Delayed Site Progress w/ Premium Domain

[MinstrelJunkie]

Hey BuSo, I think I've caused an issue with a new site I'm creating. I believe I just need to be patient, but I'm sure we can all agree that isn't always easy. Looking for some advice/suggestions.

We're investing hard into a new site. I started this back in April on a fresh domain, with two full time writers who I've worked closely with to nail the content quality. We're going for ultra low competition keywords, so we should be cleaning up.

Initial progress was good. By July we were getting around 20 hits a day on a fresh site, and climbing quickly.

Then I purchased a 'premium' domain for around $4k. It's a far better brand name, and I want to make this site a behemoth in the long term, so I didn't mind the short term disruption. I 301'd everything to the new URL.

The traffic went back to zero when we changed domains, as expected. However, it's still stuck there 3 months later. We have almost 400 quality articles and are getting between 2-8 hits a day.

The premium domain was first registered in 2002, and doesn't look like it was used for anything other than hosting a 'Website For Sale' page. Could using an older domain which has been dead for years make it harder to rank a new site? I figured it could help things as it's an older domain, but maybe the age means Google is much slower to accept changes. Compared to our newer domain which was making quicker progress.

Also not sure if I'm missing anything. Here's what's acting in our favor:

• Solid content quality. Better than my main site which is >700k hits a month
• We have 400 pages showing as indexed in GSC
• 8 DA 60+ backlinks built via HARO. 2 are DA 90+
• Solid inter-linking. Using LinkWhisper to make sure no orphaned posts

Our page speed needs some work which will be taken care of soon, and I'm still building out the brand theme and EAT etc. But can't imagine those are stopping the whole site from gaining any momentum.

It's just strange as we're 3 months into using the premium domain, getting far less traffic than we did on a fresh domain with 1/3rd of the content. It probably just needs time, but if you can think of any blind spots I could be missing would appreciate any thoughts/critique.

 

[Hanuman]

Does "site:" display the old domain or the new domain in the results?

The traffic went back to zero when we changed domains, as expected

Is this really expected though? I only have experience with one site 301, and if I remember right, the traffic dipped a bit, sure - but it never went to zero.

 

[MinstrelJunkie]

Thanks for the response.

Does "site:" display the old domain or the new domain in the results?

Both. As in "site:[olddomain]" displays old domain which links to new site, and "site:[newdomain]" displays the new domain

Is this really expected though? I only have experience with one site 301, and if I remember right, the traffic dipped a bit, sure - but it never went to zero.

Not exactly to zero, but like 10-15% of what it was. And that's held true ever since (despite 3x the content on the site)

 

[illmasterj]

If you check my thread "The Long Play" I more or less did the same as you. It wasn't a Premium domain or even had many backlinks, but it was parked for years.

In the end I gave up and moved the site back to the old domain and it's been rainbows and lollipops since.

My theory (not science or marketing accreditation backed) is that Google crawls so many of these expired/parked domains that they have a categorisation for less crawling and so on. It appears to take a long time to remedy this (over a year).

 

[MinstrelJunkie]

If you check my thread "The Long Play" I more or less did the same as you. It wasn't a Premium domain or even had many backlinks, but it was parked for years.

In the end I gave up and moved the site back to the old domain and it's been rainbows and lollipops since.

My theory (not science or marketing accreditation backed) is that Google crawls so many of these expired/parked domains that they have a categorisation for less crawling and so on. It appears to take a long time to remedy this (over a year).

Thanks, just read through the whole thing and wow. That's an insane drop and recovery just from the domain swap. Couldn't have gotten a more direct correlation.

Problem is I have a whole theme and brand designed around the premium name. We're doing a custom theme with things in a certain style, an artist drawing our authors in that style, along with custom featured images, widgets - the works. The old domain wouldn't fit this at all.

I think the theme/brand is perfect for the niche and would work so well in taking the site from a general info blog to a recognised authority.

