We get this question all time and there can be many many reasons why. The algorithms for the search engines take into account dozen's and dozen's of criteria to determine a website's rank.

One of the not so obvious reasons can be the actual age or registered age of a website. A recent client asked us to explain why one of their competitors was ranking higher than them even though on the page content of their competitor seemed very sparse and not very relevant. This can almost always be explained by off-page factors.

The competitor's site was created in 2002 and is registered until 2015. That is an actual age of 5 years and a registered age of 13 years. Our client's site targeting Minnesota weddings is a relatively new site and had an actual age of 2 years and a registered age of 3 years. We informed our client to extend their domain name registration for another 7 years to get an even 10 year spread. It would be the best $70.00 they could spend.

I first learned about this concept in one of Google's 100 page patent applications. Because many scam sites are only registered for 1 year at a time Google came up with a creative way to determine which sites were more serious and legitimate about staying in business. The age of a website and the "spread" of its registration period are one factor that Google and probably the other major search engines take into account to determine legitimacy and "expertness". So if your site was created in 1995 then a forward registration period of 2008 would be fine. However, because our client's site is relatively new compared to their competitor it makes sense to extend their registration to look more serious in the eyes of the search engines. Now I am not saying that this simple little trick will instantly help you but it is one of dozens of criteria that the search engines look at.

The other important issue is that their competitor has a popularity index value of 107. That is very good and it is partially because their competitor has had an online presence of some form since 1999.

By comparison our client's popularity index is only 9.

This is clearly one of your site's weaknesses in terms of the search engines. It is also the most time consuming and expensive to improve. This is where our search engine friendly press releases ($300.00 each) can add anywhere from 5-10 points to your popularity index. A couple of our releases that were picked up by TV stations across the country added 30 points to one of our client's website.

More on the popularity index in the coming weeks.

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