Coming out of the Sandbox

I do buy into the sandbox theory.

Moreover, I also currently believe that the sandbox algorithm was altered radically in early May.

The older algorithm was much nicer to new sites.

The new algorithm is more harder on new sites.

Proof? None yet, and with Google, seldom if ever.

 

Thanks Darren

Lot's of hard work and it helps to either own a high page count forum or two or be able to buy or barter a link thereon!

Mick

 

Colin, I know where you are coming I was in the same position as you two years ago when I launched my business Worldwide Holiday Homes. It's taken me all this time to really make a dent in the search engines for my main website, your first aim is to take as much information in as possible from the forums, treat some of the information as speculation because you don't want to be redesigning your website because of what one person says.

The main thing about Google is back links, you seriously need to get them links up, the more links you have the better positions you will get in Google. Also, keyword related content, use keywords within your text, ie Dubai Holidays etc. I am not sure how competitve the Dubai travel industry is at the moment, so I am actually performing my own tests to see how easy it is to get listed for Dubai vacations/ hotels related KW's.

I'd recommend spending a least five hours a week on gaining more links, especially to websites that are related to holidays, and Dubai.

I'm sure you already do but use DP's keyword tracker, and see how it goes. Keep in touch because I don't mind sharing the results of the testing I am doing for the Dubai website.

Darren

 

Hmmm, I'm not sure.

I had a 80 page site and here's what I did

> Added a forum (now 900 pages indexed - very fast I might add)
> Added probably c 100 links (all to the home page)

My competitors now have less pages and less links

I crawled slowly up by about 10 pages - but now can't budge

I think my recent links are not counting

(site > 3 years old)

 

When your forum gets pagerank the links back to your site from there will give you more value.

I wouldn't be shy in adding a couple more links home from your forum footer.

I would consider getting a few directly to the forum. Something that comes to mind (don't ask me I don't know if it is) but is your forum search engine friendly?

Gee - I did a quick search on google for business plans and it seems like a pretty tough term to compete on.

 

yep - tough term, but I was moving nicely up the rankings up until a couple of weeks ago as I was adding in links - now I am at a standstill, and SERPS are very stable.

I have quite a few links back from my forum so I am just going to hunt down links

 

PS - all of the forum has been indexed

 

Though a Sandbox exists, most people do not realize that it really is not new. It also is not applied system wide. Google has a "HotList" of terms that it considers highly competitive (meaning highly searched and with ranking scores that are fairly close). As you can imagine, these are also the most valuable to Google. There has been a debate as to how many terms are in their HotList but most of us believe it is no more than 50,000 and probably closer to 20,000.

The problem is that most people confuse the time it takes for normal indexing and re-ranking with the added time associated with the Sandbox.

Because a new website has no history, Google bases much of its initial ranking on backlinks and page optimization. The PR of the page(s) linking to you IS somewhat important for the mere fact that a page with a higher PR is seen as more of an authority. However, in the initial ranking, the system focuses on a few main criteria.

Is the site that is linking to you of the same theme or topic? Is it a site that is already ranked in that specific keyword? Is the link coming from the root domain of the linking site? If not how many levels deep is it? Is the site on a different IP address (so it isn't one of your own sites on the same server)? This is why initially, a couple of good links from the homepage of other sites in your industry that are already ranked in the keyword you are looking for is far better than having 1000 links on a bunch of other no-name sites that are not even ranked and in many cases not even about your topic.

Now, if your keyword IS in their HotList, there are other considerations. Meaning, they have added criteria they look for and added time constraints before your site has "proved" that it deserves to be in the rankings.

Remember, the guys at Google are arrogant a$$holes. Smart ones, but a$$holes nonetheless. They are on the moral crusade to provide the most relevant results on the planet and they consider it a PRIVILEGE to be listed in their search engine. Whether you are in their listings or blacklisted completely is at their sole discretion. They deem what is and is not relevant. (We'll see how long that lasts when they have 10 million shareholders to answer to and there is a class action lawsuit for business interference.)

