My first dropped domain is sucking hard.

[ZimGorilla]

I recently bought a dropped domain. Decent tf, cf, pa, DA, clean and relevant back links. No manual penalties and no algo pentalites as far as I can tell.

So I redid the site, but kept the homepage, which was where all the back links were pointing to. Here's an example to put in perspective the new site to its old back links - if the site was previously a one page site on car tires, the new site has the same home page on tires (which I copied from the old site through way back machine), but has additional resource pages for bumpers, rims, tire drills, etc.

Competition in my keywords is essentially nil, and I've put up some pretty strong articles (~1000 words, good pictures, HQ shit).

The problem is I can't even find my pages in the serps (for the dropped domain). When I first started the dropped domain, it hadn't gotten indexed within the first week so I submitted the sitemap to Google, and after that all pages were indexed within a few days.

For the sake of comparison, I started a fresh domain a week into the dropped domain, targeting 1 of the keywords. It's already up in the 30s for the keyword. Pages were indexed within 2 days.

Does anyone know what's going on? Is there some loading period that dropped domains have to go through to come back in the serps? Given, it was only been 3 weeks since I started this project (and put up the dropped domain), but it is really weird that the fresh domain is doing so much better than the dropped one.

Thanks

 

[LuckyCharm007]

It's hard to tell. If I were you I would wait another 3 weeks and from there take a decision to either keep it or drop it. From the looks of it it looks like a penalty.. but you never know with google. For some unknown reasons I could create 5 different site targeting the same damn keywords and one would rank easily while 3 would rank "ok" and one would simply never even show within the first 100 results in SERP.

 

[archon10]

It's hard to tell. If I were you I would wait another 3 weeks and from there take a decision to either keep it or drop it. From the looks of it it looks like a penalty.. but you never know with google. For some unknown reasons I could create 5 different site targeting the same damn keywords and one would rank easily while 3 would rank "ok" and one would simply never even show within the first 100 results in SERP.

If you create 5 sites that are too similar, you water down your rank because Google wants to display different results for each query. The 2005 days of creating tons of domains that were all the same targeting the same industry are over. It's better to create 1 site for any target than 10 sites for the same target.

 

[LuckyCharm007]

If you create 5 sites that are too similar, you water down your rank because Google wants to display different results for each query. The 2005 days of creating tons of domains that were all the same targeting the same industry are over. It's better to create 1 site for any target than 10 sites for the same target.

You are saying that if I create 5 different site with all of them having unique content and targeting the same keyword that google is going to water down my sites? Your out of your mind.

Once I see which domain is ranking decently I can dump those who aren't ranking well and work on those who can land me my paycheck.

 

[archon10]

You are saying that if I create 5 different site with all of them having unique content and targeting the same keyword that google is going to water down my sites? Your out of your mind.

Once I see which domain is ranking decently I can dump those who aren't ranking well and work on those who can land me my paycheck.

If they are too similar (unique content does not mean useful content), yep, you will indeed water down the rank of all 5. One of Google's goals for search queries is to give a variety of results.

 

[nikita12]

The problem is I can't even find my pages in the serps (for the dropped domain). When I first started the dropped domain, it hadn't gotten indexed within the first week so I submitted the sitemap to Google, and after that all pages were indexed within a few days.

You mention that you cannot find the pages of the dropped domain in the serps. Can you confirm whether the dropped domain is indexed or not i.e. Do you see any pages with a site:domain.com query?

 

[LoftPower]

If they are too similar (unique content does not mean useful content), yep, you will indeed water down the rank of all 5. One of Google's goals for search queries is to give a variety of results.

I agree. Similar content is not always good, even if it is unique.

 

[ZimGorilla]

You mention that you cannot find the pages of the dropped domain in the serps. Can you confirm whether the dropped domain is indexed or not i.e. Do you see any pages with a site:domain.com query?

I can see all of the pages of my site when I use site:my domain.com. there is also a ww21 result popping up (ww21.my domain.com), but I have no idea what that link is from or for. Google says "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt - learn more."

It's hard to tell. If I were you I would wait another 3 weeks and from there take a decision to either keep it or drop it. From the looks of it it looks like a penalty.. but you never know with google. For some unknown reasons I could create 5 different site targeting the same damn keywords and one would rank easily while 3 would rank "ok" and one would simply never even show within the first 100 results in SERP.

Ya I figured Id wait it out another few weeks and see what happens, hopefully it pops back up.

