Run the numbers
Seven questions. One honest curve.
Answer for your site as it is today. The timeline updates straight away, with a low, expected and high case.
SEO Timeline Reality Check
For context: only 1.74% of new pages reached Google’s top 10 within a year. Source: Ahrefs (2025).
Copy a plain-text summary of these results, with the source, to share with your team or agency.
Indicative estimate from a rule-based model informed by published ranking research (Ahrefs, 2025). Not a prediction or a guarantee. Firestarter | firestarter.com.au
Assumptions
Our assumptions. Edit anything.
These are our own modelling assumptions. No published study gives a universal traffic curve, so treat them as adjustable judgement, not fact.
The 30-day ranking promise
Page one in 30 days? Be careful.
“No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.”
“If they guarantee you that their changes will give you first place in search results, find someone else.”
Google Search Central, Do you need an SEO expert? (accessed 2026)If an agency promises page-one rankings in 30 days, be careful. Google's own guidance for hiring an SEO says no one can guarantee a #1 ranking. The data agrees.
A quick win is possible on very low-competition terms. A reliable 30-day result across the terms that matter is not.
Your drivers
What is driving your curve.
Traffic growth is not a straight line. Early months are mostly crawling, indexing and testing. Then a steeper stretch as pages earn positions and links accumulate, then a flattening as you approach what the keyword set can deliver.
Methodology
How it’s estimated. What it isn’t.
How it works. The tool is a rule-based estimator. Your answers set (1) how big the eventual traffic gain could be and (2) how many months until the steep part of the curve. Bigger, faster gains come from: consistent content, clean technical SEO, stronger authority, lower competition, an older domain and a local focus. The curve is an S-shape (slow start, steep middle, flattening) that runs from today's traffic to the month-24 gain, with a low and a high band around the expected line. The low band is slower and smaller, the high band faster and larger. Multipliers and typical gains are editable above.
Limits. It cannot see your actual site, keywords, SERPs or content quality. Google algorithm updates, seasonality and brand demand can move things in either direction. Use it to set expectations and plan cash flow, not as a forecast.
Honest framing. These are indicative estimates, not predictions. Ahrefs measures how often individual pages reach the top 10. It does not measure site-level traffic curves, so the shape and size of our curve are modelling judgement informed by that research.
Sources. Check our working.
- Ahrefs (2025): How Long Does It Take to Rank in Google? And How Old Are Top Ranking Pages? Findings used: 1.74% of 1M random newly published pages reached the top 10 within a year (a filtered non-empty English content set gave 6.11%); 72.9% of top-10 pages are over 3 years old; the average #1 page is about 5 years old; higher-volume keywords take longer. The oft-quoted 5.7% figure comes from Ahrefs' earlier 2017 version of this study and has since fallen.
- Google Search Central: Do you need an SEO expert? (accessed 2026). Source of the guarantee warnings quoted above.