How long does it take for a new website to appear at the top of the search results?

I had a phone call from a potential client yesterday and he wanted to know how long after his website was launched it would take it to show up at the top of the search engine results. I actually get that type of question a lot.

A few years ago, the answer was quite a bit less complex than it is today...but it was never simple. The advent—better yet, the explosion--of social media has and continues to change the answer by the minute. I don't believe one person can reasonably answer that question fully anymore. It has become increasingly necessary to specialize—there is no one-size fits all approach, and there is much to know about each website promotional opportunity presented. There are literally thousands of variables that impact whether your website will show up early in the search results, including things you simply have no control over, like the economy, the demand for your product or service, the money your competition is spending to outrank you in search, and how many competitors you have. The list goes on.

The good news is that there are things you can do to increase your visibility on the web--either by doing them yourself, or hiring qualified professionals to do them for you. As I write this article, I continue to be excited—giddy even—about the unlimited opportunity and potential power of this online medium to drive your business success. I touch on some basics in this article, but at the risk of oversimplifying something that is really not that simple, just know that every item I list could easily take another article—or in some cases book—to fully explain. To keep this article manageable, I will provide some helpful links where you can learn more.

To make sure you have a strong and effective website that will rank well in search:

Know your Audience
Who will visit your website and why? What do they want and need; like and dislike? What are their Internet habits (what do they search for and where do they spend money)? Answers to these questions are vital to determining the content of your website in addition to the way it will be designed, and the features that will be offered.

Understand the Importance of Color
The colors you use have a direct impact on your potential customer, effecting user engagement, emotion, brand recognition, and memory. Visit the Color-Wheel-Pro website to learn the meanings associated with different colors. Numerous studies have been conducted on color and the impact it has in marketing—just search the web and you'll be inundated. One study conducted by the Institute for Color Research revealed that human beings make a subconscious judgment about a person, environment, or item within 90 seconds of initial viewing, and that between 62% and 90% of that assessment is based on color alone. Clearly, color matters in design.

Make it Visually Appealing, Powerful, and Relevant
Along with the color choices you make, the layout of the website should be pleasing to the eye, balanced, and not overly crowded. The images you choose should compliment your message, and your copy should be well written, relevant, powerful, and even provocative if appropriate to your business. Each one of these factors influences whether your website visitor will stay or click away to one of your competitors.

Writing for the Web
Make sure you are using correct grammar and spelling. Copy for the web should be short and to the point, because people are typically looking for something specific. If you have lengthy white papers or articles, just put them in their own place (like a blog, or article archive) so users can go read them if they so choose.  Since web users have to sift through tons of information, they tend to scan until they find it. If your key information is buried in a lengthy dissertation, it is likely to be missed. If your grammar and spelling are off, your credibility becomes questionable.

Be Worthy of Trust
Be transparent and let your visitor know what you are offering right up front. If you make your key information cryptic, or require your visitors to sign-up in order to learn what they want to know, you create mistrust and will lose customers you might otherwise gain. Make sure your site visitor can contact you by prominently listing your address and phone number on your contact page. In many cases, it is a good idea to be sure your phone number is visible on every page.

Make if Friendly
A “friendly” website loads quickly, is easy and intuitive to navigate, provides information the user is looking for on the first page, and makes it clear what they should do next.  A website that immediately starts playing music or video can be perceived as intrusive—instead, give your visitor an option by letting them choose to watch a video or listen to music if they want.   A website that makes the user click-to-enter just adds an extra step to get to what they are looking for—this can give the perception that your visitor's time and effort has little value to you. If your website is full of flashing or moving elements and advertisements, rest assured you will drive visitors away. If you use pop-up or pop-under windows and your visitor doesn't leave immediately, he or she is sure to feel violated at best.

Make Sure it is Optimized for Search
Your website needs to be search engine friendly so that it can be indexed by search engine “spiders” (the little computer programs that visit your website so search engines know what kind of information and links you have). This plays a large role in how search engines such as Google will “rank” your website. The rank (or popularity and relevance as determined by the indexing) of your website directly influences where your page will show up in the search engine results when people search for your keywords.

Keywords should be in your title, meta tags (title and descriptions html tags in the website code), and the copy of your website. Make sure you are not using Flash elements or images in place of keyword text, and be sure to include a sitemap. The Beginner's Checklist for Small Business SEO is a good step-by-step resource for do-it-yourself search engine optimization.

