I was thinking about this over the weekend, but don’t know if it will actually work. The problems many people have with SEO are that new sites take ages to get ranked and trusted in Google. However when you transfer an old site to a new domain and use 301 permanent redirects to direct spiders to the new site the pagerank often transfers over very, very quickly.
So how can this be exploited for SEO purposes? Well say for instance that you run a site about DIY tips for home improvements. It’s been around for years and you’ve got good pagerank. Meanwhile you’ve got a client who’s just launched a brand new site selling hammers. You know they’re not going to get ranked well for ages, even if you started link building right away.
What if you were to build an information page about hammers on your DIY tips website, maybe link to it from the homepage of the DIY website so that it is seen as an important page. Wait until the pagerank passes to it at the next update. Then take the page down, sacrificing it, and place a 301 redirect to your client’s hammer site. The pagerank of your hammer page should then pass fairly quickly to the client’s new site.
This is all theoretical of course. I’ve never tried it. I’d love to hear if anyone else has. And if it does work as a way of getting the client site listed and ranked quickly, how many of these 301’s could you give from the trusted DIY site before it started to impact on it’s own rankings (like linking out to too many external sites from your homepage)?
