Grow Your Blog Twice as Fast With Seed Sites
The power of a baby seed to rank on Google
You can grow your blog twice as fast with seed sites.
Seed sites are home-grown websites that have been around for a while — sometimes years — or aged sites that you buy from other people.
In this article, I’m going to share with you how to grow your website between 2-10 times faster with seed sites.
What You Need To Know About Seed Sites
To understand seed sites, we need to back up for a moment to talk about a few things to make sure we are all on the same page.
Here’s what you need to know:
- What are domains?
- What are aged domains?
- Why are aged seed sites so good for blog growth?
“The best time to start a blog is a year ago.” — Christopher Kokoski
What Are Domains?
Domain names are the virtual keys that open your website to the world.
A domain name is essentially a string of characters that represent your website address. For instance, if you wanted to visit a niche website about board games, you’d type in something like “boardgames.com” into your web browser.
The system that translates these strings of characters into the website you want to visit is known as the Domain Name System (DNS).
Every website on the internet has a unique domain name.
And every domain name is registered with a registrar. Registrars are businesses that manage the reservation of domain names.
Oh boy, how exciting! (Did you fall asleep yet? Still awake? Ok, good).
If you want to start a new website, you’ll need to register a domain name for it.
You can usually do this through your web hosting provider, or with a registrar like Domain.com or Namecheap.
Domain names can be registered for anywhere from one to ten years, and they usually come with an annual fee. The cost of a domain name varies depending on the registrar, the length of registration, and any extras like private registration.
Domain names are an important part of your website’s identity.
They can affect your search engine optimization (SEO), which is a major factor in determining how visible your website is on search engine results pages (SERPs).
See, all this boring shit is related to growing your website. 😆
Your domain name should be easy to remember, spell, brandable, and relevant to your niche. It’s also important to choose a registrar that you can trust, and that offers good customer support.
The value of a domain name depends largely on its age and popularity.
The longer a domain name has been registered and the more popular it is, the higher its value will be as an investment opportunity.
Hence the term “domain investing” or “domain flipping”.
Even a domain name as young as a baby who can’t walk yet is a major leap toward boosting your blog growth.
Here’s why.
What Are Aged Domains?
Aged domains are domain names that have been registered for over 1 year (baby age).
They have established trust and sometimes brand recognition. This means they are more likely to rank higher in search results for certain keywords relevant to your website niche.
Additionally, they can have a higher conversion rate.
Cha-Ching!💲
That’s because people searching on the same keywords will be more likely to click on your site rather than one of the sites with lower search rankings.
Note: Look for aged domains with some activity.
A domain that’s been sitting on the shelf with no activity for 10 years is not going to be as helpful as a domain that has seen some publishing activity in the last year or two. The more activity, usually the better.
What Is a Seed Site?
A seed site is technically a site that you start, throw 30 quality blog posts on, and then leave alone for over a year.
It’s like planting a seed that grows into a huge tree.
Or planting a baby — wait, what? No. That analogy gets real weird real fast.
The idea behind seed sites is that you let the site age and mature while continuing to build other websites (or do other blogging things).
After about a year, you come back and start promoting the site and adding more content.
You can then use this seed site as a platform to grow your business.
So, seed sites and aged domains are very similar.
How Aged Seed Sites Help You Grow Your Blog Twice as Fast (Or Faster)
There are several good reasons why you should buy aged seed sites to grow faster.
Aged Seed Sites Skip The Google Sandbox
The ability to skip the Google Sandbox is a major advantage of buying aged domains or building seed sites.
The Google sandbox is a temporary holding area for new websites that aren’t yet trusted by Google. All new websites start in the sandbox, where they’re subjected to close scrutiny before being allowed into the main search index.
This process can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months (or longer).
Most experts predict a brand new site to take about 12 months to fully age.
If you’re trying to grow your blog or website organically, the last thing you want is to be stuck in the sandbox for a year. But with an aged domain or seed site, you can bypass the sandbox entirely.
Aged seed domains are already trusted by Google, so they don’t have to go through the same rigorous review process as new domains.
