I am always testing new link building methods to see what works and what does not work. I never ever get my information from forums, blog, word of mouth, or anything else like that. I learn from doing, not by reading, and because of that I am always testing out SEO myths myself. Below are a few myths that I am currently testing.
1. Google not only looks at your domains whois info (and past history, etc), but Google also looks at other domains that are owned by you to see how trust worthy you/your domains are.
I kinda of found this myth myself. In case you did not know, back in 2008 Google banned all of my websites that were on the same IP because I was selling text links (they even banned the websites that were not selling text links but were on the same IP). That was a huge pain in the ass so I broke my websites up and made them harder to find (however I know that if google wanted to find them… google can find them haha). Because of this reason I break my domains down into different whois names, either personal names or company names.
Now because I break my domains down like that, I have found out that google DOES track ALL of your websites (no matter the niche). I am not sure exactly how they track your websites however, it is either by the name on your whois, or the IP on your websites, or a combination of both, or maybe even something completely different… all I know is what Google knows a lot about you and ALL of your websites you have online.
So how do I know this for sure? Well I use fake names for my godaddy info when registering a new domain, I have at least 25 different godaddy accounts with all different whois info. Lately I have become lazy and I have started to register other domains using the existing godaddy accounts, instead of creating a whole new godaddy account. Well I have found out that it is a lot easier to rank websites when you have other existing websites already ranked that are using the godaddy account. So how could that be….. because Google looks at your other websites info to see how trustworthy you are.
Now this is just a myth, but I am researching it so see if it is true, and if it is true… how can I use it to my advantage? But if you disagree with me then please leave a comment because I am definably interested in what you have to say.
2. Subdomains
I used to love sub domains because Google treats them like they are there own domain. So I used to use sub domains for smaller niches and ranked each sub domain for the search term. Now google did something to make them harder to rank for, ever since July my sub domains have been slipping in the SERPs even though my link building plans have been the same. I am currently switching my sites over to a better link structure way, but I would like to know what google now does to sub domains? Does anyone have any ideas on what google is doing with sub domains in there index?
SEO Tip:
Here is a SEO tip for newbies… Google loves websites that have been around for a long time. So if you want to rank a website for a hard term then the best way is to buy an existing domain from 10+ years ago and build a site using that domain instead of a new one. Google loves old trustworthy domains!
I rather do SEO work for a website with 100 backlinks from 1998 then a website with 5k backlinks that is 8 months old… any day of the week.
But anyways, leave a comment if you have something to say… whether its good or bad I want to hear it 
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new subdomains take ages to get indexed. It took over 2 months to get into google’s index on a recent client project – this is for a subdomain of a large banking corporation – the main domain has been around for 10+ years
Alright, so my question is this…You say that the older the domain name, the better. Obviously a domain name that is ten years old is the best, but I’m pushing my third year with one of my sites. Does that start to constitute “respect” with Google. It’ll be renewed again come February and that’ll start year three. Is this good? Not old enough to matter? When does age really start helping?
Oh yeah definably. If I have a brand new domain I dont expect to be consistently on page on for at least 1 year. I used to be able to rank a site on page 1 in google for a lot of terms, not it takes 1 year plus to rank.
Google looks at the domains whois history along with the ip history and all that fun stuff, they are just making sure that the domain owner is trustable.
But, once you hit a year or longer, it starts to do better in the search engines?
It will be really interesting to see how you get on. I don’t bother with subdomains anymore, don’t really need them for my site/s.
Very interesting research indeed.
.
1. This point is really interesting, hard to believe, but when Google is involved everything is possible
2. Sub domains may be penalized because lately many are creating heaps of them. They are surely infecting the index, and that could be a reason for bad ranking.
3. Be sure to check the history of domain before buying them. Taking an old domain with bad reputation may not be so good
Hi John
I’d really like to know how this applies to buying sites!
I am literally just buying a fairly well aged site (4/5 years)
I have big plans for it but should I wait before making big changes (like 1 month) and should I leave the whois the same or what? Do you have any experience or even just hunches as to best practices when taking over a site?
Thanks
Chris
Jon, what’s your experience with changing the design of a site? Do you notice a drop in SERPs?
I’ve actually noticed it’s harder to rank an older domain especially when it’s sat around forever. The longer it sits around, the more of a bitch is to rank. What works best for me is buying links on the big sites.
Good tips. #1. If you submit your websites sitemaps to Google from the Webmaster tools site, can´t they determine that all the sites are yours?
I like this line Jon!
“I rather do SEO work for a website with 100 backlinks from 1998 then a website with 5k backlinks that is 8 months old… any day of the week.”
What sucks is i just got 2 new domains..So they are about 2 months old! Hopefully DH can help me out with that