8. Does having a brand new domain name slow things down?
Answer: Yes, but there are other factors which also affect this; primarily the Keywords you choose.
The keywords you choose affect search engine optimisation because very general keywords or highly competitive ones can have hundreds of thousands (even millions) of sites all competing for the top - the more competition, the harder it is.
For example: the keyword "plumber" would have more competing sites than say: "plumbing services" or "plumber basingstoke". As it's quicker to get results for the latter of the two, and plumbers have a relatively local target market, the wise choice would be for the client to choose "plumber basingstoke" and get a much higher position faster, than if they chose "plumber", also bearing in mind that people outside of Basingstoke will probably be looking for a plumber in their area, so appearing for "plumber" nationally has very little value for a local business.
Because domain history is a contributing factor to how long SEO takes, if you have had a website for a few years, it will be relatively easy and quick to achieve top results for more competitive keywords. If it's brand new, it will take longer for Google to build-up trust in your site. In this instance we would generally recommend that the client chose five easier keywords to target and get top 10 results quicker.
Why? Well if you bear in mind that being in the top 10 dramatically increases your chances of getting clicked on (because people tend not to look back through lots of pages when they have already found what they are looking for), then it makes sense to be getting a high percentage of the traffic looking for a longer keywords, than a tiny percentage of the traffic looking for a shorter keyword.
So in a nutshell; if you have plenty of domain history, then up the stakes a little. If you don't, it's best to play safe for the first few months, building-up future trust for shorter-tail keywords, while you benefit from the traffic coming from the longer ones.
To answer the question as specifically as possible; if you have a brand new domain, it will take 6-12 months for more competitive national keywords like "plumber", whereas local, less competitive keywords can reach the top 10 in 3 months (sometimes less). If you have a few years domain history behind you, then you can expect even faster progress for both types of search terms
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