So they make up the "rules" then don't tell you what the rules are. And if you violate the rules, they don't tell you which rules you broke. You're just gone. haha

OK, how does this relate to the Sandbox?

Well, everyone knows that Google has been in an eternal battle with the SEO experts of the world. To Google, in theory, there is no "White Hat" and "Black Hat". They consider all optimization search engine spamming because of the fact that you are altering the way you develop and deliver content. Their entire search ranking philosophy is based on their being a democratic Internet where all websites are independent of one another and all content is written unbiased and without influence.

With that said, they know that they can't stop people from optimizing their websites so they decided to focus on the malicious optimization, like optimizing a porn site to come up 1st when someone types in "music". Some of the techniques these people were using were unethical. So developed the distinction between "White Hat" and "Black Hat".

But you must think to yourself... what is the most important thing to a search engine company who makes all of its money based on how relevant their results are? Well, being that 90% of all searches done in the world are virtually the same 20,000 keywords/phrases they needed to protect those results with an iron gate. Thus emerged their HotList.

They created the Sandbox to protect that list. Those are the most valuable terms from a corporate image standpoint and from a revenue standpoint. So before they make any major changes to those terms they make you jump through hoops (only you don't know you are).

The big question is... What are the hoops?
One of them is time. Think of it this way. They put your site in jail for a certain amount of time and have variables that can reduce your "sentence".

One such variable some of us experts refer to as the "who you know" factor.

You see, they have a list of "MAJOR" sites that they deem credible in each of these industries (it isn't always the sites on the first page). If you can get links from some of these websites, you can bypass their HotList criteria (though you still must abide by their normal initial ranking criteria).

There are some well known SEO companies (I wont name any names) that really know very little about true SEO but instead have relationships with very important sites in various industries. Heck, you don't need to know very much if a site like the L.A.Times links to you. haha

Sorry, back to the Sandbox. As I said before, this system isn't new. It just wasn’t called Sandbox before and it wasn't as strict. But they have always had additional criteria for their HotList. They once relied more heavily on DMOZ listings because the boneheads at Google believed the directory was unbiased and therefore the sites that were accepted should be "worth" more. But if you know anything about DMOZ as I'm sure most of you do, you know that it is one of the most hypocritical, corrupt organizations on the Internet. Though our studies show that it is still a factor, it really doesn't hold much weight anymore.

At the end of the day, if you are persistent and use smart SEO techniques, it will only be a matter of time before you see results. The fact is that unless you have built a system that can bypass or reduce their grading structure (wink), you should be counting on every SEO project being about 4-6 months anyway depending on your keyword, the quality of your links, the number of internally indexed pages, your competition, etc.

Hope this explains a little.

 

That was brilliant. That fits exactly my findings. I do SEO for over 50 travel sites as well as 20 other non travel related sites. About 16 of my sites are in the Sandbox in my opinion, all of them started after May 2005. All the sites are in the top 5 for allinanchor:"cityname hotels" and all have at least PR4 or greater on the homepage (most are 5). There is NO reason that these sites do not come up in the top 1000 results, especially since I have similarly constructed and optimized sites that were built before May 2005 which all enjoy top 10 listings for the same kind of competitve keyword phrases. MOst of these keywords get more than 15K searches a month at Overture and I know they are VERY competitive terms. The only thing is some of these sites are over 6 months old (7-8) and I am growing impatient..lol. I will try to buy some advertising perhaps from an authority site that is topic sensitive and see if that will help me break out.

Anyway, great post. Also, its my opinion that being in the sandbox affects you for all words in the sandbox. Is that your experience or do you find it goes on a keyword by keyword basis?

 

I totally agree

 

got this domain out of sandbox in 3 months : jobscochin.com

what i did ? Build more backlinks and content