Aged Domains Might Come With Backlinks
One of the most important reasons to invest in aged domains is their links.
Aged domains with backlinks are a valuable asset for any business, be it an established one or a new business.
In other words, links from aged domains will provide your website with more visibility in search engines and social media while also making it easier to rank higher on those platforms over time.
Warning: Not all backlinks are good backlinks.
Always check for previous Google penalties or risky backlink practices before you buy an aged domain. Of course, if you build your own site and let it sit with 30 posts, then you should be good to go.
Aged Seed Sites Help You Rank Better
Age is a factor in how well your website ranks.
You’ve probably noticed that massive sites dominate in every niche.
There are multiple reasons but one reason is certainly how long the website has existed. This means that if you want to rank better, it’s advantageous to have an aged domain.
With a seed site or an aged domain, you can hit the ground running and start ranking quickly
Aged Seed Sites Help You Rank Faster
The more established a website, the more likely it will rank faster in search results because of how much time it has been around.
Buying or building aged domains is like a blogging cheat code.
My oldest website is only a few years old but it regularly ranks for low-competition keywords in 24 hours or less.
Aged Seed Sites Might Come With Email Lists
A domain name may come with an email list that you can use for your own marketing purposes.
When a domain has been used for a long time, many people have likely visited the website and may have added their name to an email list. This means that entrepreneurs who buy aged domains could easily contact this email list and create an instant audience.
As we’ve seen, aged seed sites can also come with other advantages, such as:
- Established history
- Known and trusted brand name
- Higher search engine rankings
- More traffic
- Increased conversions (sales)
- Greater customer retention
- And more!
Aged seed sites and expired domains have much in common, including how much they can help you launch your site into the ranking stratosphere.
Here’s a good video about that:
How To Buy Aged Domains
You buy aged domains the same way you buy any other domain name.
There are a few ways:
- Go to a domain registrar like Namecheap, Hover, GoDaddy, ExpiredDomains, or Domain.com, and search for an aged domain. There is also a site called Domainhole and I don’t know why I find that hilarious.
- Find a broker that specializes in selling aged domains.
- Buy an aged domain from another blogger that you know.
- Use a domain auction site like Flippa.
The second and third options are the easiest, but you’ll likely pay more for the domain than you would if you found it through an auction. If you’re on a budget, domain auctions are a great way to find quality aged domains without breaking the bank.
Be sure to validate the domain before buying it.
Here are two important things to look for:
- Spammy backlink profile: If the domain has a lot of links from low-quality websites or thousands of links from the same website, it could be penalized by Google. You can check the backlink profile using a tool like Ahrefs.
- Bad reputation: The domain might have a bad reputation online if it was previously used for spammy purposes. You can check for this by doing a Google search for the domain on the WayBackMachine website.
Seed Site Quick Start Guide
If you like the idea of starting a seed site, here is a quick start guide that might help.
I’m actually in the process of doing this right now.
Here’s my process:
- Choose a blogging niche with lots of low-competition keywords and plenty of opportunities to monetize (Bonus if you know about and like the niche).
- Choose a new domain name or aged domain name from a domain registry or auction site.
- Set up your blog with WordPress.org, a cheap hosting site like Bluehost or HostArmada, and a fast theme like Astra or GeneratePress.
- Create your mandatory pages (About Us, Contact, Privacy, Affiliate Disclaimer, etc).
- Add the fewest amount of plugins you need for security and speed.
- Connect your website to Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
- Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console.
- Publish 30 blog posts on related low-competition keywords for topical authority (i.e., all articles about Birdfeeders or even one brand of birdfeeder).
- Let your site sit and age for 12 months from the day you publish it online.
After a year of waiting, check your analytics, update your plugins and themes (WordPress will guide you automatically), find your best-performing topics, and write more articles on those topics.
Related posts:
- 3 Fastest Ways To Scale Your Blog
- How I Make $5,000 Each Month With Keyword Cloning
- These 3 Google Positions Spike Your Traffic The Most
- Use My SEO Article Map for Higher Google Rankings
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