I have been receiving your excellent newsletter for more than 3 years and find it an invaluable help to understand the ins and outs of SEO.

Indeed I am sure that your advice has been instrumental in achieving a top 5 listing for the last 3 years in Google for my London site.

We have now broadened our operation into Paris. Our Paris site has been optimised in exactly the same way as my London site, and submitted to Google 6 months ago. However, a search on [our keywords] - or anything else — it is not even on the first 20 pages!

It almost seems as if Google are intentionally favouring sites with far less claim to be relevant for this search.

Can you suggest anything?

Kind regards,

Harley

Jill's Response

Hi Harley,

If the site is only 6 months old, then you are still the victim of Google's aging delay.

Submitting to Google won't help; you simply need to build up trust, links and credibility. Plus, as with everything in SEO, you'll have to have lots of patience! The aging delay time frame averages around 9 months, so you've most likely got at least another 3 months or so to go.

Also note that since you're in a highly competitive area, things can take quite a while even without the aging delay. It's difficult to gain a decent trust factor in competitive areas, so you'll want to think of everything you can to set your site apart from the others in your niche. The more useful stuff you can offer that isn't offered by others, the better your chances will be for search engine success.

Good luck!

Jill

Discuss this article in the Small Business Ideas forums.