Freshness Index?

[nichemarkettools]

Hi, I've been a member for a few months but this is my first entry.

I typically build small portal websites to help attract more customers for small business approx. 5-7 pages and very tightly optimized around one primary keyword and 2 secondaries. These are typically very low competition. I do no link building to speak of. I don't keyword stuff or use poorly written content. I know that may be subjective but I believe the content I am using is genuinely useful to the reader.

What I have noticed recently is the sites get ranked quite well to begin with e.g. anywhere from the bottom half of the first page to page 2-3 and they stick for maybe 2-3 weeks, and the client is very happy, they then just vanish. It's not just the Google dance either these sites don't typically come back at all or when they do they are 100+ I was advised this was due to the freshness index but honestly these sites are hardly newsworthy...just wondering if anyone had any ideas?

Many thanks in advance.

[JakubMovic]

It's typical for new websites, i have few case's that new website on low competition keywords rank very well for few weeks and then boom! Can't see them in first 100. Bonus at the start

I would do some basic link building, few directories(only high quality), few links from social network and it should help. This can also help you: http://www.seomoz.org/directories

[nichemarkettools]

Thanks for your reply William, much appreciated.

I do use Word Press but have the option to remove meta which I always do, so there is no page date identification. Interesting you mention pages as opposed to posts, I will definitely try this, thanks again.

[William.Lau]

Congrats on your first post!

As you titled this post, freshness is indeed very important. I am assuming you are using a CMS like WordPress, and if you are using these articles as 'Posts' then freshness/ranking could vary. However, it might be more worth to have them as 'Pages' instead.

This is just if you are using WordPress.

Overall, my advice is to make sure your articles are static pages with no date identification. But if you plan on always posting fresh content, putting dates on them could be helpful as long as you post often.