How Long Before Links Start To Help Google Rankings?
We have conducted extensive testing on how quickly do backlinks start working & across over 50 different tests from 50 different class C IPs, the average time required for a new link to start to influence Google rankings was 8 – 12 weeks.
There are several factors to consider together which will determine how quickly backlinks start to have an impact on Google SERPs.
If your site is new or not updated very often, or doesn’t have much traffic, or, doesn’t have many backlinks then Google Bot probably visits once a month or less frequently.
Each time Google bot visits, it updates the information Google holds about your Trust score and thus adjusts your rankings.
When we create a new link, it may take up to a month before google visits that site and finds it. (We ping Google after posting a new piece of content, but this provides no guarantee of the new page being spidered by Google bot faster).
Once Google has found the new link pointing to your site, it will follow the link to your site and attribute it to your site.
This may not occur for a month.
Google has several quality filters that it uses to determine long term benefit of backlinks.
Initially you will gain slightly from the presence of the link, but Google waits until it revisits your site on its next schedule before it ‘confirms’ the continued presence of the new backlink.
This may take another month.
All new links only pass a percentage of their trust score for the first 6 months they exist, after which they increase in the power that they pass. They mature as they get older.
How Quickly Do BackLinks Start Working
SEO is a process of continued aggregation of influence.
For these reasons, you need to allow a few weeks for new links to be indexed and to show up in Majestic and around 3 – 6 months for your new backlinks to start passing decent volumes of trust score through to your site.
From the date your backlink is added you should on average see a ranking improvement in 8 – 12 weeks depending of course on the search term you are targeting, the anchor text used, page structure, etc.
These means that initially improvements can be quite slow to happen but, once you get a few months into your link building campaign, the effects of new links work cumulatively to benefit your site.