I think I'm in the same boat as you were in your case study. My gut says push on and make the site so good that Google can't ignore it (in terms of user metrics and organic backlinks). But I'm wary that will be a huge uphill battle with no early momentum to drive motivation. Meaning it will get more and more difficult to stay the course.

That being said, I'm building this as part of a 5 year plan. I'm not in a rush, and have the resources to keep funding content, finish the branding, and then focus on outreach. Surely with enough positive signals, Google will recognise the site... right?

 

[Encrypted]

Are your articles actually showing up in the SERPS for their keywords (a.k.a being Served by Google)?

Your case looks like the articles aren't passing the serving stage of Google's crawling - indexing - serving processes.

Quickly check this: Search Console > Mobile Usability.

Does the number of usable pages correlate with the number of indexed pages? (i.e 400 indexed pages vs 100 usable pages)

 

[secretagentdad]

That is really an interesting thought and would be a way google could really troll domainers. Make them worth less the longer they have been squatted. Just like IRL.
Lol that’s so funny.
This totally points to them doing that.

 

[MinstrelJunkie]

Are your articles actually showing up in the SERPS for their keywords (a.k.a being Served by Google)?

Your case looks like the articles aren't passing the serving stage of Google's crawling - indexing - serving processes.

Quickly check this: Search Console > Mobile Usability.

Does the number of usable pages correlate with the number of indexed pages? (i.e 400 indexed pages vs 100 usable pages)

They are in the SERPs using site: - but that's super interesting. Only 3 usable mobile pages (though no errors reported). Will look into this further, thanks!

 

[Biggy]

What I would do.

- Check if domain wasn't penalized or had some shady backlinks / waybackmachine
- make sure that seo plugin is set up right + you added sitemap to Google search console.
- check that in your WordPress is in setting "index my site"
- make sure that site load is good

 

[Encrypted]

Aha! That’s it. You have 400+ indexed articles but only 3 of them are actually ranking.

Another thing to check:
- Are the indexed pages showing the article date when you do a site: search, or is it blank?
- Are the mobile usable pages showing article dates in the SERP?

Please let me know what you learn from your investigation. I have a website in a similar situation, although not as extreme as yours. Aged domain but only went offline for ~ 1 year. 150+ published articles but only 103 actually ranking. I started this project in March and all went smoothly until the May update brought about this issue.

Been trying to wrap my head around this for months now to no avail. and No, It’s not a content quality issue. Something else is going on. I just don’t know if it’s a Google thing or my fault.

 

[thisishatred]

- Are the indexed pages showing the article date when you do a site: search, or is it blank?

This is actually a big one that most folks don't know about - kudos for bringing it up.

------------------------

I wanted to post to help shed some light on this because besides @Encrypted bringing it up just now, I've never seen any other article/editorial, twitter thread, forum post, etc. talk about it.

I internally call it "false indexing" as the URLs can/will show up for site:domain/url searches but be accompanied without a publish date.

These URLs aren't actually indexed.

It's happening way less (was rampant when most folks were complaining about indexing issues) but I do still see it across new domains (less than 9 months old - even "aged domains").

I actually sort of alluded to it here as the folks from Income School were also experiencing it on their site, but again never brought it up.

I have a bunch of aged sites just sitting with 30+ indexed posts and done up EAT credentials. Several posts still have false indexing issues. On this recent update though, one of the sites (roughly 7-9 months later mind you) had the reigns taken off and I saw posts start to rank in my SERP tracker.

Doing new site:checks and the posts are accompanied with dates now.

Other sites I've tried a number of things from pushing through indexers, Google's API/Rankmath's plugin, etc. The only thing that's really every worked is just time.

Food for thought: Could Google be delaying ranking for 9-12 months regardless of the amount of content on your site? We all know there are delays, but to what extent and why?

------------------------

Another really "cool" one is common with PBNs/Auction domains where you'll do a site:domain.com search and you'll only see 4 pages indexed.

