Has anyone here had an experience where they drop in and out of the sandbox fairly frequently? I've spent at least 3 2-week periods in it, broken up with times of being #2 in Google for my keywords. While I've been told to keep link building while boxed, it seems that link building is what's putting me in there in the first place. What is a "safe" number of links to build per week?
I don't think you can define a "safe" number of links to grow - but being cautious about link growth is wise. Too many times the answer given to many SEO issues is "get more links" - but you need to be cautious. One question - how are you measuring when you are "in" and "out" of the sandbox? If you see your rankings drop and rise by significant chunks this is quite different to the idea of a "sandbox". Howard
I have the same problem as soon as I change something on my homepage my site dissapears, I am highly ranked but my site seems to be on a high risk category with google or something like that. As soon as i do something it dissapears for 2- 3 weeks. Do google people actually look at the site, are you put into a high risk catgoery? It is very frustrating because you want to optimise but seem to be punished for it Ryan
Whether or not it is true I have seemed to notice if you try to make a lot of site wide changes, in a short time span, you get screwed with your rankings.
What I mean by in and out of sandbox is that I either rank #2 for my keywords, or not at all for my keywords.
OK, that's a bit different to the sandbox... this just means your position in the SERPS is fluctuating quite a lot. When you drop from the top 2 position, have you found your site anywhere at all in the top 500? Do you know where it drops to? (you can quickly scan results if you set preferences to show 100 results at a time, then use find in page). Fluctuating rankings are the norm - new sites are appearing, content is updated, links are added or removed, so even if your site content doesn't have a lot of changes, it's normal to see some change in ranking position. That's true for new and established sites, though newer sites will probably fluctuate a little more. Ranking wobbles of 20 or 30 places aren't that unusual, but changes of several hundred are less common. If your site is new, and there have been quite a lot of changes in links to your site, expect things to continue wobbling for some time. Howard