Hi, I have been building a few niche sites targeting an individual keyword. eg, bluewidget.com would be highly optimized for the term "blue widget". When I first get a site indexed, it normally appears on page 1 of G for its main keyword (blue widget). Then it tends to disappear to page 3-10 after a few days. (The sites don't get linked to as they are normally affi sites) Right, how about this: When the site first gets indexed, and I decide to buy/generate a few links, using anchor text around the term "blue widget", while the site is still visible on page 1. Getting links while the site is still on page 1, will this help it stay there? Ie google may think that your site is good/relevant/important and keep it high in serps, rather than letting it slip back after its honeymoon period? Thoughts please if this may work or not? Thanks in advance Mike
Back in July and August of 2008 I opened my wife and my son a VBulletin forum. Both sites went through what you described. The sites ranked well for a few days, maybe a week or so and then slipped back to pages 2 - 60. When the the sites launched, I changed my forum signature on a few sites I am a member of. This gave my wifes forum and my sons forum around 3,000 instant backlinks with a wide range of targeted keywords. I dont think it really helped. Both sites even had a site map generator, which was submitted to my google webmaster tools every day. Even with around 3,000 links, the sites still floated around for their targeted keywords. Sometimes disappearing for a week or two, then showing back up. Their ranking in google results pages did not stabilize until the sites reached about 6 - 8 months old. The number of backlinks were being checked in google webmaster tools and yahoo site explorer - as well as a few other online tools. So my answer is - unless you have the ability to get a site a large amount of backlinks (maybe 4,000 or higher), its ranking in the google results pages is going to move around.