Aged Domain Not Being Found For Keywords, Even Low Competition

[RMcdonald]

Hi Guys,

I recently purchased a domain through the GoDaddy auctions, however I have had the site up live for around 4 weeks with some really good content on there. ( Around 5 Blogs Ranging From 3,000 to 15,000 words ), The site is indexed but isn't being picked up for any keywords.

What I found odd was when I placed the domain into Moz's new link explorer tool, it told me it was being redirected (when it clearly isn't ) I'm just wondering if anyone has had this issue before and what would be the best way forward?

Thanks for the advice in advance!

 

[real]

Did you run the site thru HTML check, mobile friendliness check or https://tools.pingdom.com/ and did they report any redirects/problems?

 

[RMcdonald]

Not showing any redirects using those tools.

 

[Calamari]

I'm not familiar with moz but I'd be willing to bet its telling you about an old redirect.

Does it tell you where the redirect pointed to?

You're more than likely going to have to wait longer than 4 weeks for things to start happening. Building on expired/aged domains doesn't give you as much of a head start as it used to now that the algorithm prefers aged url's.

 

[RMcdonald]

Yeah I thought this, Moz does tell me where it redirects to, but all other tools report that it's fine.

I know that I have to be patient with an aged expired domain, but I have another aged domain doing great, purchased on the same date.

I will run a small number of links to it and see if that helps kickstart it backup.

 

[Ryuzaki]

One thing I always recommend doing if this isn't a PBN site (and I did it with them too if I had to back in the day) is to submit it to Webmaster Tools, if and only if you think there's a manual penalty. It will tell you within days, then you can submit it for reconsideration and usually get it fixed within days. All you have to do is explain you're a new owner and not sure what the past people did, but you're starting fresh so any old problems will no longer occur.

 

[RMcdonald]

That’s a good idea,

I’m not using it for a PBN site, it’s going to be my next affiliate site project, as my previous aged domain is rocking it out!!

I haven’t seen any manual actions or anything like that. One of the keyword is about 41 keyword competitiveness so yeah it isn’t an easy one to go after, but I don’t even show up in the top 100 which is super weird! And even my low competition ones too

 

[Steve Brownlie]

Back in ye olden days I used to buy these old domains just because you could slap content up, and start collecting cash right away. I always buy a fresh domain these days so I'm not sure how bad it is now, but after Google started paying a little attention to these ownership changes, the odd one I bought just wouldn't ever get indexed at all. Not a big deal at $100-200 a pop but I'm wondering if that's still something that happens sometimes these days or if that was just a temporary FUD type thing that was going on back a good few years.

 

[Golan]

I can't add much to what @Ryuzaki said.

Basically you always start with newly grabbed domain from building at least a half decent site. Next you wait until it jumps back to index, and shows for some keywords. If it doesn't, send for reconsideration. If the site doesn't look like cheap PBN and have a decent content, G will always grant it. And only then you start slowly adding some network links or affiliate content, whatever you are up to.

 

[RMcdonald]

@Golan The site is already indexed and has been built the same as my others.

It is going for a little higher competition keyword, but it should still be showing in the 100's in the serps.

The problem is at the moment it isn't showing at all. They isn't a way I can resubmit as I have said it is already indexed.

I am stuck really, I think it might be a better idea to drop the domain and start a fresh.

I am happy to share the domain in a PM if you feel you can help, both you and @Ryuzaki

 

[Calamari]

I am stuck really, I think it might be a better idea to drop the domain and start a fresh.

That seems a little hasty to me. I'd let it marinate. I've had expired (non-dropped) domains take months to shake whatever algorithmic "penalty" they picked up during the expiration and auction process that turned out to be perfectly fine. One took 6 months of me just letting it sit there.

I'm not convinced that building a site to rank on an expired domain shortens the sandbox period anymore. Instead of pulling down the old domain I'd consider putting the exact same site with the same content on a new domain. If the new domains ranks better right away I'd 301 the old one to it. It sounds like you have enough projects going on so I'd play with this one a bit by doing that to see how it reacts.

 

[RMcdonald]

So the PBN links I placed back to the site must has given the site a kick start as it used to be a 301 redirect.

Currently found well for the competitive keyword, so will keep a track on it. I am pretty sure my rank tracker is missing this domain too, as it isn't updating correctly, So i have placed the site and keywords into a new tracker.

Will see how this goes, I think it might be worthwhile me doing some Blog comments (None Spam Of Course), as well as doing a small outreach campaign to build some branded links. I am hoping that all of this will aid the domain back on track.

Thanks for everyone's help, I think the thing here is to be patient (As always! )

 

[Golan]

If you might be interested, i've recorded recently a screencast about choosing SEO domains, you can watch it by the link together with transcript. The topic of indexing is also covered there.