SEO Tips #7: Age of Web Site
Recently, we’ve been focusing on important factors that can affect your Web site’s visibility in the search engines. Last month, we focused on global link popularity (authority) of the site. This month, we cover the age of your Web site or the launch of indexable content as seen by the search engines.
If you bought your domain name 10 years ago then “parked” it (kept it at the hosting company in your account) while you waited 5 years to launch a Web site, only the 5 years count since the site was launched.
Recently, aging has taken on more significance when it comes to your site’s ranking factors. As the search engines have come to place more emphasis on “trusted” sites or ones that have been around for a decent amount of time (they want the cream to rise to the top), so the “weight” they place on your site has increased.
This is a big factor known as an “aging delay”, especially for sites less than one year old. If your Web site is less than 6 months old, it is repressed on Google by some sort of “sandbox” or temporary holding pen. This may be to prove to them that your site is long-term and means business rather than a fly-by-night.”
So the question is, “How do I get going as a newbie?” First things first, once your site is launched, you then need to get indexed by the search engine spiders so you appear when you type the “site:www.domain.com” in the address bar. To get indexed, if you can get an inbound link from an already-spidered site (e.g. a forum), the chances are you will get spidered too. If you are starting from scratch, try to build up some early link equity so that when you do get indexed, you’ll be on rung 2 rather than the bottom rung.
Secondly, submit your site to the major engines (Google, Yahoo!, and Live Search) and directories (DMOZ is an important one) – you only need to do this once. Focus on Live Search and Yahoo! results and buy Pay-Per-Click (PPC) if you need early traffic.
TIP: If you are moving your Web site to a new domain, don’t simply move the pages and delete the old ones as the “link equity” already earned at the first one will need to be transferred to the new one. To do this, you need to do a 301-redirect from the first one to the second by uploading an .htaccess file into the root directory of where all your web pages are stored on the first server with the following code:
redirect 301 /index.html http://www.newdomain.com/index.html
Do this for all of your pages to the new ones, even if the page name has changed.
If there is a .htaccess file already in existence with lines of code present, be very careful not to change any existing line unless you are familiar with the functions of the file. Scroll down past all the existing code, leave a line space, then create a new line with your new code.
There may be a dip in traffic but you will be in better shape with a 301 redirect. A 302-redirect is for a temporary move.
Next month, we’ll focus on #8: the topical relevance of inbound links to your Web site.
