Google On How Long SEO Takes

Google’s John Mueller answers the question: “how long does SEO take for new pages?” in the latest episode of Ask Googlebot on YouTube.

This is a loaded question, and Mueller even makes a joke at the beginning of the video about refraining from his typical “it depends” response.

Here’s Mueller’s answer for how long SEO takes.

Mueller on SEO for New Pages

Mueller tackles this question by breaking his answer down into two parts: indexing and speeding things up.

Google Indexing

When a new page is published it can take anywhere from several hours to several weeks for it to be indexed.

Mueller suspects most good content is picked up and indexed within about a week.

Sometimes there are technical issues on the web that make it take longer, and sometimes Google’s systems get busy with other things.

With that said, there are a few things site owners can do to help speed up crawling and indexing.

Speed Up Crawling And Indexing

To speed things up, Mueller recommends the following action items.

Prevent server overload
Make sure that your server can handle a reasonable number of requests in a timely way.

When your server slows down, search engines tend to slow down with it.

Prominent internal links
Link to your new internal pages prominently within your website.

The easier Google’s systems can recognize what pages you think are important, the easier it is to prioritize crawling and indexing.

For example, with an ecommerce site, it helps to have links to new products on the home page so Google doesn’t have to crawl through several categories to find them.

Avoid unnecessary URLs on your site
Go through your website and clean up any URLs that you no longer need.

Search engines get bogged down trying to figure out all the URLs on a site, and might miss the ones you care about.

Keep website’s quality high
The easier it is for Google to recognize a site is critical for users on the web, the better it can prioritize the website for crawling and indexing.

There are a lot of aspects to consider when it comes to making new pages visible in Google Search.

There’s no absolute timeline for any of these steps, Mueller says, and the steps can change over time.

There’s no absolute timeline for any of these steps, Mueller says, and the steps can change over time.

Apart from addressing technical issues, Mueller emphasizes the importance of keeping the overall quality of the website in mind.

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