Hard to rank 14yr old domain

I've had pretty good success ranking other websites with my methods, but they have all been new sites/domains. It's just your basic tiered link building, but I've narrowed it down to be pretty legitimate. But for some reason, I am having a really hard time ranking this new domain I have aquired. The keywords are not that competitive ( medium in google Adwords ), but I'm not ranking for them at all. Would this be because of the domain age? It's 14 years old and it already had 400 backlinks (all natural looking) when I got it. I think the site just has a lot of authority, so maybe I need I need to build a lot more backlinks then I am used to? I just don't want to go all out before I screw it up.

 

Hey sup rogue, although the domain is 14 years old, it could possibly have a bad history with google. Even tho it's indexed, and possibly has a bit of PR, there is also other things that google takes notice that won't be visible to the human eye. Kinda sux, but this has actually happened to me in the past too ...

 

I think you need to work hard to it.
Do more backlinks then it was in the past and you will be great.

 

Thanks for the advice. Im just going put a little more work into it and see what happens

 

There could be more than just adding links and working harder.


Is the site in trouble with google? Do a google search for your domain with a few search operators to find out.

If you type info:domain.com (replace domain.com with your domain of course) and site:domain.com you should see your domain right at the beginning of the search results. This is a healthy site.


If it doesn't show up, it could be unhealthy. People sell penalized domains all the time, so you have to check these things before you ever buy a domain.


What is the keyword you are trying to rank for? I don't mean tell me, but is it competitive? And by competitive I don't mean "what did Market Samurai" think of it. If a million other marketers are going for the same keyword, then you'll need a lot more than a few backlinks to rank your site.


If it's a healthy domain with good backlinks, you should be able to easily rank for a non-competitive keyword in a matter of a few days or hours. Create a post with kind of a keyword that nobody is typing in at all, like "how to fold the gibberish in the month of may". Ok, that's stupid, but if you create your post and optimize it for that keyword and you rank #1 in a matter of minutes, you have a healthy site.


If you never rank for that keyword, you have an unhealthy site and you'll need to really work on it to get it on Google's good side again.


Hope that helps a bit.

 

SEO isn't easy... Not even with a 14 year old domain. You just got to keep building those links and be patient. In many cases it can be worth it to outscource the link building tasks...

 

Not hard to getting good ranking and traffic with targeted keywords, because your domain is old one.

 

How long the domains is inactive before you got it? You also have to consider it. If the domain is inactive for a long time, then it will require some time to re-back in results. And need some push up.