6 replies to this topic

[bobmeetin]

Developing a new website, even adding pages to an existing, commonly involves setting expectations to the customer based upon the sandbox. Say 6-12 months for a new site to get recognized and ranked, perhaps 2 months or so for pages.

Theory I) Yesterday I heard a designer say that she 'never' releases a new site until the design is complete and all the pages are viewer-ready. Sounds good, but understanding the sandbox effect and the fact that between being able to do the work, then collect client content, can easily take a month, sometimes many for lethargics, thus prolonging the agony of recognition by search engines.

Theory II) An opposing theory is that as soon as you have a project in hand you should minimally get the domain registered, then set up a skeleton site to get pages into the "system", start the google clock ticking. You might have some pretty barren pages at the onset as well as a rather plain site, but the wheels are moving.

Opinions & feedback?

-Bob

[Jill]

Even if you put up a domain, unless you build links to it, you're not going to start the clock ticking.

[Shane]

I always try to get a placeholder page and at least one link to it ASAP. It can be something as simple as "Coming Soon," but it's definitely good to get that clock ticking, and there's no harm in doing it.

[Srvwiz]

Put some healthy content and submit to few directories...

[bobmeetin]

Interesting what you say, Jill - I thought I'd seen some pretty sparse sites get indexed, nothing to write home about, but indexed soon after registering the domain, but without any links pointing at em.

Are we setting the clock the same in the same manner? I'm not talking indexing frequency or frequently, just plain first time index. Treat me like I'm from St. Louis.

I thought:

1) register domain
2) google sandbox clock starts
3) sometime within a week to several months, site gets spidered
4) google comes back in perhaps another 3 months, if no content changes google sticks to 3 month routine
5) another 3 months, still no change in content and google just might slip reschedule next visit for 6 months or longer. If content changed, search engine may schedule a sooner return visit.

Somewhere after step #1 as the site is building you should also work on links. The links act as vitamin supplements and encourage the search engine upon its next visit to pay heed, we're alive, but also impacting future page rank.

Back to the original thinking, wouldn't it be smarter to get something initiated, even with minimal content and few links now, rather than wait for the business owner to get all the ducks lined up and open the site for business 3 months down the road?

BTW - earlier today I read someone suggesting that you can get a site penalized for getting links from new, content light sites. Don't you gotta start somewhere?

-Bob

[Jill]

I thought I'd seen some pretty sparse sites get indexed, nothing to write home about, but indexed soon after registering the domain, but without any links pointing at em.

Sometimes that happens, but the pages rarely stay indexed without any links. I have no idea if the clock starts ticking then though. My guess would be no, as the site wouldn't be very trustworthy without any links pointing to it, and the aging delay is very much about trust (as well as time).

Back to the original thinking, wouldn't it be smarter to get something initiated, even with minimal content and few links now, rather than wait for the business owner to get all the ducks lined up and open the site for business 3 months down the road?

It certainly wouldn't hurt.

[Randy]

I am from St. Louis, Bob. Or at least close enough to still count as a Show Me'er.

In my personal experience your problem is with #2.

Google will start to spider a site as soon as they know about it. And since they can know about it as soon as it's registered spidering can start right away. Especially now that they're an official ICANN registrar.

But just because they know about it and start to spider the site it doesn't necessarily follow that they start the aging delay clock, so be careful about making any assumptions based upon the initial spidering and even the initial indexing.

I buy a lot of domains for future projects. Some of them I get around to fairly quickly, some are years in the process because I either don't have enough time to do the development or haven't yet convinced myself that the idea for one site is better than another. Because I own the servers, all of the sites go up with at least some placeholder pages pretty soon after they've been registered just so I don't forget about them.

They all seem to get spidered and a page or two indexed for a time even if there's no links pointing to the new site. But out of a complete fluke, I had been using some of these spare domains as test beds for this or that, which of course usually required that I link to them from another site that is already fully indexed.

It's not proof by any stretch of the imagination, but my new sites over the past year or so that have had a few links to them seem to have spent a lot less time in the aging delay than those that only had placeholder pages but no links.

Apply a few thousand grains of salt, but that's what I've seen.