Sites that have been on the net longer.....

always seem to be ranked higher in google...

[PFOnline]

Does anyone else notice that sites, for most popular keywords, will come up on the first page only if it has been around, on the net, for a long time?

I know this is like common sense, that sites that have been on the net since like 1995 for example will have obtained alot more links.

I guess it just seems a little "unfair" to me, the way google works... that just because a site went up on the net in 1995, that it can be a crappy site, with barely any info, and just because its been on the net so long, that it can be on the first page of a google search for a pretty popular keyword, because it has obtained so many links in the past 7 years.

I guess I'm just jealous I didn't get my site on the net in 1995, lol.

PFOnline

[PFOnline]

Is there any 'one' big key thing I can do that might help get my site to the first page for my sites main keyword? Besides getting more sites to link to me... I work on that one daily!

[toolman]

Google should be called Linkle maybe.

It's odd though. The more they try to get away from the link thing the worse the results are getting.

[bird]

No, there's not "one" thing besides inbound quality links.

But you can build a Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone [webmasterworld.com] with a little more effort... ;)

[rfgdxm1]

Its not longevity, but the inbound links. A site that has been on the net since 1995 that sucks and nobody has chosen to link to gets no boost.

>It's odd though. The more they try to get away from the link thing the worse the results are getting.

I'm not seeing this on the SERPs for what I search for. Googleguy in fact did hint here that the PR component of the algo was toned down last month with his reference about Google being concerned about Pagerank for sale.

[Finder]

My brand new site went up in February, ended up with a PR4 with no inbound links except DMOZ.

I revamped the site in July, made it dynamic, added loads of new content, and acquired four voluntary in-bound links (PR3, 3, 7, and unranked). And I now have a PR2. Makes a person wonder! :)

[PFOnline]

Its not longevity, but the inbound links. A site that has been on the net since 1995 that sucks and nobody has chosen to link to gets no boost.

Ohh, i know that. The sites i was refferring to dont "completely suck" to the point where they would get absolutely no links. But what I meant was, they've been on the net for such a long time, that they managed acquire alot of links, where if they made there site today, exactly how it is, they would maybe be on page 100 in google search, with very few links.

[danny]

I've been on the web since 1994 and I can vouch for the "founder effect". There just wasn't much content online back then, so even pages that were quite slender were linked to. (Though my site only started getting many links/traffic when the first search engines appeared.)

A lot of those links have disappeared over time - and some are updated enough that links have been changed to reflect my move to a new domain - but there are still a lot of old links out there, only gradually suffering link rot. (They say web pages have an average life of less than six months, but once they make it to four or five years they seem remarkably tough.)

[Trisha]

It bugs me too, PFOnline! I know of some older sites that have been around a few years and have some really good links that were most likely made when their sites first went up. Their web sites aren't very good though, but since the people linking to them haven't updated the links section since like 1996 the sites still do really well in Google.

[PFOnline]

Exactly, Trisha.

[Sasquatch]

Is there any 'one' big key thing I can do that might help get my site to the first page for my sites main keyword? Besides getting more sites to link to me... I work on that one daily!

If you can't bust through on the main keyword, how about trying to improve your other keywords and keyphrases?

Look through the search words that people used to find your site, then check out how you are doing in those results. Then try out a few variations on those.

A first page result on "fuzzy dice" might be worth more than a first page on "pink fuzzy dice", but a #1 on "pink fuzzy dice" will get you a lot more traffic than #100 on "fuzzy dice" and you will probably have a higher conversion rate too.

Then as the "pink fuzzy dice" buyers link to your site you might start having a chance on the "fuzzy dice" page.

[PFOnline]

This is all very true sasquatch..... and I do, do great on other search terms... for example... I come up on the 5th page of google, for search "keyword", but #1 on 1st page, for the search "keyword chat"!

Thanks for the tip sasquatch, ive known this before, but i think you kind of reminded me, since i cant make page 1 yet for the search "keyword", that it would be a good idea to optimize the pages that are doing well, like "keyword chat"

PFOnline

[Sasquatch]

It always helps to get a little reminder.

I was just looking at my list of search terms and was reminded of how many people misspell words in their searches and don't notice when google offers a correction.

One of the reviews on our site misspells "keyword arctic keyword" as "keyword artic keyword" (missing the first c in arctic) and we have gotten over 8 times as many referals off the misspellings as when it is spelled correctly!

We are off the radar on the correct spelling, as that is on a "fresh" page that is currently showing PR0, but there is only one page of results when it is misspelled, and we are #3.

Now if there was only a way to get some of those people that can't spell without looking like we can't spell, or spamming. Oh well, not worth worrying about.

[piskie]

I have got a site that is 12 months old with PR4 that competes with sites much older with PR6 to PR7.

For 8 primary search terms, it achieves:-
5, 3, 1, 1, 5, 1, 15 and 16.

This is with only a handful of fostered incoming links and a listing in DMOZ but not Yahoo.

The site is 100% clean with not a hint of trickery or deciept just good optimisation and descriptive text content.