One Site Indexed & Ranked In 24 Hours. The Other Isn’t – Analysis Breakdown
An interesting turn in events already. Last night I decided to chuck my two domains names into Google.com.au to see if either was index. The following is what happened next…
To get the back story… (read this post)
So, I put contender 2′s domain into Google first because it was the ad free one – and I wanted to see if my theory was correct.
And to my surprise, just 24 hours after installing WordPress and getting two pages of content up – there it was indexed! (Awesome!)
My next step to was type contender 1′s (the one with Adsense) domain name into Google and surprise, surprise -It wasn’t there.
So I Took It A Step Further…
Excited that niche site contender 2 was indexed, I jumped onto Market Samurai, opened up the ‘rank tracker’ option and typed in the domain name and the two keywords that my current content was targeting – here is the results:
So if you remember, contender 2 is in the mining niche, and I am targeting two keywords with the word ‘mining’ in it.
The second keyword is my main target keyword with 145 exact searches a day, and as you can see, I am already ranking 94 for my home page. (not bad!) But not only that, the second page that I created targeted another keyword with 33 exact searches and although the page is not yet indexed – I am already ranking 88 for that keyword as well.
One thing you might notice is that I have two pages that have been indexed. The second page is actually one of my ‘tag’ pages, and proves why you should be using ‘tags’ for your niche blogs. I’ve use two different auto tag plugins (which use Yahoo and your post content to recommend tags for your posts), and they are:
- WP Auto Tagger
I have this one on a couple of my niche sites and it not only automatically suggests tags for your posts, but it also automatically adds them. It only has a 2.5 star rating in the WordPress Plugin gallery, but I’ve had no problems with it. - YQL Auto Tagger
This is the one that I am currently testing on these two new niche sites. 5 star rating in the plugin gallery and it doesn’t automatically add the tags that it generates, but instead allows you to select from the tags (meaning you can remove non-relevant tags)
Does This Prove That Ads Affects Indexing And Ranking?
Now I don’t want you jumping to conclusions, because there are a couple of alternative reasons for contender 2 getting indexed and ranking, and contender 1 not.
You see there was one thing that I failed to mention that differed between the two niche sites – that could have played a part in this.
Contender 1 is a ‘taking’ site and contender 2 is a ‘giving’ site.
What Does All This Mean?
To go with the typical micro niche site that people create with the intent of making money. I made a decision that contender niche site 1 would only include internal linking, while contender 2 would be much more giving – linking out to other sites when relevant. Could Google have picked up on one of these links when it got pinged and followed through, found an authoritative site and the looked back at my site with a positive light? Possibly…
Aside from this difference and the alternative views on ads, these are the only two differences between the two niche sites. They both have the same plugins, same ping list – same everything.
So either it was Ads, Outbound Linking…Or…
Since these are the only two differences between the niche sites, obviously the indexing and ranking had to come down to one of these two factors, or one other:
- Luck
Sometimes (Most of the time) you just don’t know what Google is going to do. For all I know, the real reason could literally anything – and I will probably never know (for indexing).
That being said, I will continue to monitor the websites as I build them. And Contender 1 will continue to have ads and only link to internal pages, while contender 2 will be ad free and link out whenever necessary. I will keep you updated on the situation.
If you are eager to know the actual domain names, then subscribe to my RSS feed as I will be holding out for the next couple of days as I finish building the basic content framework for the sites – and if you subscribe then you will be the first to know when I share them.
10 Responses
1.28.2011
Interesting results but like you said this could just be a fluke. Need more data:p though I have found slapping adsense on from day one doesn’t really cause any hiccups.
Though have never done a controlled test so ….
1.29.2011
Really interesting stuff man
I think the tagging works so well because its such an easy page to automatically update so google sees it as something relevant and gives it a reason to crawl – while it’s doing that, it picks up the other pages anyway :P
1.29.2011
Hey Tom,
Interesting stuff. I think it’s one of those things that there are too many variables to get a definitive answer this early on.
I like the theory that linking out could benefit your SEO.
It does seem that you could say you rank quicker if you post value content first. Adverts maybe penalise a little because they mask the content. Just a theory.
Anyway, I like this approach, I look forward to seeing how your site ranks after a month or two.
When will you consider monetising the unmonetised site?
1.29.2011
@Domance – Yea I have done the same before as well. The the first site is now indexed (but just the home page) – so it may just be a little slower, but no ranking.
Be interesting to see how the rest of this case study comes together.
@Murlu – Yea exactly!
1.29.2011
Hey Mark – My thoughts are along the same line as yours. As for monetisation. Depending on how long it takes me to get it to a solid level with steady, good rankings. But I am guessing 2-3 months. But I expect that as soon as I start displaying ad’s it will be a $1-200/month site the next month.
1.30.2011
Tom, interesting stuff! I have heard about using Google Ads as a way to get your site indexed quickly.
Yep, I agree with Mark–too many variables to pinpoint exactly ‘why’ but it’s interesting to note this stuff, isn’t it?
1.31.2011
Hi Tom,
I read this with interest, I found that the idea of link to other sites and getting a trackback is a great idea for having high quality links.
What could get your site indexed faster? How about creating a sitemap and submitting it to google webmaster tool, start put google analytics code on your site, and finally create a Twitter account with the link to your site in the profile?
This should get Google’s attention pretty quick… what do you think? Have you done all that?
Ben Wan
1.31.2011
@moon – Yea exactly. I decided that I needed to start trying new things if I was going to take my sites to the next level, and by creating case studies I am forcing myself to do the analysis. But as you said, once you get into all the analysis – it is a heap of fun.
@Ben – Outbound linking is great. All the sites I linked to were not using WordPress (so there were no trackbacks), but that is a great strategy.
I did set up Google Webmaster and Analytics straight up on both sites, so that could have had an effect. But I am surprised with the difference in the indexing from both.
2.1.2011
Hi Tom, this is interesting, yet frustrating at the same time. Too often I’ve tried to rationalise things and come up with a solution based on the facts, but the facts have a nasty habit of moulding themselves to the situation.
The only thing you can say for sure, this is an anomoly and it needs further testing.
(Not a criticism, just a caution to anyone thinking they have a solution, when it might not actually be one).
Thanks for sharing the journey, I look forward to cheering your progress! Matthew
2.1.2011
Those are some interesting stuff Tom. Maybe its all a coincidence but even if its not I will check back to see what the results are of your experiment.