With the web growing at such a phenomenal pace, many businesses and webmasters are looking to capture just a little more market share.

One way they do this is to build new sites in addition to maintaining their existing sites.

But because they are new, they sometimes take a while to make a big enough impact on the search engines to get noticed so that they can start ranking and bringing in traffic.

In this article I look at some of the simple things you can do if you are in this situation.

By now, if you have the new site already built and optimized, you may be wondering why the heck it isn’t showing up in Google. Particularly if you’ve just launched the site within the past 9-12 months with a brand new, previously unregistered domain name.

The reason you aren’t seeing your site rank is that Google has an area where it places new sites until they “earn” their way out basically through links.

Because of this, we are going to look at what these links are, and how you can go about earning them. In addition, I’m going to give you a tip to help you get that site out of the “sandbox” sooner using the power of your existing site(s).

When I do link building for a new client I recommend they start with at least two or three links, depending on their industry. Or course link building is an ongoing thing, but there are 2 or 3 “essentials.”

A must have is a Yahoo! directory listing. For those who don’t know, Yahoo! has a directory of websites that initially started as a set of personal bookmarks but quickly grew to become one of the most powerul and authoritative directories on the web. To this day they are still considered highly authoritative by engines such as Google. So it’s worth the $300 submission fee to get your site listed in a high PageRank Directory page.

Second is an Open Directory listing. The Open Directory Project, also known as the ODP or DMOZ is a free human editted directory. It’s roots also go way back as well and, as such is also considered highly authoritative by Google. Granted, to get such a listing is sometimes as likely as finding gold on the side of the road but you have to at least make the effort. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a directory with a good editor who updates listings regularly.

Third, and this is optional depending on your industry, is a paid listing in Business.com. Business.com is similar to Yahoo! or the Open Directory in that it is a directory, but it’s target is primarily B to B. Paying the annual subscription provides you a text link back to your site.

I recommend this listing to many of my B to B clients not so much because of the link popularity they will gain (which is also a great benefit), but because some of my clients receive the best quality leads from here.

If you can get all three of these links in a timely manner I would expect you to see your PageRank jump to 4 or higher on the next PageRank update (which usually happen every 3-6 months. In fact we should see an update any time now). This should get you out of the sandbox and into the regular Google results.

But let’s say that you’re not a B to B website. Or, let’s assume that you don’t get that rare DMOZ editor that updates regularly. Let’s say that all you’ve received is a Yahoo! directory listing. What then?

Well, there is a great opportunity for you to do some quick link building for your new site that many site owners overlook.

And that is the power of your existing sites.

That’s right. Your other sites already have an online reputation built. Chances are if you’ve done any type of web promotion at all, you have at least a PageRank 5 on your home page, and likely in the 3 to 4 range on internal pages.

So knowing that, why not take advantage of it?

Let me give you an example:

I have a client that has five sites and has recently launched a sixth. They’ve heard about the Google sandbox and are concerned that the new site will languish there for a few months.

Yet the site hosts a revolutionary new product and they want to build buzz about it now, not eight months from now.

So we did the above: Yahoo!, DMOZ and Business.com but they are still concerned.

I recommended they place a link in the footer of each of their other site’s home pages back to the new site. This was done just around Christmas-time. Fast-forward three months later and that new site is already ranking in Google quite competitively for those terms they needed to create buzz about.

You see, each of those five sites had a PageRank ranging from 4 to 7. Imagine what a link from the home page of a PageRank 7 site is worth to a new site? How long would it have taken to build a bunch of links from PageRank 3 or 4 sites to make the value the same as that of a PageRank 7 link?

This is the power of your own network of sites – that each can help the others succeed on line.

Now, this doesn’t mean that you should rush out and register a bunch of domains and build out a bunch of doorways to your main domain.

But it does make sense to register several domains now to both protect your brand and use for future expansion.

That way, when the need arises, you build out a single new domain and use the power of your existing domains to help push the new site out of the sandbox much sooner.

So, if you are in a situation where you have a new domain and a handful of pre-existing domains with decent PageRank, why not use the power and influence of these other domains to help give your new site the initial boost it needs to see the regular Google index?