Your website has launched officially, and you want to rank your website on search engines in San Jose. You pop over to your favorite search engine and type in your keywords – and have to scroll through several pages before finding your site, if it’s there at all. You check your analytics, and view your webmaster tools – nothing.

Don’t panic!

You have no doubt heard that patience is a virtue, and that is especially true when it comes to website rankings. Like everything else in life, good results take time and are worth the wait.

Because of the way search engines crawl and rank, it takes time to see the results of your changes (this goes for both new sites and updates or changes to old web pages). A good rule of thumb is to make your changes, then wait 2-4 weeks before even checking the results. Checking any sooner will likely not give accurate results, due to not enough data yet. DO make sure that your changes are done properly, and there are no typographical errors. The more major the changes, the more time it is likely to take to see the results. If you have still not seen the desired results by the sixth week, try changing something else.

Achieving the top results can take over six months, sometimes as much as a year, of carefully optimizing your website.

Remember the main things that affect your website’s ranking on search engines: good quality, unique content, and that is written to engage your visitors. You also want to have good quality links from other sites that have good quality content in a related area. Good use of keywords, but not overdone; use keywords in titles, links, alt text in images tags, and in meta tags, as well as in the body content. Avoid Flash for the whole site, as it cannot be indexed, and avoid frames for the same reason. Check your text-only site (there are sites that give you this view) to see what the search engines see when they visit. Be sure to have your navigation somewhere on your site in text so the search engines can see them, also.

Other things that help with your site is to keep it updated and to use social media to keep your fresh content visible to as many others as possible. You will also want to remember that the longer your site is around – and the longer it is purchased for, as well – the better the ranking will be. Most search engines prefer to give higher rankings to sites that are good quality and well established.

Using the tools and tips above will get your website ready, but you still need to have patience when waiting for ranking your website on search engines, San Jose.