The folks from Indexmenow.com are the only other people I've seen bring it up; Scrolling down to bullet-point 24 on their homepage sheds more light on that topic.

More food for thought: One of the tech sites from my premium PBN service on BuSo had this issue and I identified it early and didn't allow anyone to have a post on it. On these recent updates, the issue is now gone and the posts are indexed - the first posts went live December 2020.

That's nearly 2 years for this "penalty" to be removed.

 

[illmasterj]

I'm pretty drunk but following along, you may want to sit back and consider what is more important:
1. Organic search traffic, or
2. Brand name.

Sometimes one will win out over the other. I don't have the science to back it up but my gut feeling tells me that eventually the organic search traffic will catch up. It may just be 3 years away.

So it depends on your greater vision for the project.

If I can help you in anyway please DM me. Happy to send links or whatever.

 

[Darth]

Hey there, check out this thread for a similar experience I had with an expired domain.

Coincidentally, I also came across this recent Tweet on the same issue too.

 

[MinstrelJunkie]

Aha! That’s it. You have 400+ indexed articles but only 3 of them are actually ranking.

Another thing to check:
- Are the indexed pages showing the article date when you do a site: search, or is it blank?
- Are the mobile usable pages showing article dates in the SERP?

Looks like you're right with only 3 being ranking! The 3 pages are the home page, contact page, and one article. The article is ranking #1 or #2 depending on the keyword variation you use. Every other keyword I search doesn't exist on Google, even a super obscure article we wrote with a total of 3 pages of results on Google. Straight up doesn't exist. Despite being indexed (and saying it's usable on mobile when inspecting that URL directly).

No dates shown for any posts, but we don't actually show dates on the site so that makes sense. I can maybe add dates as a test.

The weird thing is, the post that is ranking isn't super old. We had maybe 100 posts that came before it, and it's not one of the smallest keywords either. Can't see why this one is accepted but others aren't.

Also, back in August we had 20 pages in the usability report, and it's since dropped to 3. So strange.

Other sites I've tried a number of things from pushing through indexers, Google's API/Rankmath's plugin, etc. The only thing that's really every worked is just time.

Food for thought: Could Google be delaying ranking for 9-12 months regardless of the amount of content on your site? We all know there are delays, but to what extent and why?

Seem like time could be the case, thanks for sharing everything you've tried. Kind of ridiculous we've dropped $4k on a solid domain name just to get way less performance than on a fresh one.

I'm pretty drunk but following along, you may want to sit back and consider what is more important:
1. Organic search traffic, or
2. Brand name.

Happy hangovers. Think you're right - with enough time and creating a solid site it would eventually 'recover'. From a business standpoint though, the time between it being 'unlocked' means a lot of earnings that could be reinvested (not to mention the motivation/confidence from seeing the graph going up).

At this point I've registered the .co version of the domain. I'm honestly thinking of placing everything onto that instead. Then a few years down the line, once we're too big to be ignored, switch back to the .com and hope the momentum is strong enough to blast through whatever barrier this is.

We've put +$35k of investment into the site already. Kind of ridiculous if we need to wait 2 years to be allowed to see a return on it.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Another really "cool" one is common with PBNs/Auction domains where you'll do a site:domain.com search and you'll only see 4 pages indexed.

The folks from Indexmenow.com are the only other people I've seen bring it up; Scrolling down to bullet-point 24 on their homepage sheds more light on that topic.

I've seen it before, but thought it was a one-off problem. It happened to a friend and I assumed he had a quality issue (with Google not wanting to index every little thing from new sites). The domain had sat like that for at least a year, with 30+ posts live and only 4 showing in the index.

I looked the site over from a quality standpoint and suggested punching up the word counts (they were really low, like 100 words sometimes and a youtube video), plus interlinking, more images, etc. Just more spider food.

Within a month (I think, maybe a couple) of doing the work, the 4-post-filter dropped and indexing returned to normal. I don't have any points to make. It could have just been time passing that did it. I just like to add information to these rare occasions so there's more data to chew on and consider.

