Hi there, I've already found great insights in this forum (thx to all of you), but I'd still be grateful for a little more advice: I have a new site with 50 pages of unique, well written content. It pulls quite a bit of longtail traffic, but is in the sandbox for the competitive terms. It has what I consider enough quality backlinks to rank well once it gets out. My question: Can I leave it for a while to work on other projects without updating it, or will the lack of updates hinder its way out of the sandbox?
You don't need to update it every day, but it wouldn't hurt to update something minor once a month or so, especially something on the main page as that is likely the first URL the crawlers will check.
Interesting... so, let's say that you regularly updated content on your main (index) page. Do you believe that this would help you get out of the sandbox sooner... For instance, say that you added a regular news feature that would update daily... What do you think...
I wont think it will help. Google first ranked my site in first page and second page for most of the terms three months back. And after two days all disappered. Again, in sep 1st week, for most of the terms it is showing in first page and ranking far better than three months. These three months, my keyword ranking improved in MSN and Yahoo. But now, google is sending far more than Yahoo and MSN. My best suggestion is to keep add the the content that improves ranking in MSN and Yahoo. And in coming months google will catchup and exceed your expectations.
Hmmm, avakai, I see what you are saying... and in a way, there is another funny thing that runs in the back of my mind (and probably just in mine, because many other posts would refute this)... Google is very keen on links, links as an actual vote. And Sandboxed sites alter competativeness, basically by removing a spamed up site from placing highly on competative keywords. At the same time, because of the 'sandbox' effect, it doesn't pay for the owner of a spam site to try and create natural linking. Not to mention, most of the hand edited directories out there would not accept a robot generated site as a source for their site... it's pretty clear which are which... I'm going to begin my linking campaign coming up, but I wonder if there are other factors than time that google uses to determine time in sandbox. EG... links, or since most of us have a google toolbar on our browsers... maybe a ratio of how many pages/visitors a site generates... Thank you for your story of how your rankings have gone. It's very encouraging. (Hope I didn't bore you with my conjecture and ramblings too ) Starke
Thanks for the answers. So to sum it up: - Regular updating will probably not get the site out of the sandbox sooner, but it obviously doens't hurt either. Regular updates do help to build up traffic from MSN and Yahoo and will later help with Google after the site is out of sandbox. In conclusion I'll just throw in an update like Scotia King suggested and will concentrate on the other project until I see results from the first site. Should those results be encouraging I will return to work on the first site. Thanks for your help.
The regular updating won't get you out of Google's sandbox sooner, but Google isn't the only crawler that will visit your site.. Note that you may not even experience a sandbox for non-competitive keywords. The purpose of the sandbox is to prevent new sites from appearing for very competitive keyword phrases because they don't have the authority/credibility to rank for them yet.
buys a few text links on high PR pages or start a few link exchange campaigns. This will get you out of the sandbox faster Updating has (as far as i know) nothing to do with getting out of the sandbox Didier
I have around 50 domains linking to me. I hope this'll be enough for a start and don't plan on buying any links. The site is not yet two months old. I am getting around 50 unique visitors a day from long tail queries. From what I've seen doing a little PPC there are enough searches a day for the keywords I'm targeting, so I guess they are considered competitive. For those keywords I am not listed anywhere although a site: query returns the pages. I have therefore concluded that I am in the sandbox for these search terms. Before I invest more time I want to be sure the site has a somewaht decent conversion. To get reliable data I need more traffic. Hence I'll just wait until the site comes out of sandbox and work on something else in the meantime. I have had a look at RSS and think I will implement some feed from somewhere to keep the pages from going stale. Unfortunately I'll have to upgrade my hosting package for PHP support first. Anyway, thanks for dropping the hints everybody.
My own experience is that Google does reward regularly updated sites with more SE traffic - partly because the content is growing, offering more opportunities to be found, but there seems to be an additional traffic boost also.