The Stages Of Organic Ranking
So I've seen the same patterns in almost all of my websites, they go through stages and it's very reassuring when you realize your site has "leveled up" and moved into the next stage.
I thought it would be useful to share with you what I mean, as it's sometimes hard to explain, and newcomers find it difficult to recognize if their site is really making progress or not.
Time and time again I see people (and I do it myself too) asking if such and such technique works, or the best way to do this and that. Frankly, every site I've had has gone through the same stages via the same methods, which is exactly what is taught in the main certification courses. Just keep adding content, keep sharing your posts with the community, G+ and Facebook, and keep commenting on sites in your niche, people will comment on yours in turn.
Stage 1: The "Only get visitors when I hit the share button" Stage.
When a site is very new, you'll only get visitors when you share posts. Your Google Analytics chart will look crazy. Maybe something like this:
It can be frustrating and make you think it's not working, or worse, make you start sharing your posts all the time. Don't let yourself get down. You are in Stage 1. Deal with it :)
Tip for moving to Stage 2: Keep adding posts, avoid too many affiliate links, link out to other authority sites in your niche, and consider writing 1 or 2 Street Articles to help your site get indexed. This will also improve your writing.
Make sure you have added your site to Analytics, WMT, and Google Authorship. Welshy will teach you how here.
Stage 2: The "Oh hey I got a couple of organic visits, but wait, time on page was 0:00?" Stage
When you start noticing that you got 1 or 2 organic visits on any given day, it's awesome. The problem is, you sometimes go in deeper to Analytics and find out they just left your page immediately. I'm not 100% sure what this is, but I'm assuming it's a bot or just Google's spider indexing you.
Don't worry, it just means you are on Google's radar and you should keep adding content to give them some incentive to come back and check you more.
Tip for moving to Stage 3: Keep sharing your content, encouraging people to engage with it (Don't just beg for comments though), start linking your posts to each other where they are relevant, and try growing your social circles with people interested in your niche. You want social visitors who will be reading your stuff.
It should be safe to start adding affiliate links toward the end of this stage, but make sure you've passed a month of your site's life.
Stage 3: The "I thought I was making progress, but I've hit a bit of a plateau" Stage.
This could happen anywhere between month 3 or month 6 depending on your niche, the competition, how regularly you post, and so on. By now you should be consistently posting. It doesn't matter if it's twice a week, once a week, or more, but ideally you should be giving The Big G something to read every week. Google is a big reader. Never satisfied. Keep giving them more.
This stage is where your growth might slow a little bit. It can be anywhere from 10-30 visitors a day and you will have the same number for the loooooongest time, but soon enough you'll make another post that gets some good ranking, and your traffic will move up again by 10-20 daily visits.....until you hit another plateau. I hate those plateaus.
Often at this stage you can start to get disillusioned. "I've been writing for months and only my mom has subscribed" or "I just don't get much traffic" but fear not, you're in this for the long run, and you'll move on to the next stage soon enough.
You might start noticing that about 20% of your traffic is organic in this stage. Great!
Tips: Just keep at it. You might now be noticing that some of your articles are slowly creeping up the rankings from page 6 to 3 or 2 or even 1. Don't worry if they bounce back down again, as always it just means Big G is flirting with you. He doesn't quite love you yet, but he's willing to let you buy him dinner.
Additionally, new posts you make will be "debuting" at higher positions. Where a new post might have taken you 4 weeks to get in to the top 20 pages of Google, now you might see your articles go straight in at page 5. It's niche dependent, so take these numbers lightly, but the point is you'll notice an improvement.
Stage 4: The "Oh my I think I'm starting to see a little traction" Stage.
Bingo! Google is falling in love with you. Don't buy the ring yet, but start window shopping. In this stage, you'll notice even more that your newer posts are ranking higher and faster, and your older posts are doing well too. You might have one or two sneaky articles that have crept up to the top of Page 1 of Google and are happily gobbling up traffic for you.
This is where you can start looking at how your site is performing, which pages people are spending the most time on, how best to utilize your traffic, and start testing your "money pages".
Organic traffic can be anywhere from 40% - 60% in this stage, and that's amazing.
Stage 5: The "Oh hey again Mr Plateau" Stage.
Your new best friend is the traffic pleateau. If your Google Analytics chart is starting to look like stairs or a stock-chart that you'd like to invest in, then great! but don't be alarmed if your traffic goes up, then levels out, then goes down again, then goes up again. It happens. Google can be a fickle lover, but a loyal one in the end. Soon you'll be getting frustrated that you are stuck on "only 200 visits a day" when just a few months ago you were wondering why people only visited when you hit the share button.
