My site is getting traffic, but most target keywords are not moving — how long did it take for you to reach Top 3?

raagjattmusic

raagjattmusic

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My site is getting good traffic and currently has around 120 keywords in Top 3, but many of my other target keywords are still far behind.


Some competitors have already ranked 2–3 of their main keywords in Top 3, while mine aren't moving much. I'm also building backlinks, but haven't seen much improvement yet.


How long did it take for your site to reach Top 3? And how long did you wait before seeing an impact from backlinks?

Screenshot 2026-09-30 at 6.46.32 AM.png
 
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raagjattmusic said:
My site is getting good traffic and currently has around 120 keywords in Top 3, but many of my other target keywords are still far behind.


Some competitors have already ranked 2–3 of their main keywords in Top 3, while mine aren't moving much. I'm also building backlinks, but haven't seen much improvement yet.


How long did it take for your site to reach Top 3? And how long did you wait before seeing an impact from backlinks?

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How old is the website and what is your SEO approach so far ?
 
onlinemarketer12 said:
How old is the website and what is your SEO approach so far ?
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My site is around 10 months old. Some competitors have only 2–3 month old domains but are already getting around 60K daily traffic, while my domain isn't getting the same boost yet. I have 40K+ indexed pages, whereas one competitor has only around 400 pages in Google. I'm still building relevant backlinks and working on SEO to improve the rankings.
 
Most probably, your target keywords are competitive. You should keep building links for pages targeting those keywords.
 
if you are already making backlinks this will take some more time to rank in top3 i wish you good luck!
 
raagjattmusic said:
My site is getting good traffic and currently has around 120 keywords in Top 3, but many of my other target keywords are still far behind.


Some competitors have already ranked 2–3 of their main keywords in Top 3, while mine aren't moving much. I'm also building backlinks, but haven't seen much improvement yet.


How long did it take for your site to reach Top 3? And how long did you wait before seeing an impact from backlinks?

View attachment 549470
Click to expand...
Ranking in the top 3 can take time, even when traffic is growing. I think checking search intent, content quality, and competition is a good starting point.
 
Usually takes a few months of consistent work before the rest of the keywords start climbing. Backlinks can take 4-8 weeks to show real movement depending on the niche.
 
raagjattmusic said:
How long did it take for your site to reach Top 3? And how long did you wait before seeing an impact from backlinks?
Click to expand...
It really depends on the keyword difficulty, competition, and how established the site is.

Backlinks can take weeks or months to show an impact, and they won’t always move rankings on their own.

Try check the pages that are stuck and see if they match search intent as well as the top ranking competitors.
 
Typically, it takes another 2 to 3 months to reach the top 3, depending in part on the level of competition and the credibility of your website. Since your site has been active for 10 months, it already possesses a fair amount of credibility; just be patient, and time will provide the results.
 
40k indexed pages vs a competitor with 400 is the thing id look at first tbh. thats usually a lot of thin or near duplicate pages splitting crawl and internal link equity, so your money pages dont look like the strongest page on the site. id take the target keywords that are stuck, check in gsc which url google is actually showing for each (often its the wrong page, or two pages swapping), then consolidate, noindex the dead weight and point internal links at the one page you want ranking. build links to that exact page, not the homepage. the ones already on page 2 usually move first once thats cleaned up.
 
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