Hi, I've had my site up and running since April 2004. The site (I think) is still sandboxed for my main phrase. Couple of questions/thoughts 1) Are certain phrases sandboxed longer than others? 2) My allinanchor position is in the top 10. My site ranks in the 500's (which is an improvement on no position, but I assume this means I'm sandboxed. 3) Can you be pushed back in the sandbox by dabbling with things like gotlinks. I had one way gotlinks for 1 month. 4) My site appears to have been in the sandbox much longer that the quoted 3-8 months. Have people waited as long as me to get further up the serps, or is something else to blame maybe (my dodgy seo for instance). The url is the first in my sig if anyone is interested. Thanks.
1) Are certain phrases sandboxed longer than others? Yes, some highly competitive keywords can take longer to get a top ranking, but at 1 1/2 years, I'm guessing you are not sandboxed. I would assume there is something else that needs to be done. 2) My allinanchor position is in the top 10. My site ranks in the 500's (which is an improvement on no position, but I assume this means I'm sandboxed. Not necessarily. You can have a penalty which will keep you from ranking well - overoptimization can do it. "inanchor" links are a better judge imo than allinanchor and they seem to mirror ranking positions. It seems google made a pretty big shift recently. 3) Can you be pushed back in the sandbox by dabbling with things like gotlinks. I had one way gotlinks for 1 month. I don't think the "sandbox" gets pushed back, but a penalty has the same affect. I don't know anything about "gotlinks" specifically. 4) My site appears to have been in the sandbox much longer that the quoted 3-8 months. Have people waited as long as me to get further up the serps, or is something else to blame maybe (my dodgy seo for instance). You are going after a high competitive sector. I would investigate you "inanchor" position compared to the top ranking sites. There is no substitute for backlinks from "authority" sites in your sector. They take the most time, but google gives these a lot more weight.
I checked in inanchor. That was down in the 300's. Authority sites is the challenge. Thanks for the advice.