More often than not, the answer you’ll get when you ask a digital marketer this question is: ‘It depends’. This is because there are simply too many variables to take into account and the amount of time it will take a website to climb up the Google ladder will depend on things like page speed, content relevance, backlinks, domain power, and many more. In fact, there are at least 200 different ranking factors currently used by Google.

Luckily, a study from SEO tool provider Ahrefs may be able to offer a slightly more definite answer after all. First, the Ahrefs took 2 million random keywords and pulled data on the Top 10 ranking pages for each of them in order to determine the average age of the top-ranking pages on Google.

As it turned out, the average Top 10 ranking page is over 2 years old on average, while the pages that rank at position #1 on Google are nearly 3 years old. According to the study results, only 22% of pages currently ranked in the Top 10 are created within 1 year.

When Ahrefs study moved on to investigate how many pages at each ranking position were younger than 1 year, the data showed that the SERP is obviously dominated by older pages.

So what does this tell us about the most important question every website owner wants an answer to: “How long does it take to rank in Google?” Take a look at the infographic below by The Website Group and find out more about the Ahrefs study!