One question we get a lot from our prospects, is how long does it take to get on Google? It’s legitimate question because while 82.6% of Internet users use search, most people don’t quite understand how it works.

With that in mind, we always feel it’s a good practice to level set our customers and prospects on how long it will take to get on Google.

When people ask about getting on Google they refer mostly to the SEO piece. How long will it take for Google to index my website? The answer is usually a couple of days but this is a shallow answer because you won’t rank for anything but your website’s name. For example if your website is named Joe’s Bag of Doughnuts Shop, and you sell doughnut, you will probably get on Google for your brand name “Joe’s Bag of Doughnuts Shop” but won’t rank very highly for doughnut shop. Why? Because unless you are in an area with no other doughnut shops, you will face competition from other shops.

Therefore, to rank higher and get on Google for more search terms like doughnut shop or Joe’s Bag, you will need to get more websites to link to you and more content that uses those search terms. Blogging and social media can help do that. With some amount of diligence about writing a blog and posting it to Social media, it usually takes 3-6 months to start to rank for a number of keywords that will drive good traffic to your website.

So how long does it take to get on Google?

About 3-6 months for a critical mass of keywords.

If you don’t have 3-6 months, another excellent way to get on Google is to use Google AdWords. However, while you can start getting traffic from Google withing about 20 minutes of putting a campaign up in AdWords, it’s advisable to let the campaign run for 30 continuous days to give Google’s algorithms enough information about your site to optimize your campaign. These campaigns, can be expensive to the tune of thousands of dollars.

So if you are patient, we always recommend using SEO to get on Google, but if you need to make a splash immediately and get on google quickly, AdWords, though expensive can really kick things off.