I know this has been posted about a lot but I need a pat on the back saying it's going to be ok! I always see that people say it's exactly 3 months until you're out but then there's the occasional 6-12-24 months to get out. What's everyone's experience?
I was complaining about the same recently (to myself) only to find out I hadn't really done much in terms of SEO. Once you're 'out' give them some reason to rank you high and don't just think time is the only factor for ranking you.
14 months. I've learnt a complete overhaul of the site. Design/content EVERYTHING does wonders about the 11 month mark if you see no action.
The best way out of the sandbox is to gain natural links to your site. Do not over do it with link farms and buying links. I suggest submitting your link to at least 2 directories, search engines, or sites once everyday. Try to get as many one-way links as possible. Focus on SEO in terms of your pages, make sure your meta-tags are in place. Check your backlinks with Yahoo (not Google). Google usually will not show you a good number of backlinks, they hide their information so it is hard to determine how you rank in Google, but most of your visitors will find you through Google. If you have a good amount of backlinks in Yahoo then it is fair to say Google has just as many backlinks as Yahoo or more, but Google will not show you this. Currently Google shows me 83 backlinks for one of my sites while Yahoo shows me 2,630 (which is strange because just a week ago Yahoo showed at least 10,000 backlinks - but oh well). Google, Yahoo, and MSN (as well as other smaller bots) visit my site daily and each engine crawl & index at least 800+ pages. I rank #1 on MSN and #11 on Yahoo for one of my keywords but can't find myself in Google for any of my keywords except for the site name, but most of my visitors find my site through Google. I could simply ask visitors what keyword they used to find my site, but I just haven't done so....I'm not concerned with that. I lightly focus on search engines and more concerned with building my sites naturally and creating a buzz. I write/submit press releases and articles to get links and create buzzes, but I'm out of the sandbox...not sure if this is wise or not while being in the sandbox. But I suggest do what is right for your site not what is right for the search engines. Focus on your site >>>> Search engines will follow >>>> Once Search engines follow traffic will come The old Build & Forget method....which means focus on your website and not search engines or traffic schemes....focus on getting the word out about your site by all means without using any unethical or overnight success methods and everything will fall into place. The only thing better than search engine marketing is word of mouth.
Well here's the thing. I already have all the links in place as I'm #3 and #4 for allinanchor for the two terms i'm sandboxed for. It's just google hates me Also here is a rumor I heard recently that I wanted clarification on. Supposedly you get sandboxed no matter what if you do and adword campaign for the terms you are targetting. Now I'm not saying this is true or anything but when I checked my records, I was sandboxed very near the time when I signed up with adwords for those two terms I was targetting. ;/
Yes! This is all I am doing recently lol. I've gotten pretty good and get listing at "authority" websites in my subject field daily, or every other day and this is the main way I am getting traffic at this point. Also I'm #1 in MSN and yahoo for these terms ;/
ive been sandboxxed for just under 9 months now, so i thought i would do basic seo to the site for my chosen keywords (didnt wanna go over the top and get banned) and i then said to myself screw google if they dont wanna rank my (new) site then who cares yahoo and msn bring me enough traffic to keep me happy. so my bit of advice for today is, dont worry about 1 engine, when there are 2 other major ones that can do just as much as google can.
Right there with ya. I have a site that also languishes in the sandbox and I believe it's been well over 5 months. It does well in Yahoo and MSN and has a good number of quality links. It is PR3 but nowhere to be found in the Google rankings. Gotta be patient I guess.
I strongly agree with this. My most recent four or five sites I've let build links as naturally as possible. I create an inbound link from another website, submit to Google, MSN, and Yahoo, then let everything take its natural course. As an example, I launched one site the first of July. While I'm not in the top 10 yet for my key terms on Yahoo or Google I am getting more visitors to my site from Google than anywhere else. I am in the top 10 (and even a few #1) at MSN. Using this technique has brought good results. While I'm not in the top 10 at Google for any of my targeted terms I am in the top ten there for lots of terms I don't track and they send me tons of traffic. AdSense has been good too with double digit revenues every day. Keep in mind too that Google engineers have alluded that the sandbox isn't something that all sites automatically appear in. You need do do something that looks unnatural for a new site that puts you there according to statements I have heard. More like a penalty-box than a sandbox.
It's no exact science. It varies from site to site but I think you'll find most sites break out after 6-9 months. In my experience, my first site was released after about 7 months.
I get great results from MSN and Y!, several no1 positions. Google "seem" to have sandboxed me, yet my homepage is PR5 (possible?)... I changed over from .com to .com.au and they seem to have decided to penalise me for that... it's been 5 - 6 weeks so waiting to see what will happen.
Sites which are sandboxed still display Pagerank in the toolbar. When you say you changed over from .com to .com.au what did you do exactly?
My sandboxed site is also a PR 5 but ranks well for other terms. It just got sandboxed on 2 phrases that I heavily targeted ;/
You'll find that's how the sandbox works. You can rank well for more obscure less targetted phrases, but wont rank for the money terms.
You can see from this poll I posted a while back, the majority seem to get out in under 4 months, but a lot of people still stay sandboxed for longer... http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=24687
noob question, but I have to.. what exactly does term "sandbox" mean? not indexed on google yet or something else?
http://www.seomoz.org/articles/google-sandbox-analysis.php#2 This is a good read if you're interested in the sandbox, myths etc.