How Long Does It Take For A Blog To Be Popular?

Is there a fast way to create a successful blog?

You need to think about it correctly if you’re asking this question.

You can begin receiving traffic on day one!

Thousands of visitors to your blog can theoretically arrive within days of its launch.

Assume you or someone you know has a Twitter account with a lot of followers. All it takes is a tweet or two directing them to your new blog, and you’ll be inundated with visitors.

Another example: Let’s say you publish your first blog post and submit it to Reddit. It makes it to the front page. You will receive more traffic than you can handle. It will most likely cause your web server to crash.

These may all sound fantastic to you. However, these are only temporary solutions to increasing traffic. Furthermore, these are different from repeatable strategies on which you can rely.

SEO is the best long-term solution for increasing consistent traffic to your blog.

How much time does SEO take?

If you’re wondering how long it will take to get search traffic to your blog, the answer is, once again, “it depends.”

It is determined by the number of backlinks you have built to your site. It all depends on how strong these connections are. It all depends on the keywords you’re aiming for with your blog posts (low-competition keywords rank easier than high-competition keywords).

The average time for a new blog to gain traction in search engines is 3 to 6 months.

This assumes that you consistently publish high-quality content and are actively building backlinks to those articles.

What Is The Google Sandbox?

The Google Sandbox is the first thing you should be aware of as a new site owner.

The term Sandbox refers to the concept of sandboxing in computer security. A sandbox is essentially a quarantine and testing environment. A modern phone, for example, keeps apps in their own individual sandboxes with limited access to other data and device features. This helps prevent a malicious app from accessing sensitive data or taking control of the device.

Sandboxes are used for app testing and security. They can also be used to demonstrate transparency or security.

The Google Sandbox is essentially a quarantine for new websites. When you create a new website, Google places it in a sandbox, even if the domain is one you’ve owned for a while or has been around for a long time and was purchased from a parked domain seller or an expired domain marketplace.

Why? Google wants to ensure that you will not abuse that domain. A popular website that has since expired is likely to have a large number of links pointing to it, as well as some residual traffic. If you buy that domain and create a malicious website with stolen content, Google will end up recommending stolen content or malicious code to users, which is bad for everyone.

The sandbox exists primarily to prevent malicious abuse but serves another purpose. Google can monitor and audit your marketing efforts using the sandbox. Suppose they notice anything that suggests abusive SEO, such as keyword spam, invisible text, content theft, or some kind of unnatural link-building scheme. In that case, they can penalize the site ahead of time. This is one way they help prevent successful private blog networks from forming.

Google has never officially confirmed the existence of the sandbox, but SEO professionals generally agree that it is a genuine quarantine. Sandboxing is likely when launching a new site, whether you purchased an old or brand-new domain. The only way to avoid the sandbox entirely is to buy an existing site and not change much about it.

It’s worth noting that the sandbox only affects organic Google traffic. Google does not prevent people from clicking through if you post on social media. If you pay for advertising, Google will not stop you from purchasing ads or tracking referral traffic. If you are building links from third-party sites, Google will not prevent those links from referring traffic; however, they will only provide you with much SEO benefit once your site is no longer in the sandbox.

How long is the sandbox available? Some claim it only lasts a few weeks and that you can rank and begin receiving organic traffic in as little as a month. Others believe that a site is in sandbox mode for up to 12-13 months after it is created. It varies from SEO to SEO, how long they believe it will take, and why.

This is not to say that you must wait a year before seeing results from your blog. Depending on other factors, you may be able to succeed despite the sandbox, or you may choose to shorten the duration of the sandbox. There’s a lot going on; this is just something that new bloggers with no prior resources must deal with.

How Much Existing Audience Do You Have?

One of the most important factors influencing how quickly you can get your blog up and running is how much existing influence you already have and can leverage.

At the most basic level, you have a newcomer to the world of blogging. Someone who has never previously run a website or owned a business. These individuals typically have a small number of friends and family members who may visit their blog, share a few links, and follow a few social media profiles. That’s not much, and it won’t get you organic hits because they’re all hits you’re actively seeking.

One of the biggest problems with starting a blog at this level is that your friends and family are probably not your target audience. Unless you’re just keeping a blog to document your life for your family to read, your friends and family can help “signal boost” your content, but they aren’t engaged and aren’t much of a growth seed.

People who have previously made a name for themselves are a higher step up the totem pole. People who are famous for something else, such as being an outspoken political activist, the owner of a popular Facebook meme page, or the owner of another successful small-time blog, can use that audience to follow their new endeavors.

This is why, by the way, one common blogging tip is to include author bios on your posts. People who recognize you can more confidently follow your new content if you’ve done anything in the past. If you decide to try something new in the future, having credits from your past will help you be more effective. This is especially important after the Google E-A-T update in 2019; Google wants to know who wrote the article and their credentials, which can affect your rankings.

At the top, of course, some wildly successful individuals launch new websites. Any new website launched by Bill Gates, Elon Musk, or Neil Patel will be a huge success from the start. The fame, name recognition, and money to throw around are all extremely beneficial to a new website.

How Much Will You Spend on Promotion?

The flip side of the promotional coin is, well, the flip side of the promotional coin. By investing money, you can jumpstart any marketing effort and get more traffic and conversions faster.

Money can be invested into your blog in a number of different ways. On the one hand, you can put money into the site. Spend money to create better content, license better images, create better graphics, and optimize with better tools.

Money, on the other hand, drives traffic and conversions through paid advertisements. You can pay for social media shout-outs, influencers’ mentions, and guest post links. You can also pay for ads directly, such as promoted social media posts or promoted links on Google search and in the Google display network. The more money you have to invest, the faster you can grow.

Final Thoughts

So, how long does it take to get traffic to your blog?

SEO is the most dependable, repeatable, and consistent traffic source for your blog’s long-term growth. Just keep in mind that it can take up to a year for new blogs to see significant traffic from Google.

Other forms of traffic, such as social media and community sites, are almost instant. If done correctly, you can get traffic to your blog right away.

Unfortunately, these sources of traffic are transient. You’ll notice a spike in traffic one day; then, it’ll drop back to zero the next. Furthermore, these are strategies that can be used sparingly.

As a result, the best traffic strategy is to concentrate on SEO (you may also want to check out this 3-month blogging plan). Create a lot of high-quality links and publish a lot of high-quality content.

If you do, your rankings and traffic will eventually start to rise and grow month after month.