinks to be able to rank fast for a keyword.

We noticed the amount of backlinks (from various domains) also plays a key role in getting FASTER search traffic. That means, if you’re building quality links to your target page from a variety of domains, you’re going to get top 3 search results faster (than those compared to pages with no or less backlinks).

In our case study, we attracted 68 backlinks from 18 various domains. Although we didn’t specifically focus on building links for this particular post (most of the links are organic or through blog comments), but it still performed well.

That being said, if you want to attract backlinks to your blog posts to improve Google rankings, make sure to follow these tips.

• Find out the content types that naturally attract links: Usually educating blog posts get organic backlinks when compared to commercial intent blog posts. There are also a couple of content types that attract a ton of links naturally which include infographics, case studies (the one you’re currently reading), in-depth tutorials, interview posts and so on.
• Start writing on Quora or Medium using your blog posts URL: This is important for two reasons: keeps your backlink profile look natural and also helps you drive targeted visitors.
• Ask for backlinks: If you’ve written a great blog post and reached out to other people who are already linking to that type of content (also called as skyscraper technique), the chances are they’ll be glad to link to your content too. Just make sure to reach out to people and ask for a link. If they like your content, you’ll get a link. Bingo!
• Guest posts: Writing guest posts for other sites in your industry is the surefire way to get dofollow backlinks. Make sure to use guest posting strategy for every blog post that you think is a traffic puller. Instead of linking to your website’s home page, link to your inner blog posts while writing guest posts so you can get more SEO benefits.

Few Takeaways from This Case Study

Here are few things you can learn from this case study on improving your keyword rankings.

It takes time to get into top 3 search results

It took us nearly 3 months to get into top 5 results for our target keyword in Google search. If you expect to rank #1 for a keyword immediately after publishing it, you are going to hate yourself.

Just like any other long time investment, Google search traffic takes its own time. So you have to be patient. Just make sure to track your keyword positions on Google and try to get into top 100 search results as soon as possible (after publishing your post).

You can start leaving thoughtful comments on other sites, build backlinks and get more social shares to increase the odds of getting into top 100 search results for any keyword. If your content is good enough, it will definitely get into top 10 SERPs within a few weeks.

By getting into top 5 search results, you can also rank for multiple keywords

We’re currently ranking for over 130 keywords by getting into 5th position for our target keyword. What can we learn from this?

By getting into the first-page search results, you’ll also rank for a ton of multiple keywords which are relevant to your primary keyword. This thing alone helps you attract hundreds (if not thousands) of visitors from search engines.

It’s also important for you to select multiple LSI keywords (also considered as secondary keywords) to generate more search engine traffic to your site.

LSI keywords play a big role

This is one of the biggest takeaways from this case study. It’s a dumb idea to only target ONE keyword per page. You have to find and target multiple LSI keywords that are highly relevant to your primary keyword you want to rank for.

So how do you find LSI keywords to bring additional search traffic?

There are two simple ways;

• Use Google auto suggestion tool: Google auto suggestion tool gives you LSI keyword ideas as you type. Just make sure to come up with a couple of keyword ideas for every primary keyword you want to rank for using Google auto suggestion tool. Also try to add suffixes like “free”, “best”, “2025 (or the year)” etc to make your headlines interesting.
• Use “searches related to” option: At the end of every search term on Google SERP results, Google shows you “searches related to” option where you can find a good number of highly relevant long tail keyword ideas for your search terms. You can insert these LSI keywords within your blog posts to get rankings for multiple keywords.

Using LSI keywords within your content helps you optimize your blog posts for various keywords and you can also avoid keyword stuffing.

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FAQs

Here are some interesting FAQs you should know if you want to improve keyword rankings on Google search.

Browse more helpful case studies:

• How I made $16000 plus while selling a single affiliate product?
• How I end up making $13000 within a week time?
• How We Exploded Our Traffic to Reach 2 Million Views with Semrush

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Final Thoughts

It took us a lot of time to create this SEO case study as we had to carefully compile a lot of data points along with screenshots to provide you accurate details on how long does it usually take to rank for a keyword in first page of Google.

If you found this case study to improve Google rankings useful, do share it with others so they can benefit. Let us know what you think about it in the comments below.