All you need to do now is just keep at it. This is definitely a stage where you start thinking about testing. 200 visits a day is easily enough to make 1 or 2 sales of whatever it is you are selling, so if you aren't getting those sales, you should re-work some of your copy.
Summary: Just be patient.
It's hard, I've gone through the stages many times, and frankly, you'll never know when your site is going to turn the corner. These stages are here to help you recognize when you are making progress, because the most reassuring thing in this business is knowing that what you are doing is paying off. It sometimes takes a few months for you to actually learn that.
Also, don't worry too much about rankings. I've been talking more about traffic than rankings, because that's what really matters. You can get a lot of traffic without necessarily being on page 1, and you can get valuable traffic from page 2 or 3. Page 1 IS the end goal, but it's not the only thing to focus on.
Extra Reading: This one.Oh also this one. Go on then, one more.
Recent Comments
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This is so spot on, it's good to know I'm not the only one looking at plateaus. After nearly 6 months at WA I am just starting to feel settled into the long haul, this is going to take time. I think one of my sites is around stage 4, getting some page 1 rankings, etc. etc. Thanks for the great info.
Craig
BTW the 15 reasons ('this one' extra reading link above) is really worth going through if you are not seeing the results you want.
The stages are flexibile and sometimes you get some mini stages in between, so don't worry if you can't quite place your site into that model. You seem to get the point though, think long-haul and keep going.
Thank you for helping me with my plateau blues! Wow....really well written. It feels like an experienced friend just said, hey here's a healthy dose of reality and everything is OK. No worries, just keep on going forward.
Quite the most helpful and inspiring post I have read in quite some time anywhere. In fact it is absolutely brilliant.
There are very few posts with explanations about these stages, what to do and why they happen. Perhaps more importantly not to get yourself down when it does.
It is all very well reading motivational thread after motivational thread when nothing is happening in your website world and there is no explanation for it - but they don't help.
Here we have an easy to follow explanation of some of the simple things but very real issues we meet that are rarely explained properly by anybody, if all all. Cheers Dom, very much appreciated.
Just one of the benefits of me being addicted to starting new sites lol. A lot of other people probably haven't been able to notice patterns like I have.
Thanks for the kind words and recognition though, appreciate it.
It genuinely is helpful. Mine seems to have flat-lined, never mind plateaus, and I often wonder if I am going to get anywhere with it.
This is the only time I have seen anybody explain the situation and how to read it and deal with it. I now understand this issue a lot better.
Thank you - that was very helpful!
... do you know how to determine true keyword searches (organic) in GA - it's never given. I do notice keywords displayed in "search queries" - but that's different and not the tern used by someone to search.
You can figure out which pages people are visiting on your site, and guess what keywords you are ranking for with a bit of creativity, but it doesn't really matter as long as they are coming!
I would like to add something to stage one. Kyle and Carson say skip the street article submissions. They say it doesn't work like it used to work, so is a waste of time. The articles you would submit there put on your site instead is what they recommend. They said they would update the training videos regarding skipping the street article portions of it.
My personal view is and always has been that if you are going to write the content add it directly to your website, it surely has to help rank your site better than if you post it elsewhere. But if Dom says otherwise I'm not going to argue.
A brand new site made by a brand new author with very little G+ presence will benefit from an article or two linking to it from SA. Yep, it doesn't work like it used to, but helps get the site on Google's radar. I don't do it because my G+ following is large enough to help a new site get indexed that way.
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Very encouraging Dom.
I lost track of what stage I'm in (although I've been at this for over a year). The organic traffic is still in the daily 10-30 range, and hasn't changed in months! I've started to lose steam a bit as far as content ideas are concerned. Product reviews are about the only type of post I can do consistently...and I don't have the funds to continually BUY product for which to review! So as much as Google wants to read new stuff --- they're only getting something from me every couple of weeks now. Any comments on my progress?
Very good piece though. It would seem you've been down this road a few times already.
You can usually buy products and return them if your income is getting low, I guess it depends what exactly you are reviewing.
10-30 a day isn't bad, although if you could double it you'd be a lot better off. I'd say you should aim to post every week, so if you can't review things that often, think about what other posts you could add. Is there a point you make in a review that can be expanded upon? Say you review a razor and talk about the sharpness of the blade, you could do a post talking about blade quality in general (just an example off the top of my head).
Thanks Dom. I'd LOVE to have double the visitors I have now!!
Returning bought products (online) is rather a hassle, and I don't want my name to become "mud" with online retailers.
Yes, in a sense many of my posts are expansions of features and such that are discussed in other posts. It's just my "well" of related topics is running dry! I've always posted about once a week, but there comes a time when unless I expand on the niche to cover other types of products, all my ideas are re-treads of topics already covered. The website is http://lightsngear.com