SEO Case Study 2024: 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 2024?

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!

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.

rankings

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

overview

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.

search console

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.

total clicks

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

growing traffic

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

total visits

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!

overall traffic

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:

semrush

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 2024 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.

ahrefs data

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).

first traffic

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

growth trend

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.


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.

long tail frequency

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.

top 3 results

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”, “2024 (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.


FAQs

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

What are primary keywords and secondary keywords in SEO?

Primary keywords are “focus keywords” which define the nature of your business, app, products or services. Secondary keywords are those keywords that supplement your primary focus keywords.

How can I rank my keywords on Google first page?

Make sure to target a keyword that has low relative search volume instead of picking high volume keywords. Make sure to analyse the competition for the keyword you want to rank for.

How do I maintain my keyword rankings?

There are 2 best ways to maintain your keyword rankings.

→ Provide exact information your target audience are looking for so they will read and share your content regularly
→ Keep on building backlinks for the page you want to sustain keyword rankings

What is the best tool for keyword research?

The most effective tool we used so far is undoubtedly Semrush. It is an all in one SEO tool which is not only useful for keyword research but also helpful for competitor analysis, backlink research, site audits and so on.

How can I track my keyword rankings?

Semrush is so much helpful in tracking your keyword positions. It also shows you if there are any ups and downs in your keyword rankings so you can keep an eye on your keywords easily.

Browse more helpful case studies:


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.

Avatar for Anil Agarwal
About Author
Anil Agarwal is the Founder of Bloggerspassion. He is a full-time blogger and SEO expert who has been helping people build profitable blogs for over a decade Now. He has been featured in Over 100 Publications including Forbes, The HuffPost, HubSpot, Shopify, Semrush, Kinsta, Bluehost, Hostinger and G2.com etc. Know more about Anil Agarwal from here.

Reader Comments (26)

  1. Hello Anil sir,
    I read this article starting to ending without closing my eyes since I am a seo learning enthusiastic person.I had more doubts on seo and get ranking a website on top 10 results, Important tools to measure traffic, keywords performance, spying on competitors. But after read this article, all doubts were in my mind since a long time washed away.
    Really it’s great information.Thank you for sharing sir.!

    Reply
  2. Wonderful Article Sir . I simply loved it, very helpful, ranking in google nowadays is every blogger’s dream and this article will help many new bloggers to get the right information. Thanks for sharing the article.

    Reply
  3. Hi Anil,

    Tons of good advice on this blog. Thanks. As newbies, I have curiosity & this article helped me a lot.

    “Anything I wish I knew” –
    The understanding – that you do not need to be patient always. To succeed it makes sense to hurry. Hurry to get paying customers, hurry to increase traffic.

    Reply
    • Patience is important especially if you’re into online marketing or blogging. You can’t expect results within a month or two. It takes at least 1 or 2 years to start getting better results in terms of search traffic and sales. If not, you’ll fail miserably. Just make sure to be consistent with your blogging work and focus on learning new things related to SEO to speed up your success.

      Reply
  4. Hey Anil sir!

    It is a great post sir am going to use this startagy.i learned lot from this post and its not easy wtrite 5000words of article very superb.

    But i have question as a newbie should i backlink my home page or a perticular link ??

    Reply
  5. Hey Anil,

    Great case study and very informative. I actually just started using SEMRush for about a month now and I absolutely love it. I never realized how much information over the free version.

    It’s nice to see that it took you 52 days to rank for your keyword. I know that will vary for sites depending on several factors, but it is nice to see a case study on it.

    I’ve been trying to improve the rankings of my keywords and trying to write content that will help me improve my organic rankings.

    When I use SEMRush to find the keywords, I was trying to target keywords that the KD score was less than 50. They are harder to find, but since my site does not have that much authority, I try to avoid those keywords that have a high KD score.

    Plus, I am not a huge fan of building a bunch of backlinks to my blog. I know that it’s important, but I always have so much to do, backlinks are the last thing on my mind.

    I really enjoyed the case study, I’m going to read it again to see if I can learn anything new or if I am missing something from SEMRush.

    Have a great day 🙂

    Susan

    Reply
  6. Thanks for this awesome article Anil.
    I have two questions regarding the same.
    1)Should I Start making Backlinks from the DAY one? and What should be the ratio of Link building for Domain and Link building for Post.
    2)Getting a number of backlinks from anywhere means an off-topic website is good or getting a few backlinks from related website is better? which will help in ranking.

    Reply
  7. Anil! Writing 5000 words with lots of data and research is not a joke.kudos to your hard work.This post is definitely going to help thousands of your reader.
    One more question that I want to ask is how to find when Google crawled my site last? I am in doubt that it’s not crawling my website.
    And how to stop Google indexing my site map, disclaimer etc etc page.as I don’t want it in search result

    Reply
  8. Thanks for this information, i will definitely try those. But i want learn abou onpage seo.

    Can you please help me sir.

    Thanks

    Reply
  9. It took me so long to go through the whole case study.
    I enjoy the each para which is full of information.
    You’ve putted every aspect of SEO on the table.

    Thanks for the great case study.

    Reply
  10. Hi Anil,
    Very Interesting case study. Learned a lot from this post. Ranking on google really really difficult. However, your case study really is inspiring. I’m gonna apply the strategies discussed here. Thank you for sharing this post. Cheers.
    Kritesh

    Reply
  11. Thank you for sharing this article Anil. I came to understand that based on Domain Authority only our ranking will improve. So I’m gonna follow the steps mentioned in the case study.

    Reply
  12. Can you please give me detail explain about how to rank ecommerce website with particular keyword ranking startegies.

    Thank You

    Reply
  13. Hello,

    This blog post is giving really deep knowledge of the SEO.
    It is very descriptive article.

    Thanks and Regards,
    Prashant Shah

    Reply
  14. Thanks for such a useful information really helps that how keywords ranking is important in search result since im doing SEO from last 2yrs to my website by reading your article ill implement this strategist to my website

    Reply
  15. Thank you For sharing the Great article and this article is very helpful for me. we follow this technique in my activities to improve and I have learned a lot from you

    Reply
  16. Hey bro,
    Though the keyword gets just 1.3k searches, I see the competition isn’t easy. 72.6 difficulty rating isn’t a joke. Congrats on beating those competitors and thanks for sharing the case studies.

    Reply
  17. Great case study, Anil.

    I am assuming that your blog post took only 100-120 days because your site’s domain authority is above 50.

    Site’s with less DA may take more time in ranking. (Am I right?)

    By the way, thanks for this case-study it helps people like get some idea. 🙂

    Reply
    • That’s true. For less DA websites, it will take some more extra time. They can reduce this gap by going for even less competitive terms having keyword difficulty (KD) less than 50.

      Reply
  18. Hello Anil,

    Very informative case study. Keywords play a great role in ranking a site for a particular phrase. I have published a post a few days ago and it is ranking on the first page after 3 days of publishing the post. You are right longer content performs well in search engines and Google loves long content. Thanks for sharing this helpful case study.

    Have a Great day 🙂
    Vishwajeet

    Reply
  19. Anil the reason I love this post; it dives into what you need to do to rank on Google, in-depth. Reading, studying and using this post to rank takes time. Months. At least. Meaning it is the perfect representation for how long it takes to rank for semi-competitive or long tail keywords.

    Reply

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