Wed Feb 06 14:56:44 PST 2019

255
Real versus Artificial
On Being Real
Sites that are real and useful tend to get far more quality editorial links than bogus
sites. Even mildly interesting sites pick up links. Sure you have to give yourself a
push around launch time, but after that, most sites will float or sink based on how
interesting people think they are.
I have a personal rant blog that has about four subscribers, and yet a writer for Ziff
Davis added my site to his blogroll. It also has some other editorial links that I am
uncertain how it acquired, but exposure leads to more exposure. Being real means
your site will snowball quicker than cheesy passionless sites.
While I did not work hard to optimize my personal blog, that site still gets about
10% to 20% of the traffic that my main blog does while only requiring about 3%
of the effort, simply because it is real and many of the topics I post about on it do
not have many competing sites.
Why New Sites Cannot Compete With Old Ones in Google
You can look at search results and see a lead generation site at the top of the results
and do almost everything they are doing and still get nowhere. Why?
The answer is fivefold:
? Domain history. Google trusts sites that have aged.
? Link quality. Links used to flow much more easily than they do now.
If you try to replicate a competitor?s links, odds are you will not be able
to get a few of their most important ones. The editorial quality links
are the hardest to gain and pull the most weight in search results.
Since the web has more content on it now, and search is so much
more relevant, the quality needed to be linkworthy is much greater
than it once was. For example, if a site like SeoToday.com launched
today it would not be able to compete with all of the social SEO sites,
but because it is aged and well-integrated into the community, it sticks
near the top of Google?s search results.
? Link age. In a similar fashion to how Google may trust older
domains more than new ones, they may also put greater weight on
aged links.
? Usage data. If a site has been serving visitors for many years, it will
take you awhile to build up that much usage data. Plus, a site that has
aged and has had many visitors has many more visitors who may be
willing to link to it.
? Flipping the switch. Many high-profit, authoritative sites only had
the profit element added long after they became authoritative. Many
people, like me, only accidentally stumbled onto business models.