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I think some web purists may frown at the idea of placing any site on the web that doesn't serve a purpose that benefits surfers, but I'm curious as to whether or not anyone has tried this approach yet. It seems like a nice incentive to offer a prospective client, after a few months to a year you could offer someone a site with immediate inclusion in every search engine.
This isn't theory, its something that anyone can do in less than an hour. What I was curious about was whether or not anyone has done this with free hosting in order to jump start a new site or help a new client get speedy inclusion into search engines. Or, if most webmasters would frown on developing dummy sites that don't immediately serve the online community.
Free hosting has gotten more appealing since then, primarily because it's easier to find options that give you more control over the site. But in the end, with most free hosting accounts, it's still a folder on someone else's domain. This can provide some lift for the site if the domain's authority is worth much. Which is why it has also become a favorite tactic of spammers. Various ways of executing it exist.
But if you want to really grow the site into something important and sustainable, you'll most likely want your own domain which signals legitimacy and offers you total control over your Web site. Plus if you've build up enough links to matter to your free site, you'll eventuallly be faced with moving the site and either redirecting the backlinks, which comes with its own set of issues, or contacting the site owners to ask them to update their links, which is a real PITA.
If you want the site to have real long term juice, put it on its own domain. My 2 cents anyway.
Either way though, I fail to see the logic in doing this. I hear you talk about building pagerank, but as was implied above, the only way you're gonna do that is with lots of decent content that gets people to link to you, or bought links and listings of various kinds. Just throwing up a few generic articles won't do much.
So if you are willing to buy links or directory listings, for the tiny cost of hosting these days, it's almost a no brainer to get your own host and keep full control over the sites.
At least as relates to what I think you're asking.
about building pagerank, but as was implied above, the only way you're gonna do that is with lots of decent content that gets people to link to you, or bought links and listings of various kinds. Just throwing up a few generic articles won't do much.
But generic articles and a few links from a single related PR5 site that you own is all you need to create a site filled with PR4 pages in less than six months. No link campaigns or buying of text links is necessary. I know that it can be done, that's why my questions are more about whether or not other designers have done this and if some people would consider this black hat (since you've created what is essentially a dummy site for the express purpose of gaining PR value).
Ive been practicing this for a year or so. Every now and then, when i can think of a good domain name, i get it and set up an optimised web page for it, on a hosting plan from my server. most of them get PR2 in less than 3 months, with only 1 link from outside. last year, i had few of them with PR4. but they all dropped to PR2 after the last Google PR export, 2 months ago.
Many of my SEO clients, need to have a brand new website, and it takes anything between 2 to 12 weeks for the new domain to get indexed by Google. setting up a site in advance, gives you a good start and saves time. An optimised PR2 site, that cost almost nothing.
But this is only good if you know your "client to be" and their needs, which is my case.
I dont see a point in Free hosting plans, as they use a different domain name than yours, and as far as i know, PR moves with the domain name.
If you have a reseller hosting plan, with unlimited domain name set up, and if you plan ahead for a particular client, i think it saves time to set up a page in advanced.
Koosha
Free hosting
Free hosting seemed to be an important part of the original post. No one and I mean no one that I know would do this, for most of the reasons already noted, and more. It is easy now to get a hosting account for way under $10 a month, where you can also add multiple domains, bringing the hosting cost per domain down to a dollar or two a month. The only longer term concern might be being on a shared IP, but for a holding site, it's no biggie. You can always get a dedicated IP later.
There may be free hosting accounts out there that really allow full control of the site, and hosting on your domain (not a sub-domain), but even if there are, those hosts will probably still have some control over your pages, and you will not have full control to do as you please with them. ;-)
If you can keep a site up on a your own domain, for a dollar a month and have total control of it, there is no reason on earth not to.
I was wondering if anyone else here has used free hosting as a means of getting an unused domain name they have indexed in search engines and gather pagerank until a use can be found for it (a personal site or one for a new client).
The short answer to this question is "sorta." Yes, people will take a domain they think they might want to use in the future, and throw a bit of content on, throw a few links at it.
since you've created what is essentially a dummy site for the express purpose of gaining PR value
I said "sorta" above because very few who know what they are doing will do that for the purpose of "gathering pagerank" ... and that is part of what people have been trying to commnicate here. The point of getting a starter site up (in many people's minds) is to start the clock on the domain aging process, and link aging process, so that later it will theoretically be easier to rank a more robust set of pages on that *domain* in the future.
Despite what some still think, it's not very valuable to get a bit of PR for a page or mini site, if the links are cr*p and the content is dup articles. The pages won't rank and depending up where the links come from they may or may not help much either.
Forget PR. It is an antiquated concept when it comes to ranking sites for a given query. All over the Web there are PR2 pages outranking PR5 pages.
The greater point is this: Many, many people still grossly misunderstand this clock/aging thing. It's not just about throwing a link at a site, waiting 6 or 12 months, throwing up a 50 page "real site" and getting immediate rankings. If that is the idea, you can expect to wait another 6 to 12 months after the "real site" is up before it ranks for anything meaningful.
Bottom line: Yes, people are employing the concept of what you are saying and have been with some success for a few years at least now (actually the really smart ones started doing this back in '99 or '00...maybe even earlier. But it's not being done as outlined in the OP. Hopefully we've made clear some of the reasons why.
It's also worth nothing that there are other variations on this strategy. :P