Submit Your Website to Search Engines and Directories
Make sure you submit your website to important search engines and directories (directories list sites according to category whereas search lists sites according to relevant keywords).   At a minimum, submit your site to:

Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/

Google Local Search: http://www.google.com/local/add/

Open Directory Project: http://www.dmoz.com/

Yahoo! Directory: http://dir.yahoo.com/

Yahoo! Local: http://local.yahoo.com/

Local.com: http://advertise.local.com/

Superpages.com: http://www.superpages.com/

It will take some time for your submission to be included. You can speed up your submission to Yahoo! by paying an annual fee of $299 to be considered within 7 business days, but if you are patient, you will be included. You can also find a number of directories that pertain specifically to your business and/or location by performing a search for trade organizations, niche directories, and local directories.

Build Links and Relationships
Be sure that the content on your website has value so others will want to link to you. Building links to your website is important because the search engines use this factor to help determine the relevance of your website, which in turn affects the ranking of your website over time. As I mentioned above, the rank of your website will determine where you show up in the search engine results. There are a lot of things you can do to increase the number of relevant incoming links to your website. Get started by getting in contact with the owners of well-ranked websites that relate directly to your business to see if they will link to you if you are willing to link to them.

Be Social
Social networking through websites like Facebook and Twitter is not only here to stay, it is a powerful way to connect with others and build your online community. Everything you do can be tied together for maximum impact and efficiency. I've written an article on Twitter here, so you can learn some basics, and an article about promoting your business with FaceBook is forthcoming.

There are a number of social bookmarking sites that let others (and you) create reviews and links to your website such as delicious, digg, and StumbleUpon. You can even create your own social network on sites like Ning. You can also participate in online forums and discussion lists to tell others about your business and encourage them to visit your website. 

Of course, these suggestions just scratch the surface of social networking opportunities, but I've definitely given you enough to get started in the right direction.

Blog
I just wrote an article on blogging that you can find here. The point I want to make here is that a blog it is a great way for you to stay connected with your community and lead new traffic to your website. Much like your main website, you want to make sure your blog is well designed (matches your brand/website), optimized, and contains engaging and valuable content. If you have an email newsletter, you can enter your email marketing sign-up code right on your blog and collect contact information from visitors who are interested in hearing from you on a regular basis.

Send Email
A well designed newsletter that matches your website is another excellent way to stay in touch with your customers and other interested parties. Make sure to include the send-to-a-friend link, so your subscribers can send your newsletters to their friends so they can also sign-up to receive it if they agree it has valuable and interesting content.  Include special offers, contests, links to your latest blog article, guest articles, links to other great resources, and so on.  One of the best ways to do this is by purchasing email marketing services through a top-notch provider like Emma, which can cost as little as $30 each month and saves you a ton of headache you would encounter trying to do this on your own.

Traditional Methods
All of the tried and true methods to promote your business—things like networking, direct mail, radio and tv spots, print advertising, press releases, and articles about your business/area of expertise—continue to be very effective ways to get people to visit your website. Just make sure everything you do includes your website address!

Paid Search Advertising
Paid search also warrants another article, and sooner or later I will write one on this topic. In the meantime, in spite of the controversy over paid search, I believe it to be one of the most effective ways you can jumpstart your website visibility. If your website is new (or can't be found) and you have done all you can to submit it to search engines and directories—but you understand it can take anywhere from 6 weeks to several months for your listing to start showing up—what better way to have your website appear when a user does a related search, than through paid advertising targeted to that search?

I have seen first-hand on several occasions how a small investment in paid search such as Google Adwords, created an increase in website traffic immediately. It works because when someone types a search term or phrase into a search engine (in this example Google), your ad is very likely to appear on the first page.  One variable here is making sure you have bid enough on the key search terms because if your competitor also has ads for the same words, those ads can appear higher up in the search results. You set the amount that you are willing to spend each day, and when that amount of money is used (by someone who searched for your key search terms and then clicked on your ad), the ad stops running. People who click on your ads are searching for exactly what you are advertising, so they are highly likely to be interested in what you have to offer. The traffic to your website generated by these ads causes it to get noticed by search engines that much quicker, and I have had clients whose results began to show up in the first page of the search results organically (in the unpaid listing), after only a few months of running their first ads. That is a measurable return on your investment by itself, notwithstanding the visitors to your website that would not have found you earlier without the advertisements. 

So...my potential client's question remains. How long will it take for his website to show up at the top of the search engine results? I would love to give him a guarantee that it will show up on the first page within "x" amount of  time—but I can't. I do know that if he takes the steps I've outlined above, he will be in a much better place, and much sooner, than he would otherwise.

Ultimately, the answer really comes down to how much of your company resources (whether time, money, or a combination of both) can be committed to promoting your website, because that is what will make all the difference six weeks, six months, six years and beyond, from the time you begin.