I'm wondering if it is better to start off a new site as a section within an existing website rather than with it's own new domain. In August 2003 some content had grown too big for an existing site so I pulled it off and gave it it's own domain. Traffic and search engine referals were maintained, and the site has grown steadily from there. That was before all this talk about sandboxes, and I'm wondering anyone has tried that approach recently and if so what happens these days? Do you just get sandboxed anyway?
Start the website where it will stay, I know from my own experience that it's extremely bad to change anything in your domain name or file structure after your site has been indexed by Google. They will sandbox you and think you have a new website when you change the domain later on.
Thanks Chrissicom. Sounds like Google have covered my potential work around. Guess my poor new site will have to live in the sandbox for a while. Pity in a way, as it's truely an information site which covers stuff that isn't covered in a useful way elsewhere on the net. There aren't even any adverts..... Err, yet. The site was launched last week with it's own domain and I was having second thoughts. I'll keep it going as it is.
SEO is not a good way for a new site...a ton of link in the first index, link from a high PR in the first index...It'll make you passport for your site to get in sand box. just try to be a normal web master. don't do SEO for the new site..
That's excellent advice fromkhun. It's so easy to be get so excited about a new site that you just want to tell everyone about it. That's maybe not the right thing to do. I checked some logs for a client the other day - search engine referrals suggest there is no way they are sandboxed despite the site being completed late last year. It's a competitive sector (real estate). We started them off with a single link from my site, but we didn't link build. Due to the nature of the site we decided to establish the site using adwords before trying to get links. Their traffic grew slowly for about 6 weeks but is now going up sharply. They've now got as far as 400 page impressions per day and rising. I've suggesed they start to link build very gradually from here. I think they'll do well. Anyway, I'm planning to follow fromkhun's advice for my own new site. I'm starting to fear the sandbox less and less.
My all my sites designed in the last 8 to 9 months are still in the sandbox, regardless of "SEO" and "No SEO". (I honestly don't understand the difference between the two in anycase). But lets say I did'nt tweek any of them during that time. My one site was registered and updated last year March has been released in January though, but the other one created the same time last year but using an expired URL is still nowhere to be seen.