Hi, I have a PR4 website that I think got in the sandbox for some terms. Can someone offer consulting please? Thank you in advance
The sandbox is an aging filter for certain competitive keywords. During this "proving" time, your backlinks are not factored in when calculating SERPS for select "competitive" keywords. PR still passes and it doesn't mean you can't rank for competitive terms, it just makes it very difficult to do without your backlinks being factored in. This period can last for 4 months to a year or more. I think the sandbox is blamed too often for sites not ranking well - when it is really a lack of quality and relevant backlink building. You can get an idea of how competitive your keywords are by using tools like: http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/ If you site is more than a year old, you're probably not in the sandbox. If your keywords are not competitive, it's not the sandbox. Nothing you can really do if your site is new but continue to build quality backlinks and wait.
You're not in the sandbox. Take a look at the sites currently ranking at the top for your keywords and check the amount of backlinks they have, and the backlinks with have that anchor text. Note their domain age. Google gives a lot more weight to in-content links that are from relevant, trusted sites rather than PR. Check backlinks with google and yahoo.