Yeah, glad to have you back. Your sandboxing story is sad! It's odd because I though there was sandboxing only for competitive niches. My site is now #3 in Google for my main phrase and it is only 2 months old. No sandboxing yet. I think there are some tricks to be out of the sandbox more quickly? Maybe it would be the perfect time to buy a very strong PR6-PR7 link? I don't know, I'm just asking. Again, good luck and keep us informed.
UPDATE There definitely is a difference between a new domain and an aged one. With all the new domains I have had, it has taken between 24-36 hours to get indexed after submitting to multiple social sites. Occasionally, it has been indexed in 12 hours or so. Today, I launched one of the aged domains and submitted to a social site. Then, I went ahead and signed up with Google Webmasters for the domain and verified. As soon as I verified, I see the message, "Pages from your site have been indexed". I am not kidding but I was shocked. Google indexed 2 URLS(there were only 2) in 3 minutes. Definitely definitely definitely, an aged domain makes a difference. This domain is a little over 3 years old. More like its 4th year in existence. It never had any content at all. I was simply fortunate to get the exact name I wanted. I don't think I would have such a good name even if I had registered a new one. I pity the guy who sold it. Maybe he wasn't a webmaster after all. This has given me excellent feelings and I can feel the sandbox effect on my mind dying.
In my opinion, nobody really knows why a site enters a sandbox. My opinion of course. It's all speculation. Quickly? I am trying to get a backlink from DMOZ (pretty tough), and I plan to submit to BOTW. I will closely watch if that will help. Other than that, I am gonna have 2 dozes of patience capsule everyday.
Just to clarify. I already have a PR7 link, a PR6 link, 5 PR5s and about 10 PR4s. Did not help so far. Maybe need to wait for an update.
Welcome back. Glad to hear you are not letting the sandbox obstacle stand in your way. Best, JDSalinger
Thanks JD. It would be unwise to do nothing at all for the next 6 months (or whatever time it takes to get out of Sandbox).
I disagree, I say it is the figures. Great Work though! LOWER YOUR GOLF SCORE BY LEARNING HOW TO REALLY PUTT!
Good to have you back indeed. Alright, so you did experience the sandbox after all... Hopefully I didn't jinx you! But I hear you, I know the drill. Nothing else to do other than continuing to create content - that's what I'm doing as well. Good luck with the aged domain!
Heck of a lot of people don't understand the sandbox effect, I've wrote a few articles on it with the latest: http://www.seo-consultant-services.co.uk/google-sandbox.html The last section "Can the Google Sandbox be Avoided?" is particularly relevant to what Marketsnipers is saying regarding aged domains. That is assuming these aged domains have aged links then you are experiencing what I've tested extensively. Aged domain with no old/aged links is not better than buying a domain that's never been registered, your looking at around a year for competitive SERPs (if you've got a good links campaign). Aged domain with old/aged links (higher the PR the better) can give instant rankings far better than compared to a newly registered domain. So registering a domain today, doing nothing with it for 2 years then adding content/links is exactly the same as registering a domain today and immediately adding content/links. Both domains will be sandboxed. On the other hand if you have a domain that's at least one year old, has backlinks that gives it PR (higher the better) and you've neglected the site (maybe a few rubbish pages). As long as there's no penalties on the domain it will rank faster/better than using a newly registered domain if you now add new content/links to it. This doesn't mean if you have say a PR4 domain about "soil PH" and you add "mortgage" content it's going to instantly rank highly for really hard mortgage SERPs. The domains current backlinks will be lacking mortgage relevant anchor text and so won't rank as well compared to a site that's always been about mortgages and so always had mortgage relevant anchor text. It will rank better than using a newly registered domain though. Many people believe sites are themed and so having different themes on a site with the extreme being completely changing the theme means the new content won't rank well at all. Not true and to give an example I have a old site with aged links (PR5 for ages) and recently changed the name of the site (changing the sites direction) from "SEO and Affiliate Marketing" to "Make Money Online Guide" and the home page is top 10 for both searches in Google (not a big deal in itself). Also added a page about an affiliate mortgage product and within a few hours had top 10 SERPs like "Reduce Your Mortgage", "Reduce Mortgage" and plenty of others related to mortgages. This site has aged links and so it's out of the sandbox and internal links pass full benefit right away. Basically an internal PR7 link to a new page on the same site will give it the full link benefit of a PR7 link. While if you created that page on another domain and sent the same link to it, the link benefit won't be completely passed for up to a year (it's at least 9 months). The only difference is ones a internal link and the others an incoming link. David Law
Thanks SEO-Expert for clarifying the matter. I definitely know what to expect now. I wasn't expecting a miracle anyways. Here is what I had intended to do and still intend to - I intend to add 22 articles to the 3 year old domain I am working on and build 1-2 links for each article and then leave it at that for the next 3-4 months. I will start link building and add more content after that. I will repeat the process with the 2 year old aged domain I picked up too, and I will post 100 articles and except 1 or 2 backlinks from Social sites, won't do any other link building at all. Yesterday I picked up 2 old domains that have the full keywords in the domain names and are PR 0. Each keyword has about 5000 searches per month according to Google tool. So, I am gonna work on these 2 domains too. I pan to add about 25 articles in each of the sites and abandon them for sometime before I go back to work on them. In a way I am glad the first site went into sandbox - 1. I was spending too much time on its development without a justifiable return. 2. Now that its on sandbox, I am going to work on 4 more sites, which means 4 more streams of income from 4 different niches. I had no plans to do this earlier. Everything happens for good. This is the plan for now.
