We’ve all heard it. “Entering the Blue Widget market is really exciting for us. Can we make sure our website is on the first page of the Google results when we launch next week?” The answer of course is no, but here’s an nice infographic from The Website Group which illustrates a comprehensive study on the subject.

In short, the vast majority of pages targeted at a specific high volume search don’t get to the first page within a year of appearing. The top 10 results in Google for high volume searches are usually dominated by ‘old’ pages. However, don’t be put off, because it’s quite possible to rank highly, quite quickly, for less competitive searches – and it’s quite probable that most of the products and services you’re promoting are just that. For the more competitive searches, my take-away is that you might be better off working on existing, established pages than starting new ones.