New domain, and Local Service, Moderate Keyword

[Will_Craig]

Hi all

i have a new client, who has bought a shiny new domain name for his business, it has one keyword in it related to his business.

He is a local plastering looking to get his site ranked, but my worry is the domain age, its very new less than 2 months, i know google sandboxes new domains,

The term he is targeting is Mod Completive (26%)

is getting his domain ranked page one within 6 months a possibility, or will it just seem utterly spammy in googles eyes.

Any tips please

thanks

will

[Will_Craig]

thanks for the advice on this one, i always thought the sandbox was still around, i tend not to take on clients with very new domains or even recommend a domain change for this very reason,

thanks for putting me right on this one, i will need to google!!

Yea content and onsite has been completed, I didn't want to do much link building other than business citations.

[Mark_Jay_Apsey_Jr.]

No penalty for new sites....

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE SOLID CONTENT ON THE SITE THAT IS USING YOUR PRIMARY KEYWORDS.

Make sure you have at least 5 keywords you can focus on when creating content.

Make sure that if any of those additional keywords have a derivation of your main keyword, you prioritize them. FOR EXAMPLE: MAIN KEYWORD IS LOCAL PLASTERING AND A SUB KEYWORD IS PLASTERING FOR HIRE, THAT IS BETTER THAN WALL RENOVATION.

Make sure you are geotargeting. local plastering dallas texas.

Unless he is directly competing against walmart or sony, you can get him listed on the first page in 6 months, with a competitive keyword that is 26%.

One more thing, make sure that the competitive keyword is actually getting some real search volume. 26% competitive and zero local search volume on your keyword gets you nada.

[MassivePrime]

A few points to make here:

Sandbox: This is not a term I would be using anymore, not since 2005 at the very least. I get the impression you think it is a penalty imposed by Google to new sites but the contrary is actually true. Newly registered domains usually get what I call a 'grace' period were rankings are slightly boosted. After some time if the site is not properly structured, has poor on-page SEO or poor content it will lose this added boost.

Since the difficulty level is 26% I'm going to say that if you create good content for the site and build up a healthy and legitimate link profile you can get it ranked within 6 months pretty easily.

You said this is a local business so you will be using geo targeted keywords, Google places and local social marketing I assume? Although I would recommend not guaranteeing your client that he will be there 100% in 6 months I'm very sure it can be done.