Good web design
is more than
skin deep
By Scottie Claiborne ( SEO specialist)
You've Got To Pay Your Dues,
Many site owners and SEOs are worried because
their new sites aren't doing well in Google.
I haven't seen any brand new sites with new domains appear at the top of the search engine results pages (SERP) since early in 2004.
There seems to be a delay of about 6-8 months. I've checked with many site owners and SEOs and I haven't found anyone who's gotten a brand new domain ranked well in Google.
If there's a magic bullet, no one's spilling the beans. What happens is new sites get indexed, they appear for some obscure queries and they may appear at the top for a week or so, but then they drop to the bottom of the SERP for several months.
Everything else works fine but it just doesn't
rank well for any terms in Google. Many times, not even the company name.
If you have a brand new site, stop driving yourself nuts wondering what you
are doing wrong! Stop tweaking and changing things, trying to influence your
rankings; until the site has been in the index a while, it doesn't seem to
matter what you do to it.
My own theory is that the age factor for new sites is Google's answer to
mini-networks and other multi-site strategies intended to artificially inflate
link popularity.
Many people divide what should be a single site into multiple
sites in order to capitalize on the links that are exchanged between them.
Others build a series of small sites that are only designed to add link popularity
to the main site.
By delaying the ranking of brand new sites, the mini-network strategy becomes
more of a long-term strategy than a quick jump to the top. Site owners who
might have started new sites are going to be more inclined to build new pages
on existing sites in order to avoid that delay.
If you are launching a new site, make sure you have an expectation that it
is likely to be 7-8 months before the site achieves any real results in Google.
We used to keep a site under wraps and launch it once it was "perfect." Now
it makes sense to get a few pages up for your new site as soon as you complete
them. The sooner Google is aware of the domain, the better.
As soon as you have a domain name, get the hosting set up, put up a temporary
page and link to it from another site in Google's index to start that clock
ticking.
Subdomains May Avoid the Ageing Delay
Pages on subdomains are generally treated as part of the main domain, making
them a possible workaround. If your client has the option of building their
site on a subdomain instead of a new top-level domain name, let them know
that this may avoid the time delay.
When launching a new site, if traffic from Google is critical to your plan
for success you need to plan ahead. Get the site out there and linked to
as early as possible and plan to run an AdWords and / or Overture campaign
for a few months until the site can be established in the editorial results.
Yahoo and MSN do not have this delay built in, so focus your early efforts on these engines. Don't worry if you have got it right, Google will eventually give your new site the respect it deserves -- just give it time.
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