Chicken and Egg Question

[drang3d]

O.k. I know from reading loads of posts here and on the web that to basically get good links have good content. But what about a new site, is it really a case of if you build it they will come? This brings up another question, how long is the site launch period. In site launch period I mean from site idea to site development, to public release right up to the point of where the site is getting traffic & links and your maintenance of the site becomes a daily routine. I believe this will allow us to develop the process of a new site launch from beginning to end. This is badly needed as you see people all the time coming to sites to get links (myself included) when they have a relatively new site or low PR. I believe we are missing a step in the process. Everybody with a new site seems to be trying to go from a PR0 to PR9 overnight. I think we're missing the fact that we have to go from 0-1, 1-2, 2-3, 3-4, etc. Now I havent been involved in this process from start to finish yet (currently in the middle at the moment) but I'll put down the structure of what I believe is the process through reading posts etc., if I'm wrong anywhere please correct me.

The Process
Build It!

• Site Idea
• Site Structure Development (If using a cms, categories, menu structure, etc.This is also where you should begin applying seo techniques to your site. I also believe if you want to try and avoid the google sand box, do your development on an old domain which doesnt suffer from the sandbox effect and you dont mind getting rid off. Upon your launch you can do a 301 redirect)
• Launch Content (In launch content I mean fresh unique content that is link worthy. I also mean this to be tools on your website and I would seriously consider web 2.0 social networking tools. When you consider say a max maybe a person would sell their home every 5 years, they probably wont come back to your site on a regular basis just for the listings, but if people were replying to posts or comments they've made they'll come back on a regular basis.)
• Site Debugging (Iron out any bugs in the site)

You've Built It, Now make them come!

• Directory Submission (At this point you have a PR0 site and in getting your first links its a bit like the first on the dance floor, nobody wants to be it, so you need to nudge the process by building your own.)
• Article Submission (This is like the previous point, it helps build your links and gains reputation for your content)
• RSS Submission (Submit your feeds to syndication sites)
• Blog Submission (Submit to technorati , etc.)
• Email Campaign (This would be lists of people who would be interested in your site both industry related and end users. You can use email harvesters like Atomic Email Hunter to create these lists. Before sending out any mails make sure you stick to SPAM guidelines. I would also include a press release through the likes of PRweb.
• Google Adwords (Google Adwords Campaign)

I believe that will get you to the point of where you will have some PR and then you can start putting in place a daily routine for increasing the traffic and ranking for your site. If anybody wants to correct this or add to it, please do.

[webmaster]

I think it is a case of "If you build it, and then let them know about it, some will come and a few will stay"

[webmaster]

I have a much better response planned, just heading home - hope to revisit tonight

[Lydia]

Your thoughts about the sandbox effect are esp. valid. I started out with a new domain and 3.5 months in I'm still in the sandbox. I wish I had either started my website earlier...or recycled an old 'quality' domain.

There's no question when I get out of the 'box I will crush the competition, but it sure is hard to wait. :-)

[Borino]

For what it's worth the expiredplus.com site went live in November last year. It was indexed about 2 weeks later, and started to show up on Google in early January. Now, it's in top 10 for several search terms.

[Lydia]

I should say that I get lots of long tail organics from G, usually 20-30 per day, but I'm sandboxed on my main keywords.

It's frustrating because I rank first page on MSN for those keywords, and get nice pageviews from those visitors, but no love here from G. I've had 3 solid leads that I know came from MSN in the last 2 months. (This from an engine that only gives me 1-3 hits a day, lol.)

It's even worse for Yahoo- I only have had 1 organic hit ever on Yahoo. I think the Yahoo result was somehow a spoof because I don't even rank for the search term I supposedly got that hit on either. I'm going to send Y! an invoice for the bandwidth they burn indexing my site and then not putting me into search. The Yahoo sandbox is supposedly shorter than G so we'll see what happens.

I don't want to hijack the thread, I just wanted to point out that the sandbox effect can be severe for new sites, so read up on how to avoid it. The algo has perverted Google's results for newer sites and technology to the point it's clear they have to back off (search for Ipod and get a first page of sites from 2003) but until the next algo update we just have to live with it. Apparently if you are trying for unique markets where there is little competition, the sandbox CAN be avoided.

[Borino]

Speaking of not hijacking the thread...
I do like your idea Lydia on your home page - the exposure map from Analytics. That's pretty clever!