How Long Do Backlinks Take To Work? -
4 min read

How Long Do Backlinks Take To Work?

Craig Dewart

Written by Craig Dewart

How Long Do Backlinks Take To Work?
published April 27, 2023

If you're wondernig when you'll see results from your backlinks, we've got you covered.

Like any aspect of SEO, backlink results are not instantaneous. Generally, it takes 11 months for the full effect of your link-building campaign to be realized.

That's not to say your site traffic will suddenly go from 0 to 100 exactly once 11 months have passed. Over the year, your site traffic will steadily increase as Google bots gradually come across your backlinks. Your site traffic could reach its peak well before the 11-month mark or even after it - it all depends on several SEO variables.

These variables include domain authority, link relevance, keyword difficulty, and the type of backlinks you have acquired.

In this article, we'll take a closer look at what factors are impacting your link-building strategy and explain how Link City can help you reach your traffic target.

How to Speed Up Link-Building Results

Unfortunately, there is no white-hat link-building technique that can deliver you instant results. Link building is a process that takes dedication and time to be carried out successfully.

There are black hat techniques that will get you results almost instantaneously, such as buying links via a link farm, creating low-quality guest posts, cloaking, or any other methods of manipulating Google's algorithm.

However, although these approaches may prove fruitful, to begin with, they'll almost always land you in hot water with Google. If caught, you could be penalized indefinitely, and your site may never rank again. Your link-building efforts need to remain white-hat for your website to stay in Google's good books, which unfortunately takes longer.

There are, however, certain types of link-building approaches that are almost guaranteed to yield results sooner than other strategies. This includes the two types of backlinks that Link City can acquire for you: guest posting and niche editing.

Niche edits

Niche edits are one of the fastest methods of attaining link-building results. These backlinks are planted on sites that have been published and ranked, which allows Google to find the link and crawl your webpage sooner.

High site traffic is already guaranteed, and niche edits are normally added as soon as they are agreed upon with the domain owner.

Here at Link City, we are highly experienced at personal outreach and have the contacts and capabilities to secure you with the biggest sites in your niche. We promise to acquire you niche edits with strong anchor texts to boost your domain authority.

Guest posts

Guest posts involve having to write high-quality content for another website, which features a link to your own website. If you're attempting to attain guest post spots alone, it can be incredibly difficult to get opportunities with authoritative sites in your niche.

Not only that, but it can take a while to prepare, write, and edit the guest blog post to a high enough standard for the website. The guest post needs to be of a high grade and adds value to the linking site.

For guest posts, we can find your websites with high domain authority that will speed up the time it takes for your web page to rank. The more traffic the linking site gets, the more page authority it will deliver to you, and the faster your webpage will break the SERPs.

We can further speed up the process for you by writing the guest post content, too.

Every webpage is unique, which means that all websites require a unique link-building campaign. Because of this, it's impossible to truly determine how long a link-building campaign will take to yield maximum results. However, it is possible to identify the factors that could be speeding up or equally slowing down your SEO project.

The main factors that influence how long link-building efforts take to yield results are as follows:

Where you currently rank

Although it takes 10 weeks on average for a link to move one spot, if you're already close to the SERPs, it may take much longer. The lower down you are in the search results, the easier it is to take over the websites positioned in front of you. These pages may be old and only still ranking because they're yet to be overtaken.

However, near the top of the results, competition is a lot fiercer, and each webpage is battling to out-optimize one another. For this reason, it may take well over 10 weeks for you to move 1 ranking position.

The more links you attain, the quicker Google is likely to notice you. However, ranking is obviously not solely based on link quantity but also on quality and variety.

On top of getting Link City to acquire niche edits and guest posts for you, you should also work on attaining comment backlinks, directory links, and pillow links from a range of sources. Even nofollow links can be useful in increasing site visibility and traffic, which in turn could result in you gaining greater DA.

Internal link building is also useful in building brand authority and increasing the ranking power of your entire site.

Conversely, low-quality links, such as spammy links, could slow down your ranking rate.

Your niche and target keywords

One of the biggest factors that will impact how long it takes your backlinks to produce results is the niche you're trying to rank for. The more mainstream the topic, the harder it will be to knock high-ranking sites from the SERPs.

This is particularly true if you're attempting to rank for a single-word keyword, which has far more competition than long-tail keywords (3-5 words).

On the other hand, if you're writing about something up-and-coming that hasn't been widely written about online, then you can expect your link-building strategies to pay off sooner.

The rate at which you accrue backlinks can also majorly impact the amount of time it takes for these backlinks to take effect. This is known as link velocity, and the faster you gain backlinks, the quicker you can climb the rankings.

The rate at which you gain natural inbound links depends on how valuable and sharable you make your content. For example, if you produce content that is timely and full of statistics and graphs, many sites will likely want to reference your site at the same time.

The rest of your SEO campaign

Although a major part, link building is only one aspect of SEO that you are required to cover. If you cover backlinks, but you neglect keyword research, page experience, and other ranking factors, your site will not be optimized. Synergy needs to occur between top link-building strategies and other SEO approaches.

It would also be a good idea to actively submit your site for indexing on the Google Search Console rather than waiting for Google to find your site through a backlink.

A great link-building strategy will normally follow three distinct phases: indexing, the jump, and the climb. Although the time frame may be different, all pages must go through these stages to reach the top of Google search results.

The indexing stage

Search engines need to first find your page, which can extend the indexing stage. If you have gained multiple links from credible sources, then it won't take more than a few days for Google and other search engines to find and index your page. On the other hand, if your backlinks are from little-known sites, it can take over a week for your site to get indexed.

Google bots crawl established sites more often than they do lesser-known ones, so attaining better links increases your chances of ranking sooner. Still, even when your site gets indexed, it is unlikely that you'll see any real movement in your page rankings within the first eight weeks.

The jump

If you started out at the bottom of the rankings, you'd likely start to overtake other pages around eight weeks in and start what is known as 'the big jump.' If, for example, you notice your page going from 80th place to the 20th between weeks 8 and 10, then you can rest assured that your backlink campaign is working.

The climb

After making major moves around week 10, your page will slow down its ascent. This doesn't mean that it won't stop climbing, however, just that it'll take much longer to skip over the sites that are in front of it. It can take well over 11 months for your site to reach the top-ranking page, and is dependent on the strength of your competition.

Final Thoughts

No two link-building campaigns are created equal, so it is difficult to give a fixed number on how long you'll have to wait to see results. However, if you build links with Link City's assistance, we can guarantee you niche edits and guest posting spots on highly relevant sites, guaranteeing you a quick climb to the first page.

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