You know you are in the sandbox when...

[Dominic]

I've been working on my homeless (http://www.homeless.org.au) site for yonks and do really well on phrases (homeless people / pictures / statistics / etc), but haven't broken the top 100 for 'homeless' with the homepage.

I have a page for young kids thinking of running away - lists help lines etc, that just got listed in kids n teens at dmoz (runaways (http://www.homeless.org.au/runaways.htm)).

I only link to it from 1 page of my site, the runaways page is now higher in the serps for 'homeless.' (the homepage is also in dmoz).

:mad: SANDBOX! :mad: AHHH! :mad:

[mopacfan]

Things that make you go Hmmmmm... Sure can be frustrating trying to get those rankings isn't it? I feel your pain my friend.

[Nitin M]

Where do you rank for allinanchor:homeless ?

I would check but am imaging results in your neck of the woods are different from here in the states.

[lowrider14044]

Know what you mean. I put a new inner page up a couple weeks ago with a link to it from the main page. No other links. It's managed to get to #8 in Google for a term with 881,000 competing pages and 1 & 2 in two other terms with 191,000 and 79,100 competing. And the ones it is at 1 & 2 at only have part of the phrase in the title. Go figure?

Dominic...I did a search for homeless in Google.au and you came up in # 5 & 6. #5 was for your Runnaways page but listed under that was your home page. You also came up #1 in most of the sub headings you have on the page. Are you talking about the main Google rather then in Australia?

[Dominic]

Yes, we have Australia covered from most angels (we did within the first month or two the site was live - not hard).

I'm talking the main game - global search.

[madmax728]

How's the situation now?
Even my sites page is in the sandbox for the keyword Mysore Palace

[ecctao]

I am aready out of it!
luckly!

[Gallito]

My domain name seperated by word is #1 in yahoo/msn/alta yet nowhere in google... I'm in the sandbox =)

[NightOwl888]

So when you are in the sandbox, you are not even in the SERPs?

I am curious if anyone knows what types of things take you out of the SERPs vs just make you lose rank. For example, I had a page that had too high of a density for a specific two word key phrase. As a result, I lost rank for that keyword in Google and nearly all of my important keywords in Yahoo. I fixed the issue and I am still waiting to see if I return to where I was.

It would be interesting to know if anyone has experimented with

a) stuffing keywords in ALT tags
b) stuffing keywords in Meta Descriptions
c) keywords in titles vs no keywords in titles
d) keywords in the beginning of the title rather than the end

and other common tricks to see what the results people have found. For example, is putting too many keywords in the ALT tags enough to be pulled from the SERPs or will it just cause you to lose position?

[jeffdz]

Don't stuff anything into the alt tags. Describe your image. If it includes using a keyword use it.
Write a good meta description and don't stuff
Yes, put your keywords in your titles but have it understandable to a human
Keywords early in the title can't hurt as long as it makes sense

[sweetlouise]

i did not ever get sandboxed for any of my sites.