beeen a whileWhat new websites tend to overlook
We design a website, code it, and add some content. We submit it to search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. We wait anxiously for our websites to be somewhere visible in the search engines. We may even start swapping links with other websites, hoping that this will increase our back links and therefore increase our ranking placement in the search engines. We look again at the search engines, seeing we're still not ranked all that well. We take a second glance making sure our website is properly coded and meets coding standards. We go into our stats log to see just how many visitors we received from Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Not looking all that great -- what do we do?
If you haven't heard by now, there is such as thing called the Google Sandbox which is incorporated into their search engine algorithm. This sandbox seems to filter out relatively new websites and usually a site won't come out of the sandbox until about 8 months has passed. And as you probably know, Google is the search engine that is most highly used and generates the most queries out of all the search engines. Google alone generates a whopping 46.2% of the searches, while Yahoo follows far behind at 22.5%, MSN at 12.6%, and the other search engines taking the remaining percentile.
Article Note: These statistics were taken from searchenginewatch.com for the month of July 2005.
So what does this mean? As a new website, most likely you aren't going to generate a lot of traffic from search engines because of Google's sandbox system filtering out new websites and Google being the number one search engine. Of course, you can generate traffic from swapping links and finding affiliate partners to help increase your traffic. This is fine, but search engines CAN give you a great deal of traffic in the long run. So what should you do?
Prepare. Start providing quality content and building up your website as much as possible during these months, even if you don't receive a lot of visitors. Of course do a few link swaps here and there and maybe a few submissions to directories to give your self a boost in traffic. But remember, eventually the sandbox WILL be lifted and if you really do have a quality website, your SERPS will increase, generating you a large amount of traffic from Google. Let your site build up and make sure your visitors have a lot to see when they do first visit your website. This will increase the likelihood that your visitors are going to come back and keep a mental note of your website. Had you not built up your website there is no doubt a lot of visitors will come and go without a second glance -- perhaps losing potential long term visitors who would have stayed otherwise.
Think of the first eight months of your website as the most crucial of all. The more visitors you have, I guarantee the more hurried and worked you will feel to satisfy them. Work hard to provide quality content and by the time you do have loads of visitors, you will have plenty of content to feed your visitors the weight on your shoulders will be lifted.
Written by Daniel Moxon