Usual time to index and rank a new site

[DavidLenehan]

Hi Just wondering if anyone knew how long it usually takes for a brand new site to get indexed and ranked?  I launched a new site about 5 weeks ago. So far I have had 96,000 pages indexed but the majority haven't ranked particularly well or appeared. The ones that have ranked aren't ranking high even though they have better content than competitors sites... And my old domain.  Do I just need to hang tight and wait till my domain authority improves? Is there anything I can do to speed up this process? cheers

[DougRoberts]

Hi David, remember it's not just about the relevance of your content, but about it's popularity too. The one thing you'll be missing on a new site is backlinks. By identifying your key pages and building good relevant backlinks to them (or even better creating content that get's others to create the links themselves!) you'll increase the page authority of these pages and your overall domain authority.

You mention an old site. Is the new site a replacement? Can you set up redirects from the old site to the new so you can pass link equity onto the new property (and link customers to relevant content on the new site?) Having to compete with your old site doesn't sound ideal.

If for some reason the old site is out of your control - can you get links from the same place as your old site did? Use Open Site Explorer to take a look at he inbound links to your old domain.

What are the keywords that really matter to your business? Where are the customers, your strongest offerings and the most vulnerable competition?

Can you identify any low hanging fruit? Are there any keywords that are less competitive, easier to rank for, buy maybe with less traffic value? If you can get some of this ranking easily you'll get a quicker increase in traffic initially than spending a lot of time/effort attacking a very competitive keyword.

Are there any existing (real world) business relationships that you can use to get links?

[DavidLenehan]

Hi Doug

Thanks for the response and advice. I have started building back links to key pages but these are not showing up in open site explorer yet. I guess that takes time as well.

Old site has no content at all and is under a different brand name. It also got a bit of a panda smack down. The new site has a lot of useful content, product descriptions, manuals etc so should do OK. I kept the old one going whilst the new one got established.

Most of my keywords (170,000 of them) are part numbers of obsolete parts - there is not that much room for creativity.

I think you need to be patient in SEO and I am not.

Thanks again Doug

[DougRoberts]

Ah patience, can't help you with that one!

It may take a while for your links to appear in Open Site Explorer. There can be a lag of 1month+ due to the crawl/update cycle. You can find details of the next update here:

https://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/345964-linkscape-update-schedule

You might be able to find fresher link using an alternative such as MajesticSEO or even google webmaster tools.

I believe the best way to ensure that the mozscape index finds your site is to make sure you've got some links from sites already in the index with high domain authorities.

Also, keep an eye on your google analytics and see where you might be getting referral traffic. If you know a site is passing good qualified visitors who convert then I'd see how you can develop the relationship with that site. (Also, find out why they're linking to you and see what other similar opportunities are out there.)

Completely get the issues regarding the specific part numbers etc. I'm guessing you can't count on repeat business either?

How much do you know about who your customers are? Apart from their very specific needs (finding a particular replacement part) can you target any content toward their more general needs/goals?

Where do these people go for advice? Are there particular user groups/forums or other online/offline communities that you could target?

Have you had any thoughts about how you can position yourself as the go-to place for these type of parts? What makes you different to the competition?