jueves, 15 de junio de 2006

Links to Rankings - A Test Of Wills

One of the biggest changes in the seo world in the last few years is the time it can take to rank a website, particularly in Google.  A bit back Rand noted that even established "trusted" domains were taking 10+ weeks to see some traction in terms of higher rankings after building links to these pages.  The amount of patience needed to see results is even greater when talking about new domains.

Our own LinkBuildingBlog.com has not earned top rankings in Google until just the last few weeks when we have spotted our blog jump from out of the 100's for "link building" all the way to the top 10 on most data centers.  We registered the domain May 12, 2005 and our first post was May 16, 2005.  Our blog was a site that seemed to receive all the right links since the first day Andy and I started posting.  A quick search on Yahoo shows over 20,000 links into our domain!  Even with this nice linkage from many quality sites it seemed we had to wait for our domain to age past that magic one year mark before we saw what we thought made sense for our blog... a top 10 ranking.

The good news for new sites is I have personally seen three unique sites (12 to 14 months old) that I track recently break out of no where into the top 15 on Google with their latest index tweaks.  Andy is also reporting some sites that were created much more recently showing signs of ranking in Google much faster than what we have seen in the last year.  Now we all know results can be seen in MSN and Yahoo much faster but the holy grail is top Google rankings for most sites.  As a very general rule for link building (always exceptions of course)...

Established Domains (domains that are over 1+ year old or are already ranking for many terms)    *build links -> 10-12 weeks later see results.

New Domains (domains under 1 year old and are showing no strong ranking results) *build links -> 12 weeks to 16 months later see results. 

There you have it, I have oversimplified a very complicated issue.  Readers, what are you seeing in terms of time it is taking you to see traction in search rankings after building new links?

14 comentarios:

  1. I agree...I set up a new blog with adsense ads about 2 months ago and it only makes a few dollars per month.

    I get links from submitting articles but it's slow.

    What are your best methods for gaining links?

    Herman

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  2. You can buy them :)

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  3. Patrick, are you seeing top 10 rankings for this blog since the last Google "update" this past week(s)?

    I've got a personal site that was launched in April of '05. It was buried in the Google sandbox until about a week or two ago when Google started it's very odd update (I don't think these current results are set in stone; there seem to be 3 sets of very different results that are toggling between data centers; everyone is seeing this). Now I'm in the top 5 on a very competitive keyword.

    I'm happy at the moment, but I'm concerned the ranking won't stick...

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  4. I've seen anywhere from 1 week to 2-3 months, but more often the latter. The times I've seen results within 1 week was from having a powerful link with anchor text from a trusted site. Also depends on the strength of the site I'm optimizing.

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  5. Suprisingly to me, but extremely happy. I notice a jump usually to the top 3 within 4- 10 days. this is when i add a product to our site..that particluar url jumps pretty quick. currently i have about 3,000 sites linking directly to mine.

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  6. A frequently overlooked factor is the age of inbound links, not just the age of the domain. Google's patent indicates that they assign weight to how long a link has been in place, and it makes sense.

    I think the "Sandbox" effect depends largely on the inbound links' duration/age, the link relevancy, and how natural a sites' link-development-progression appears.

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  7. I'm still learning,this is all new to me.But I'm having a hard time getting links unlest you have a 2 or better ranking,I've been on about a month and haven't seen any movement.I didn't know it took that long.

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  8. I started a new site two weeks ago and it already gets about 100 referrals a day from Google results. There are quite a few things you can do to bring the time right down, but.. they're trade secrets.

    Similarly, I have a client who gets 500 referrals a day from Google within two months on organic results alone too.

    If I had to give away one tip, spread out your link development. You don't want a ton of links on day one. You want them spread out over time. This isn't the best tip, but it helps. Okay, one more.. make sure any domain you register is for at least two years. Google pays attention to this.

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  9. I put my domain css3.info online last saturday, got dugg last sunday/monday, and showed up in the results for css3 on wednesday... The domain was registered about 2 weeks ago i think... It all depends on how much buzz you're able to create. Funny thing is it got denied for text-link-ads on tuesday because of the lack of links to the domain :)

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  10. Age means nothing. Look at Zillow.com. Top rankings in a matter of weeks for highly competitive real estate-related terms. All you need a boat-load of links, from top teir sites.

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  11. I'm ranked #3 on yahoo for make money and #1 for make money at home and I am not paying for links or any promotion.

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  12. I've recently bought some authority links & presell pages for a PR5 domain. Age of domain is over 5yrs. I started seeing an increase in the rankings on Google after 1 month. No earlier. And, the position just went up by one. For that site, the increase proved to be worth it from an ROI perspective.

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  13. All should be greate if it weren't exactly so.

    I have created a site (on new domani) on October 29th and have done some link building (150 links) and content writing (50 pages). In 6 months sharp I started seeing traffic trickle from Google on one of my main keywords. Judging by the amount of competition, I am out of the sandbox in a half a year, not in promised 12-16 months.

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  14. The longest i been in the sandbox has been 9 months, the shortest has been 1 month.

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