Nearly all of SEO can be boiled down into two steps:
1. Find good keywords.
2. Write articles about those keywords.
Although this process is straightforward, most people fail at SEO because they can’t overcome the fact that their effort is disconnected from their results.
Even if you write the best SEO-optimized article possible for some keyword, you typically won’t receive any traffic from Google on that article for 3+ months. For brand new sites, it can sometimes take 6 months or longer.
As a real-world example, one of the first articles I wrote on Statology targeted the keyword “p value of 0.000” which had the following metrics based on ahrefs data:
- Difficulty: 0
- Search Volume: 60
The keyword was simple to write an article about and the entire article turned out to be only 321 words, which you can find here.
I published the article in late November of 2018 and it took just over three months to hit the front page of Google and four total months to hit the number one spot.
The following screenshot shows the daily pageviews this article received, starting from the day I published it:
Another one of the early articles I wrote targeted the keyword “survival curve in excel” which had the following metrics based on ahrefs data:
- Difficulty: 0
- Search Volume: 70
You can find the article I wrote for this keyword here. I published the article in February of 2019 and it took roughly three months to hit the front page of Google and five total months to hit the number one spot.
The following screenshot shows the weekly pageviews this article received, starting from the day I published it:
The keyword I targeted for both of these articles had the lowest possible difficulty of 0, yet it still took over three months for them to reach the front page of Google.
This is the nature of SEO. You must understand this. The work that you do now won’t be rewarded until months later.
What this means is that, especially for new website owners, you shouldn’t obsessively check your traffic on Google Analytics every day when you first start out. You likely won’t have any traffic. That’s normal.
Instead of obsessing over results (i.e. total traffic) you should instead focus over developing a process you can stick with to write new articles on a consistent basis.
Once you have created your content plan, you need to set aside a block of time each day or each week where you can sit and write new articles.
During the first few months, you need to ruthlessly stick to a writing schedule and focus on churning out articles. Ignore your total traffic, as it will only be discouraging.
As your site begins to age and your domain authority creeps higher, you’ll be able to get new articles on the front page of Google quicker.
For example, once Statology was about a year old I was able to consistently get low difficulty words on the front page of Google in about a month or less.
One article I wrote in late March of 2020 targeted the keyword “qqplot in excel” which had the following metrics based on ahrefs data:
- Difficulty: 0
- Search Volume: 160
You can find the article I wrote for this keyword here.
Once I published the article, it only took three weeks to hit the front page of Google and just over one month total to hit the number one spot.
The following screenshot shows the weekly pageviews this article received, starting from the day I published it:
Another articles I wrote in late February of 2020 targeted the keyword “mse in excel” which had the following metrics:
- Difficulty: 3
- Search Volume: 200
You can find the article I wrote for this keyword here.
Once I published the article, it took about one month to hit the front page of Google and about 1.5 months total to hit the number one spot.
The following screenshot shows the weekly pageviews this article received, starting from the day I published it:
These screenshots show that SEO just gets better and better over time, but only if you stick with the process.
You won’t experience success if you give up after only a couple months.
I often refer people to the following image when I discuss this topic:
Early on, you expect results to come quickly and in a linear fashion. In reality, results are delayed but they come in an exponential fashion later on.
They key to succeeding with SEO is sticking with it during the early months when you’re producing new articles consistently but not receiving as much traffic as you’d like.
The traffic will come. Just be patient.
Full Disclosure: Nothing on this site should ever be considered to be advice, research or an invitation to buy or sell any securities, please see my Terms & Conditions page for a full disclaimer.
