Is my site just not old enough?

So I created 2 sites on the same day in the same niche targeting the same keywords. Site 1 is ranking position #22 and site 2 is ranking position #23. The sites were created 4 weeks ago. For site 1, I managed to aquire about 6 backlinks from high authority sites such as theguardian, ijr, huffington post, inquisitr, and a few other related sites. These are all articles written by authors at these sites and the article is related to my content. Site #2 has 0 links. Keywords targeted are low to medium comp, like the first page results are things like pintrest profiles, facebook group etc with about 2-3 normal sites. Now my question is, why are both sites ranking the same when one of them has no backlinks and the other has several good links.. are the sites just not old enough? any input is welcomed
btw, all the backlinks are indexed in gsc and number 1 position for this keyword has 4 backlinks which are spammy forum signature links. My onpage seo is good

domains are new or use? sometimes you must wait for effects.
Mayby you have better seo on #2 site?

Time tells!

Time is definitely matters in google SERP. You can have the best website in the niche but it won't get its ranks if google decide that it's not old enough. Time is Money!

how did you get this rank for the second website without linkbuilding?

BobLender said:

how did you get this rank for the second website without linkbuilding?

Click to expand...

It ranked with just on page seo, not really a hard keyword to rank

SEO-Ghosts said:

domains are new or use? sometimes you must wait for effects.
Mayby you have better seo on #2 site?

Click to expand...

Domain #2 is brand new, domain #1 I registered a year ago but never built the site just had it redirected to one of my other non related websites

If the sites were created 4 weeks ago, I would say it's because the link juice haven't kicked in yet. In a few weeks you'll probably see a bigger difference between the two. It takes time.

How long ago was it since you got the links to site 1?

Zbigniew said:

If the sites were created 4 weeks ago, I would say it's because the link juice haven't kicked in yet. In a few weeks you'll probably see a bigger difference between the two. It takes time.

How long ago was it since you got the links to site 1?

Click to expand...

I got a few of the links about 3 weeks ago, so around a week after creating the site. The rest have already been there for a while, probably a year

I have also encountered such a problem, you will know it later.

Your websites are in so called "sand-box". It's a time period where Google doesn't trust you and hold everything back purposefully.

Once you get out your efforts will start to take effect.