Lesson learned: Web Site age affects SERP?

[webdesk]

I have been promoting a JV product recently and got in before all of the big players. I thought I had done a tremendous job on my SEO because, for a web page that I had just created for the products release. it was reasonably positioned in the SERP of Google - above most that got in on the test run weeks earlier. Google found me in about an hour. Yahoo took about 3 days, Bing too.

Then as the deadline approached for the product launch, I noticed, I was starting to slip in the SERP... no problem, tweak the SEO... back up in the results... just not quite as high. Another day closer, falling more... tweak up... another day, fall. Well after 10 days, I'm so far down in the results, no amount of SEO or backlinking will help get sales on this product.

SO, what is going on? There must have been existing sites, of age and authority that came on board, and when they added their promos, with the same keywords I used, they automatically positioned above mine. They weren't even in the results previously.

I went ahead then and proved it. I sabotaged one of my slightly older, totally unrelated niche sites with 2 sentences added to the top of the main page content. I did not throw in any other keywords to the site... I simply added the 2 sentences and a link to my falling site. The sabotaged site now greatly outpostions the site I created for the product!

Maybe I shouldn't say lesson learned, because this has now opened up a whole other set of questions. Furthermore, if I really learned a lesson, I would know what to do about it. I'm still going to try to optimize more but backlinks really don't seem to help the urgent need for positioning in a time-sensitive product promotion.

So what helps?

[aaron_nimocks]

It is not necessarily website age, it is more link age. Both of them usually come hand in hand but you can take a 10 year old domain that never had any links to it and the results wont be that great. But if you take a 10 year old domain that had some links on it for the past 8-9 years consistently, then that is where the SERP power comes from.

[Willie Crawford]

I have taken older sites, with good search engine positioning and
repurposed them with good results. For example, take a site
with a well-ranked blog on it, that's getting spidered a lot, and
giving it a new title, and making posts related to a new product/
niche, or keyword phrases.

That has had immediate results for me.

I have also added new pages to related domains and
had them do better that new domains devoted exclusively
to a given product or keyword.

Willie

[Quentin]

This was a myth spread by registrars to try and get you to register your website for years.

You need to get it from the horses mouth.

YouTube- Broadcast Yourself.

Quentin

[mikemcmillan]

I would agree with Willie in that re-purposing an older domain (but it must be highly related) to promote a new product can work well. But I will tell you that if you are setting up pre-sell pages for a new product launch in the IM niche, your page has a much greater chance of holding its position for months or even years without doing a lot of subsequent back-linking after your initial burst.

In non-IM niches a product can hold sales for very long periods of time and new affiliates with new sales pages can be coming on board daily. However, in the IM niche there is more likely an initial burst of activity as the big guys do their launch day email promotions, but then sales start falling off rapidly after a month--maybe a little longer for products with good traction.

My point is that in the IM niche, few affiliates keep creating new back-links after the initial launch period because it is more profitable to spend time setting up new pre-sell pages for other upcoming launches and back-linking the heck out of those.

I'm no Matt Cutts, but to address your main question--there are a couple things I strongly believe can help your Google rankings especially in a product launch situation where you have a lot of competition coming on board in a very short period of time. (And the vast majority of them don't have a clue.)

For one thing, try to create compelling content at the very top of your pre-sell page. You MUST be able to hold visitors for more than 5-10 seconds! You must give them a reason to stay. The good Lady Google knows how long visitors stay on sites. If visitors to your pre-sell page stay an average of 38 seconds, and visitors to my site (promoting the same product) stay an average of only 12 seconds--ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL--you will have me at an advantage in Google's eyes! Why?

Google's primary objective is to create a quality experience for users searching for things. More seconds spent on a site is one parameter that gives an indication to Google that people are happy with a page returned. This is what "G" wants. If she serves up too many junk pages (which people click out of fast) people would get discouraged and say, "Hey, maybe I'll boogie off to YaHoo and try the search."

Without the ability to serve up quality pages, pages closely related to search terms, and pages which visitors stay on for more than a few seconds--AdWords and AnSense crumble and Google dies. She will not allow that to happen--I can assure you of that.

So, yes--try to keep visitors to your pre-sell pages there as long as you can. The second big thing--and I won't try to convince anyone of this here any more--is the strong use of LSI terms. You can beat the gurus pants down with this (again, all other things being equal).

Hope that's somewhat useful. Good luck bud! --Mike

[GeorgR.]

Domain Age plays a BIG factor in SEO, i have some sites outranking mine solely due to domain age. Sites which dont have any significant back links.

HOWEVER - if you purchase an "old" domain it is said that the authority resets as soon as the domain owner changes.

[abelacts]

Your point has been proven with my sites too. You don't need to do all the crazy SEO tricks and yet still get high ranking for old domains. Just mention the keywords in the title or content, that is all you need. This is good for those who are serious and not fly by the night players :-)

[Rush]

Originally Posted by Quentin

This was a myth spread by registrars to try and get you to register your website for years.

You need to get it from the horses mouth.

YouTube- Broadcast Yourself.

Quentin

We're talking about site age here, not domain age. Two different things.

Some very interesting stuff. I have some aged websites, I want to test this out myself by adding something unrelated. Do you think it would work to add a new page to your aged site, or does it need to be on the homepage?