When you think of sites like Google.com, or any other site that has authority, you know they worked their way from the ground up. But what if a site doesn’t even come close to having any real authority? What about those little new sites that are more than happy to link out, but aren’t established as a strong presence? Is there a way to determine that site’s future? We will focus on analyzing these sites. This can be trickier than analyzing sites who already stood the test of time and stood strong.
Questions To Ask When Evaluating A New Site
Is the site being indexed in Google and Bing? Going into both search engines, do a site:domain.com search in both. If you find that the site isn’t indexed, check your robots.txt file. This is where you’ll be sure if it isn’t locking the engines. If you can’t find any good reason why the site isn’t being indexed after a few weeks of being around, that’s an indication that things could be bad.
Does the site rank for it’s brand? If the chosen brand name is one that’s similar to another brand that has already been established, it could take time. But as long as the domain they’ve chosen isn’t a poor choice, then they should be, at the very least, in the top 5.
Is there a blog, and are they regularly posting on it? Naturally, saying what’s normal in the sense of blogging can be determined differently by each person. Some sites update their blogs everyday, while others may only update once a month. But if you find that their blog hardly has any posts, that could be bad.
Are social media share buttons present? Speaking of blogs, this one seems natural. As with any blog, being able to share them is as natural as having the blog itself. Having share buttons present on every blog post makes it easy for others to post socially. If you find that a site has no buttons, this means that the site won’t be very socially active.
Are they active on social sites, or are their profiles stagnant? If you find that there are social profiles that are present, such as Facebook and Twitter, among others, and you find little to no activity, this isn’t good.
Are they using unique content, or just rewording or scraping someone else’s content? It never hurts to have your own unique content on a site. If you can’t find ways to create truly unique content, how can you compete?
Are they set up for Google authorship? People who take the time to set up Google authorship will have a higher chance of having their content rank better when they contribute to a site with a lower quality signal. If your site already has authority, you could write content on a site that has low PageRank, and still do well despite the low ranking.
Does the site have an “About” page? Many people like reading information about the site they are visiting. When sites don’t do this, does this mean that have something to hide?
Does the site contain a way to get a hold of the site owner? There should be a way to always get a hold of somebody in case you have a question that you need answered. This means making a contact form, or at the very least, include an email address that people can follow. But be warned, make sure these ways of contact the owner or the webmaster are legit and that they work. Nobody likes finding out the contact information is invalid.
Is analytics set up? This is an easy thing to do. Just check the source code. Anybody who wants to be able to do something good with their site will have to track visits. This can give them the information needed to adjust the things they do to make their site more visible.
Are there any authorities that are linking to your site? This can be a great thing for any new site. If an authority is linking to a low ranking site or to a new one, that is a wonderful sign that the site is doing something right.
What kind of links are present on the site? Any site, new or not, can’t make the mistake of taking shortcuts when it comes to getting networked with other sites. If the site has spammed a ton of free directories and what not, that’s not good. If the link profile is already a problem, well, things won’t get any better from there.
Is the site a new player in a competitive market? In any competitive market, you have to make sure there is something that sets you apart from the competition. Does the site possess any sort of hook that would pull others away from the competition and to their site?
In The End
Obviously, there is no real way of determining the fate of any site, no matter how good or bad it is, or how new or old it is. So if a site is doing the wrong thing right now, does that mean they are doomed to failure in the future? Nope. Somebody could come in, in the form of a new employee or a service, and help turn their site around and make it hugely successful. Of course, the opposite is true as well. If the site starts off with a bang, may fizzle out later down the road and will eventually die off.
In reality, nobody can truly tell what the future will hold for anything.