Could using an older domain which has been dead for years make it harder to rank a new site?

I feel like I can't stress it enough that I would only ever use an "expired" domain if it never dropped. I want the registration date in-tact and I want the domain to have remained in the index the whole time. That means someone caught the drop, I bought it, and I set up a new site before all of the pages eroded out of the index. I don't want it to have reindexed as a parked domain or anything of that sort. I'd say the window of time for all this to happen is like 12 months max, if not as low as 6 months for domains with less indexed pages.

 

[MinstrelJunkie]

I feel like I can't stress it enough that I would only ever use an "expired" domain if it never dropped. I want the registration date in-tact and I want the domain to have remained in the index the whole time.

Thanks Ryu, appreciate the data on your friend's site. We've got 400 posts all >1,000 words with unique images etc, some aspects of the site still need built out (author pages mainly) but it's all solid. Better than our main site in a lot of ways.

I solely bought the domain for the name, not because it's expired or anything. It has zero backlinks, so if anything it's quite a negative it's sat parked since 2002. Debating whether to give it up and restart with a .co of the same domain, or just hold out.

Did find this article which covers mobile-first indexing being an issue on older sites, similar to what @Encrypted was saying.

Maybe since they weigh so much on mobile now, the site not being classed as 'mobile first' is the reason why it's "indexed", showing in "site:domain.com" searches, but not actually ranking since it's not got the 'OK' to rank for mobile terms.

Looking into this further to see if we can find a way to let Google give us the green light for mobile. Can confirm that we're still on a desktop crawler:

You can find this in your settings on Search Console. Our healthily ranked site is with 'Googlebot Smartphone'

 

[JOoa0ky]

@MinstrelJunkie how do you guys index the pages?

I've never ever waited for google to index them on their own. I've always manually submitted the URL in the search console and requested indexing. Seems to work like a charm although it can only handle about ~10 requests per day.

I actually just rebooted my entire site. Kept the same niche but started on a completely fresh domain. For the life of me, I cannot find a good domain name so I used a random word generator lol.........

Domain started on 10/1/22
First ranking article I published was 10/4/22 and ahrefs shows its like rank #56... Ranking for a grand total of 4 KW over the entire site hahaha.

However I just google searched the KW and I'm actually on the first page in the #10 spot. Woohoo!

The manual index request works extremely well for me at least?

 

[MinstrelJunkie]

@JOoa0ky We've got all 400 ish pages indexed, the issue is they're not appearing in the rankings.

As in GSC says indexed, they appear when searching with "site:domain.com", but they don't actually rank anywhere.

Looks like the issue is the domain, being 20 years old, hasn't been granted 'mobile first' ranking from Google (see my last post). I believe this means we're not ranking for mobile terms, and since Google is now 100% mobile first, we don't rank for anything.

Getting that switch from desktop to mobile crawler is probably the 'gate opening' effect other sites have seen. The goal is now to get 'mobile-first' approved sooner rather than later. Unfortunately looks like it's a case of hoping Google crawls and approves the site, but will see if I can find anything to speed it up.

 

[matora97]

When you do the site:yourdomain.com search, go through pages in SERP and see if the number of indexed pages gets truncated. That is also a sign that Google doesn't like your site. E.g. page 1 shows 400ish, and on page 11 or page 25 you have 257 - that is a bad sign.

 

[MinstrelJunkie]

I have a bunch of aged sites just sitting with 30+ indexed posts and done up EAT credentials. Several posts still have false indexing issues. On this recent update though, one of the sites (roughly 7-9 months later mind you) had the reigns taken off and I saw posts start to rank in my SERP tracker.

Would you be able to check these sites on GSC to compare? If you go to settings and see what 'Indexing crawler' type each site has, it could confirm if this is the cause

It would be really interesting if your site that had the reigns taken off changed to the smartphone crawler around that same date. They show when it changed too, like for my main site here:

When you do the site:yourdomain.com search, go through pages in SERP and see if the number of indexed pages gets truncated. That is also a sign that Google doesn't like your site. E.g. page 1 shows 400ish, and on page 11 or page 25 you have 257 - that is a bad sign.