Yup, everyone listen to what David says. It's exactly what is happening or happens. At least it is true for todays SEO, you never know what you may get tomorrow with an algorithm change. Aged backlinks are one of the most important factors nowadays.
Well dont overlook the fact that the more article pages or indexed pages you have, you get that many more visitors, dont expect more than 2 visitors per page initially and if you have 100+ indexed pages, then that can be roughly 200 visitors, with good content the pageviews can be 3-4 times and that can help immensely in serps and earnings - as far as my theory goes - adsense starts paying for the clicks well if your pageviews are good Nice to have you back
I don't understand why you plan to stop working on sites after achieving XYZ? The way the sandbox works is based on aged backlinks (basically aged PR): if you'd had a site that's got a Pr6 home page for a year it's out the sandbox, on the other hand if it's been PR1 for a year it's not got enough aged PR to climb out the sandbox. So the last thing you want to do when promoting a site is stop. What you do today in link terms will show benefit 9+ months from now (this 9+ month delay is the sandbox). Unless you think you have enough links already to do great long term your going to want to keep building all the time. Reading between the lines it sounds like you think having a domain that's a couple of years old (when first registered) is important, trust me on this it isn't unless the site has aged links which you know exists because the domain has real PR. I've got domains that were registered over 10 years ago that I don't use for anything important, because they lack enough aged backlinks and so are sandboxed. An easy test to know if your site might have enough links to be past the sandbox is to check how long it's home page has had it's current PR. I've found you need a minimum PR4 home page to compete for anything even remotely competitive, if you have a PR4 home page that's been PR4 for a year your probably out the sandbox or close to it. If you recently got to PR4 or more your probably still sandboxed (I don't see many sites with a PR3 home page doing really well in hard SERPs, so PR4 minimum is what you need to rank well in most sectors). When the sandbox first appeared I got into buying expired domains at auction. Would buy domains with real PR for cheap, add content and hope they'd skip the sandbox. I also bought some domains directly from their owners (so they never expired) and what I found was this: In the short term if a domain had aged PR it ranked better than a newly registered domain with new backlinks (I was testing with up to PR7 backlinks added to newly registered domains). Medium term the expired domains lost their original backlinks PR (links was still there, but the PR dropped) and the sites started acting the same as equivalent domains registered at the same time I bought the expired domains at auction. The PR/link benefit was reset because the domain had expired (this was a new thing Google was doing just as I got into this, typical!!!!). The domains I bought directly from their owners (didn't expire) kept their PR/link benefit and so skipped the sandbox. How much they skipped basically depended on the quality of the backlinks (the PR) and how old the links where (PR5 that's over a year old was best**). Generally higher the aged PR faster they got through (or completely skipped) the sandbox. ** From the domains bought this way the highest PRs were PR5 home page (so no data for PR6+), also had PR4s, PR3s and PR2s and a few PR0s I liked the names of. When you think about it, what I experienced with the non expired domains was common sense. A site with more links ranks better than a site with less links, since selling/buying a domain isn't a negative ranking factor in Google's eyes the new owner will benefit from the current backlinks as long as the domain doesn't expire and have it's PR reset. Not tried it myself, but understand Google won't reset PR if you accidentally let your site expire then pay the registration fees. Suggests Google checks ownership of expired domains that are registered and if it's changed they reset PR. If Google does check expired domains might explain why at first they can do well, because it takes time for Google to check an expired domain out, but long term they are reset. Hmm, someone should try keeping the original owners whois data for a year, see if it helps ) Anyway, you should continue to work on new backlinks because otherwise when your current ones finally pass full benefit that's all your going to get: what if it's not enough, if you then add new links you'll have to wait another 9+ months for the new links to pass full benefit! Better to keep a steady stream of new backlinks, as time passes more and more mature giving your site a boost in rankings long term. David Law
David, I fully agree with your observations as it happened to one of the domains I had purchased which was a year old. However, your mistook my thoughts above. I did not mean that I will completely stop promotion, but I had planned to fill content in the 3 aged domains I picked up, build backlinks and leave them as they are for sometime, say 2-3 months. For the fourth aged domain, I will continue to work non-stop. No, I do not blindly think that an aged domain means no sandbox. I am not going to blindly agree with anyone that says that or contrary. I am going to observe and learn. If you read my prior posts, you will notice how I spoke about the articles that got indexed minutes after I published them. That was unusual since all new domains I purchased were indexed within a minimum of 12 hours and maximum of 72 hours. I didn't mean to say that I wouldn't be sandboxed, even though I admit that is what I believed couple months back. I don't anymore. However, I agree with your observations as these are from practical experiments, plus I really think what you have written is close to reality, if not reality itself. I will follow your suggestion on building backlinks for all the blogs simultaneously. I can see the benefit down the line.