The most undervalued ranking factor : Time

A lot of people think SEO is magic or that the rules somehow don't apply to them, And it's hard to fault them. Tons of agencies promise quick and easy rankings for the price of a couple McDonald's meals a month. But that ain't how it works (unless you're doing some risky black hat stuff)
- Even if you're doing everything 100% correctly, things can move very slowly
- Chill out. Follow the process. Let your backlinks and content and hard work accumulate. They aren't going to disappear... they will just keep snowballing until they reach a critical mass.
- Don't start bending the rules because you aren't seeing results quick enough for your liking (people start to get themselves into trouble here).
- And then one day... boom

Absolutely, if everyone doing everything 100% accurately, then things can move extremely slow.

Completely agree with your thoughts.

Patience is a virtue and it is most important when it comes to Online Marketing. In a haste to achieve fast and quick results many webmasters often fall for nasty tactics that eventually land them in trouble.

Building a website is like planting a tree. You need to plant the seed, put compost, and water it everyday. Nurture and care it and after few months it will bear fruits that you can enjoy for long.

Agree you need to work consistent no matter what and have patience and if you endure the pain you can have a passive income without doing nothing

dmister said:

A lot of people think SEO is magic or that the rules somehow don't apply to them, And it's hard to fault them. Tons of agencies promise quick and easy rankings for the price of a couple McDonald's meals a month. But that ain't how it works (unless you're doing some risky black hat stuff)
- Even if you're doing everything 100% correctly, things can move very slowly
- Chill out. Follow the process. Let your backlinks and content and hard work accumulate. They aren't going to disappear... they will just keep snowballing until they reach a critical mass.
- Don't start bending the rules because you aren't seeing results quick enough for your liking (people start to get themselves into trouble here).
- And then one day... boom

Click to expand...

What I've found is that this completely depends on age.

Most 18-24yo will have a hard time waiting 2 years to see their results.
On the other hand, I'm 34, and can now wait even 4 years if I know results will show.

Most people KNOW the theory, it's just hard to implement.
It takes time to understand that time will fly anyway, even if you do something or not.

It took me 28 days of daily watering a lawn I seeded to even see one sprout. For 4 weeks I was just watering dirt until finally grass started growing. The gratification feeling is 10x better.

Completely agreed. I already prepare my website 2 weeks before it launches but without traffic it just goes nowhere in google search.

dmister said:

A lot of people think SEO is magic or that the rules somehow don't apply to them, And it's hard to fault them. Tons of agencies promise quick and easy rankings for the price of a couple McDonald's meals a month. But that ain't how it works (unless you're doing some risky black hat stuff)
- Even if you're doing everything 100% correctly, things can move very slowly
- Chill out. Follow the process. Let your backlinks and content and hard work accumulate. They aren't going to disappear... they will just keep snowballing until they reach a critical mass.
- Don't start bending the rules because you aren't seeing results quick enough for your liking (people start to get themselves into trouble here).
- And then one day... boom

Click to expand...

While I agree with what you are saying and have even experienced, I have a question.

How long do you think is enough?

For a lot of people, they start to wonder whether they're being patient or they're just wasting their time. It's hard to know which you are actually doing when you are a newbie.

Nevertheless, patience is important because most times good things don't come easy.

dmister said:

A lot of people think SEO is magic or that the rules somehow don't apply to them, And it's hard to fault them. Tons of agencies promise quick and easy rankings for the price of a couple McDonald's meals a month. But that ain't how it works (unless you're doing some risky black hat stuff)
- Even if you're doing everything 100% correctly, things can move very slowly
- Chill out. Follow the process. Let your backlinks and content and hard work accumulate. They aren't going to disappear... they will just keep snowballing until they reach a critical mass.
- Don't start bending the rules because you aren't seeing results quick enough for your liking (people start to get themselves into trouble here).
- And then one day... boom

Click to expand...

I would say yes - but no.
The most undervalued ranking factor is time - but the point is not waiting, but reducing the time.
Authority means nothing, when you break the time factor - cause you can scale from there.

During one of my interviews back in 2018 I said Google considers domain age as a ranking factor.

They looked weirdly, said it's not true and slammed the doors.

I like the sentiment behind this post. creating high-quality

But as you probably already know, many people don't have the luxury of time.

They are under pressure from clients to produce results as soon as possible because those clients are facing competitive pressure.

They need to attract their competitors, and they need to have done it yesterday.

That's the reality of our hyper-competitive field.

With that said, I agree with you that time is a key factor, but we have to understand what time is a shorthand for.

It's not only a question of waiting but also of laying down the right foundations so that one can reasonably expect a good result in the future.

If somebody laid down the foundations for a garbage website, they cannot expect good results even if they wait forever because they laid down garbage.

I hope you understand where I'm coming from.

Time is a crucial factor, but equally important variables must be in place.

As I mentioned, content quality is one, but so are keyword intent and focus.