Interesting question - it's not truncated.. until the last page. We have around "page 1/2/3 of 400" results for 5 pages, then a 6th page with "page 6 of 58" results and nothing more. When if it was 400 results, there should be 40 pages..

 

[Encrypted]

Did find this article which covers mobile-first indexing being an issue on older sites, similar to what @Encrypted was saying.

You can find this in your settings on Search Console. Our healthily ranked site is with 'Googlebot Smartphone'

Interesting. I just checked and we're on Googlebot mobile. We've been there since 2018.

I also did URL inspection for one of our pages and it checks all boxes. "Indexed", crawled by googlebot smartphone, Mobile friendly, e.t.c.. Yet doesn't rank for anything.

 

[MinstrelJunkie]

Interesting. I just checked and we're on Googlebot mobile. We've been there since 2018.

I also did URL inspection for one of our pages and it checks all boxes. "Indexed", crawled by googlebot smartphone, Mobile friendly, e.t.c.. Yet doesn't rank for anything.

Yikes. Thanks for checking. For what it's worth, our site with issues also gets all green ticks (and is crawled by Google Smartphone) when inspecting one URL at a time. It's just in the settings->about where the main crawler is still Desktop.

Think you're saying your settings->about is smartphone too, just wanted to clarify. It's all even more puzzling if so.

We've gone through the site today and ensured we're rock solid on mobile usability. If Google do come to check on the site, they should greenlight it and open the SERP gates.

Question now is whether to sit and wait for that, or switch everything to the fresh .co of the same domain and just run it as a fresh project.

Just to get it out of my own head, here's the breakdown:

Going with the fresh .co:
+ Will get ranking faster (and so earning faster).
+ Easier to invest when graph is going up.
- Isn't as premium/brandable as a .com (it's only one letter, how bad can it be?)
- Difficult to reverse further down the line. All links we build would be 301'd to the .com if we switched, could get messy and torpedo the site

Holding out with the premium .com:
- Could be waiting a year before the floodgates open
- If they ever open!
- Hard to keep investing into a black hole.
+ More brandable and premium name. Easier to get links
+ Increases value when we sell in future

It's sort of like choosing whether to lose out on progress for 6 months now, or potentially cause 6 months worth of damage in future if we 301 back to the .com.

Mulling it over for now. The competitive ego in me wants to stick with .com as it'd make a good story, and once the site is earning huge in 5 years, none of this will matter. The realist in me says to cut our losses, get a fresh domain ranking, and harness that momentum. To get to that 5-year goal we need to get a project going now. 400+ quality articles could mean we're throwing away thousands in potential income each month.

It's one letter in a URL. Why not just go with .co?

In that same vein, it would be so ridiculous to have a .co site while owning the .com, just because we need to dance around Google not ranking us. Surely this will get updated sooner than later. Can maybe speed it up if I generate more links, though who knows if links are related to the frequency of whatever this mobile-approval crawler does. Will keep on top of HARO to get more big sites linking to us.

Might give it until the new year and reassess then.

 

[illmasterj]

Clutch.co does over $30M revenue and has had $80M in funding. You have the .com, so you aren't losing any direct traffic from mistypes. Personally I'd just roll with the .co and get on with everything else.

 

[MinstrelJunkie]

Looks like I may have been wrong - two close friends with solid traffic still have the desktop crawler listed.

Going to give it until the end of year and see if we get any progress on the .com. Impressions are actually rising, so maybe this is all overthinking

 

[Encrypted]

Yo! Have you noticed improvements? @MinstrelJunkie My pages have started showing up for their keywords!

Going by this video, the filter thing might be "real" and in our case, caused by links (internal & external). Looks like google tweaked the treshold for new articles to get served based on incoming links (internal & external).