Optimisation for a new site - December 20th, 2007
New sites unfortunately always struggle to achieve for competitive terms, especially in Google which seems to be strict on new websites. Don’t however presume that your chosen marketing channel is not worth pursuing. It is possible to make a success of your new site, as long as you work hand in hand with your optimisation firm from the beginning.
There are many issues which new sites face including:
Google Sandbox
This is a much talked about theory about whether Google punishes new websites, especially if they are in a competitive area. Google’s ranking algorithm does seem to give preference to older domains, and punish those websites that obtain too many links too fast.
Not enough Links
This is a major problem area for new sites, obtain too many links too quickly you may get banned or put in the Google sandbox. However if you do not have enough links you will struggle to perform well in Google.
Trustworthiness
Search engines such as Google give more preference to a website if it is deemed to be trusted. A new site would not have been online long enough to become trusted in the search engines and therefore might be downgraded. There have been many discussions about Google’s trust rank and the factors it uses for your site which include, content and age of the domain.
So how do you best prepare your new website?
Involve your SEO company as early as possible in the process, this will ensure you internal link structure, naming conventions, anchor texts and other on-page optimisation factors are correct from the beginning whilst still maintaining your brand image.
Try to target the appropriate key phrases, you might find that the most competitive phrases are almost impossible for you to rank for straight away. However you can target several less competitive but targeted phrases to gain your site some initial rankings.
Ensure that your site is full of unique and relevant content, and is updated regularly. Sites which are constantly updated tend to do better in the natural listings, as Google deems your sight as a good information resource. This can be further enhance by adding blogs or articles to your site, and encouraging user generated content such as comments.
Finally start building quality links, your SEO firm will submit you too many quality directories that are industry specific. Remember to stagger inbound links to your site over a period of time, and build your site up naturally
Paul
SEO Programmer
