I've been asked to do a bit of onpage SEO for a small site (no long-term SEO campaign planned), and its already out of the sandbox. The thing is is that the keywords originally chosen are pathetic and some of the generic ones target massive industries where the site has no hope in hell of getting anywhere. If I were to suddenly change the keywords in the meta data, would this throw the site back into the sandbox (even if the keywords were still related to the original industry)?
A site is never sandboxed for non-competitive terms. If you target more competitive terms then the site may be subjected to some sandboxing.
On one site i have that was stuck out on page 15ish it came out and went to page 6 for 2 of its targeted keywords. (competitive) However no matter what i did it wouldn't go any higher through links etc. Out of frustration and more stupidity i messed with the <title> tag so see if that would help, it sure did help, it helped it go back to page 15
i think changing the keywords in the meta data would have very little effect. but if you were to optimise whole the page and in bound links towards more competative keywords then in my experience unless the site has a decent amount of age then the page will get thrown into the sandbox again.
It isn't a switch that is turned on or off; it depends on the phrase. You can be released from the box for 2 word phrases but still be filtered for one word terms. So depending on how old this site is, if you aim for commercial, more competitve terms, you may well experience more new site penalizations. If the site is over 2 years old, you shouldn't have any new site issues with any terms.
Sites don't sandboxed. This I am sure. It is keywords for which there is a competitive PPC. The age of the domain has nothing to do with it. The filter affects keywords and phrases not the sites. You simply picked phrases which no one else wanted. How do I know? All the new sites I build I use old domains. All the new domains I register I age with a dummy site. It doesn't make the slightest bit of difference. It all starts the moment you start to put some serious PR backed by serious competitive anchor on a phrase that has a lot of PPC ad stuff. Now has the connection between PPC and Sandbox clicked?
It could be that your title tag was more optimized before you messed with it. By repeating the same word too many times or by having too many keywords.... etc. it may have taken you back to page 15!