27
Apr 06

Do You ‘Do New’?

by Andy Hagans Strategy with 24 Comments

This post isn’t really about link building, but the strategic decision making that supercedes tactics. I got inspired by JudgeJeffries’ thoughts in Is Google Stagnating? (subscribers only)

Just a thought about my main site and my views being almost the same as my main competitor who I met recently for the first time. We both now think its a waste of time to put new sites up in our sector due to the sandbox, but more interestingly we are both totally scared to touch our large main websites for fear of tripping into the sandbox. Neither of us add links, we dont exchange but more importantly we’re both frightened of adding new pages or changing the structure in any way.

I think the sentiment of ‘not wasting time’ on a new site is a valid one. The threshold of momentum you need to gain traction (visitors = links = more visitors = more links, OK but how do I get the initial visitors) seems to be increasing in Google with each passing day. (Perhaps this is indeed what Google wants, anyhow).

I disagree that one should be scared of adding content to an old domain–that thar’s the only low-hanging fruit left in ol’ Goog!

But anyway, in light of the ‘box, what do you do? Not start new sites? Only start a new site if you can launch with a year-old, indexed domain? (My preferred strategy) Or start new sites assuming nothing but hate from Google for a year, and banking on MSN and Y! traffic? (my backup strategy when I can’t get ahold of a year-old domain)

Bennie votes for the latter:

Get mad and flood domains and content like there is no tomorrow. Before long you will be 6 months in and have sites ready to go back over. Then with your newfound network you can use your trustrank power to overcome the so called sandbox.

Don’t play the game get mad and work hard at it. The more diverse your content is (provided it all comes back to the main goal – or niche) you will be way ahead.

Keep adding new sites and pretend there is no link aging process. Ignore Google, work with Y and MSN, G will follow.

In the end, the only bad strategy is the uninformed one. If you can’t get link love from trusted sources quickly, expect Google to ignore you for a year or so. If that scenario is in your business model, there’s no problem.

LBB readers: Do you ‘do new’? How do you do it?

24 comments - add your's now

quadszilla (04/28/06 at 1:52 am)

1 year old is not old enough for a “new” site imho.

If you’re not starting with a 301 from an old site or , you’re not playing with an old domain to start with, don’t even bother unless you don’t want to rank in google.

graywolf (04/28/06 at 8:15 am)

Boldly go where no SEO has gone before. Chase traffic not SERP’s, find ways to build, update and maintain with a minimum of time and effort.

Andy Merrett (04/28/06 at 8:41 am)

Yes I ‘do new’ and it’s working OK – I have my own and other Google-loved sources that can link in (but not so many at once as to seem suspicious).

I work on getting readers from other SEs, but more importantly from RSS aggregators, who by nature lap up new content.

Publish content. Get linked. Don’t worry about Google as the be-all-and-end-all of your strategy. Sure, it can take a while but I now have pages 1-2 years old pulling in large (for me) numbers of visitors per day.

aaron wall (05/04/06 at 11:43 pm)

>1 year old is not old enough for a “new” site imho.

On about a couple thousand dollars spend a friend got ranked in a year in the top 10 on Google for a single word query that goes for like $5 a click on Overture with a monthly search volume of over 140,000 on Overture.

ray (05/07/06 at 2:36 pm)

Focus and patience, Grasshopper.

Adam Sharp (05/09/06 at 9:14 am)

In my experience, the age of the links is at least as important as the age of the domain.

I do new sites, I’m not too concerned about the top keywords anymore. I’ve found the vast # of related keyword combinations will add up to produce much more traffic than the top 10 keywords in almost any industry.