I have an old domain name that I haven't used for years. It used to be a functioning site, but now it's nothing. What is the potential of the site regards to SEO and ranking? Will it go back into the sandbox?
Old domains are good as age is a factor that Google uses. If you know the history of the domain (nothing fishy has been done with it) & the new keyphrases are similar to the old ones you should bounce back pretty quickly
We can't analyze the potential of the domain with such little information be given. The fact that it's an old domain means it has been well acquainted with Google and you shouldn't have a hard time getting indexed and staying out of the sandbox. If the site has PR, then that sets you above and beyond as well. However, the domain would have to optimized for the right keywords in order to have true potential. The fact that it's unused means that you probably don't have any backlinks. Every site needs backlinks, so it will stay take a lot of work.