Are You Getting New Sites On New Domain Names to Rank?

[RedBar]

How long are you finding it is taking a new site on a new domain name to begin ranking these days?

A couple of months ago I launched a new widget site on an unused domain name of mine that I've had since the 90s. Most of the thumbnail images have been indexed, most of the larger images have not however all the pages have been indexed.

Two months on and this site may as well not be there, it's almost doing nothing.

Searching around other forum boards some people are suggesting G takes at least 6 months now before any movement upwards takes place in the SERPs for such new sites.

I'm fairly sure if it were a HUGE brand this would not happen, or would it?

Any opinions/views/recent experience?

[goodroi]

I actually just launched a new site and was able to get rankings within one week for low competition terms and I am confident on the long term prospects. I am not saying it is easy, that anyone can do it, or that it will always work. I have launched some sites that never succeeded and the profit margins have shrunk over the last 10 years. But I do know from years of experience that it is still possible for a one person project to be profitable and successful in Google. I also know that if I was a big company, I would very likely be able to generate much stronger rankings signals.

Imagine if Nike launches a new website and then shares it with their 5.9 million twitter followers or the 24 million people that liked them on Facebook. If only 1% of those people were curious and clicked on the link they would immediately have over 300,000 visitors generating usage signals. If only 1% of those visitors blogged about it, Nike would have 3,000 editorial backlinks overnight. So yes, I expect big brands potentially can rank new sites a bit faster than a single webmaster launching his own site.

To anyone who is thinking of launching a new website, you need to harshly judge & appraise your new site like any other existing website. Ask yourself "why is this site worthy of ranking?" Does it have great & unique content that generates remarkable usage signals and backlinks? What is special about this website that isn't already available on 100 other websites? What unique problem does this website solve? Simply being new isn't a good enough reason to rank.

[McMohan]

Any opinions/views/recent experience?

Yes, many. Anyone saying to the contrary usually gives examples of low competition keywords that no one searches for, and extrapolate that result to keywords having some commercial value. But ranking commercial grade keywords takes much longer than what it used to be say 1-2 years back, unless your site gets backlinks from authority sites that is usually beyond bounds from regular SEOs in good number and fairly quickly. There is a critical mass of good backlinks your site should get before your site moves an inch for reasonably competitive keywords. That critical mass is different for different niches of course. This is presuming the website has all things in right place, viz: content, design, supplementary content etc.