Also, second test site (fresh domain) had content that was quite different than the dropped domain, so I don't think that shouldn't be causing a problem, but not 100% sure.

 

[witchindexer]

 

[nikita12]

I can see all of the pages of my site when I use site:my domain.com. there is also a ww21 result popping up , but I have no idea what that link is from or for.

That's interesting. I would suspect some sort of sandbox for the dropped domain. It's a good sign that the domain has been completely re-indexed, so it would make sense to wait for say at least two more weeks. Even after that I'd expect it to do a Google dance for a while before it settles down.

Do post back after two weeks and let us know how its going.

 

[puravida]

How did you determine no "manual penalties?" I have a couple of domains that used to be extremely successful over the course of many years, but now they are nowhere to be found in SERPS. All the unique content is indexed and crawled daily but even long-tail searches won't find any of my pages these days. I only ever used white-hat SEO on the sites and the content and organic inbound links shouldn't trigger any automatic penalties, so I wouldn't think there would be a manual penalty either, but the reality is that there must be a manual penalty for some reason.

I tried to revive the domains with new content, overhauling old content, asking for any penalties to be lifted in Webmaster Tools, but nothing worked. So I'm not sure that it is really possible to revive a domain that isn't ranking when it "should" be. There probably is a way if you have some insider buddies but most of us do not.

At any rate, I'd also give it a few weeks from the first indexing and see if you are seeing bots crawling and other activity before making a real determination. Best of luck!

 

[praetserge]

If you create 5 sites that are too similar, you water down your rank because Google wants to display different results for each query. The 2005 days of creating tons of domains that were all the same targeting the same industry are over. It's better to create 1 site for any target than 10 sites for the same target.

the days of ranking 5 different domains on the first page are gone? hope, you're joking.
I have my guest posts ranking and competing with my website and I see no problem there.

 

[Tiddlywink19]

You already got tons of good advice, but I will just add one little thing, be a little more patient.

I bought a dropped domain that wasn't penalized, took about a month for everything to get going. Had nothing to do with backlinks, checked to see if any were spam, etc., Just was a luck of the draw sort of thing. It depends on the niche, competition, Google crawl rate etc., etc.,

I usually give these things about a month now minimum. Like someone else said, it's not 2005 anymore. So, after a month reevaluate, and then maybe just keep it on the backburner. You don't want to get rid of it when you have a potential goldmine you know? And it sounds like you have a good idea. Best wishes

 

[ZimGorilla]

You already got tons of good advice, but I will just add one little thing, be a little more patient.

I bought a dropped domain that wasn't penalized, took about a month for everything to get going. Had nothing to do with backlinks, checked to see if any were spam, etc., Just was a luck of the draw sort of thing. It depends on the niche, competition, Google crawl rate etc., etc.,

I usually give these things about a month now minimum. Like someone else said, it's not 2005 anymore. So, after a month reevaluate, and then maybe just keep it on the backburner. You don't want to get rid of it when you have a potential goldmine you know? And it sounds like you have a good idea. Best wishes

Cool thanks for the advice man

How did you determine no "manual penalties?" I have a couple of domains that used to be extremely successful over the course of many years, but now they are nowhere to be found in SERPS. All the unique content is indexed and crawled daily but even long-tail searches won't find any of my pages these days. I only ever used white-hat SEO on the sites and the content and organic inbound links shouldn't trigger any automatic penalties, so I wouldn't think there would be a manual penalty either, but the reality is that there must be a manual penalty for some reason.

I tried to revive the domains with new content, overhauling old content, asking for any penalties to be lifted in Webmaster Tools, but nothing worked. So I'm not sure that it is really possible to revive a domain that isn't ranking when it "should" be. There probably is a way if you have some insider buddies but most of us do not.

At any rate, I'd also give it a few weeks from the first indexing and see if you are seeing bots crawling and other activity before making a real determination. Best of luck!

Thanks. Ya I found "no manual penalties" through webmaster tools. There's an option that is supposed to list manual penalties of you have any. But I havent seen any.

That's interesting. I would suspect some sort of sandbox for the dropped domain. It's a good sign that the domain has been completely re-indexed, so it would make sense to wait for say at least two more weeks. Even after that I'd expect it to do a Google dance for a while before it settles down.

Do post back after two weeks and let us know how its going.

Will do

 

[archon10]

the days of ranking 5 different domains on the first page are gone? hope, you're joking.
I have my guest posts ranking and competing with my website and I see no problem there.

Guest post? That implies posts on others domains, so the sites aren't the same. Not the same thing.