Aged Sites - How basic can they be?

[AlexB]

Hey, guys.

I have a couple of very basic 1 page websites, that I've been holding on to, in the hopes that I will start a website on them one day. Never got around to it, I focused on other projects.

I'm talking about 200-300 words of content on the front page for one site (domain name about a specific kitchen appliance), and 6-7 posts of 100-200 words each on another site (general gadgets related).

The kitchen site is 8 years old, the gadgets one has 9 years already. Never built any backlinks, so the only thing they have going for them is their age.

Does that do anything for them? If I start posting articles on them, I assume they're out of the sandbox even though they haven't been updated in 8-9 years and they have almost no content anyway? No other advantage, right?

 

[TheCurator]

My total guess is that it might help in some small incremental barely measurable way but I wouldn't base any life decisions around it. If I was choosing between working on one of those sites or working on something else, them sitting around almost a decade wouldn't be a deciding factor.

I would take one of those sites instead of a brand new site in the same niche if my plan was to go ahead with a site in one of those niches anyways but I wouldn't choose to based on that. All things equal, I think it probably helps some amount in the short term but doesn't really matter either way if this is a long term project for you, and I think it doesn't help enough to move the needle in making any decisions.

 

[AlexB]

Thanks, that's pretty much what I thought. I appreciate the input.

Would you say they're out of the sandbox though? They would have a better chance at getting trafic in the first 6 months than with a fresh domain?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Thanks, that's pretty much what I thought. I appreciate the input.

Would you say they're out of the sandbox though? They would have a better chance at getting trafic in the first 6 months than with a fresh domain?

Sure. But at the same time, every single page has to age in the index, not just the homepage. It does help though, without a doubt. But unless you're going to pump out a ton of content (100+ posts or more) in the first 6 months, it's not going to matter much since you have to backlinks anyways. The success of those posts will hinge on your keyword research more than anything else.

You have a miniscule, tiny benefit on your hands. Say they're about "kitchen" stuff. If I wanted to do a site on kitchen stuff and had one of your sites on hand but didn't like the domain name... and in one hand I had an aged domain with no backlinks on it with a domain I don't like and in the other hand I could choose a domain name I do like... I'd choose to start over with a new domain.

That's the kind of benefit you're sitting on. It's one that's small enough to be ignored, in my opinion. But if you care about the niches and want to build in them, fire away. It's still a benefit.

 

[TheCurator]

I've always just zoned out ever since people started talking about sandboxes so I'm not a good person to answer that in terms of any specifics like how long it might last. It's just never really been relevant to my plans.

I expect the first few months to be a grind with little to no lasting rewards either way so I've just baked that into my plans and in the grand scheme it really doesn't matter to me. If I'm posting x amount of articles in the first year, a sandbox doesn't change my strategy.

If I'm spending thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours, I'm not really worried about whether I get my $15 AdSense in the first few months or not. I think that a hypothetical sandbox is already less important than the time we've spent thinking about sandboxes today, but that's just me and how it applies to my sites.

Whether or not there's a sandbox you're still going to need content and links, so pick your poison:

Sandbox = you need content and links and time
No sandbox = you need content and links, which take time to get

Plus during this sandbox phase, you can be warming up a Pinterest or other accounts, ingratiating yourself to communities within your niche, networking with other webmasters in and adjacent to your niche, etc.