Q and A: Why do older unoptimized sites sometimes rank better than younger optimized ones?

QuestionHello Kalena…

A question I’ve often been asked and don’t really have a good answer for is; Why – when a site is NOT optimized at all for search engines, but it IS an older site, it’s been around a while – does it rank better than younger sites that HAVE been optimized?

Thank You!

Amy

Dear Amy

In their ranking algorithm, Google takes into account the age of a domain, as well as the history of a domain and the age and quality of links pointing to it. Sites that are new to the Internet take a while to build up “trust rank” and link history in Google. So you’ll sometimes see older, well-established sites that don’t appear to be optimized out-ranking their younger optimized competitors for target keywords.

Make sense?

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