I had to put something down to give people some information. Daily I get questions on the Google Sandbox and the filters like the overoptimization filter that Google is rumored to have. I just had to come out with something that showed the results of my tests. I think that this could help some people, especially new SEOs identify if their site has some problems.
I will start with the Sandbox, because from my prospective it is easy. I read all the time about the 3-6 month sandbox and that if you have a new site that it is impossible to rank high in the search engines regardless of your keywords popularity. I say this is crap. I just started promoting about 3 sites in November, they were all brand new and within a few weeks they were all on page one.
I can't say for sure that there is no Sandbox, even though I like to, because it is different from most of what you read, and I love to be different and cause a fuss. I will say however, that my three sites all got to the top with no problem so I either have really good luck, or I just can get around it. If there is a sandbox I missed it with three sites, so maybe it is just that my methods are better than everyone on the forums that talk about this horrible sandbox.
Now we go to overoptimization, I am sure this exisits, and this won't just hurt your rankings it will bomb your rankings. The overoptimization filter is like an atom bomb to a website. The good news, it is easily fixable and you will see rankings improvement in a few days. Here was my test for that. I had a very competitive keyword, two weeks after launching my site I was number five on Google, great promotion, everything going good, then one day I searched just because I do that every day because I am so proud of myself, and the site was gone. I don't mean it had dropped from page one, I mean it was gone from the index. I went through every page of Google for that keyword and it was gone. When I searched for my domain name including the dot com I didn't even rank on the first page for that.
I thought maybe they were proving to me there was a sandbox. Then I was in a state of panic for months. What about these other sites that ranked so good, would they drop too? I let the site sit for about a month and a half without changing anything, continued promoting it, but did no other optimization just to see if I popped out of the sandbox. No results. So about a week ago, I changed one thing. The first thing Googlebot would see is my H1 tag that was my main keywords, I changed that H1 tag to something completely different that does not contain the keywords.
Now I am not watching my rankings so close. I know that the problem with this particular site was that it was overoptimized not sandboxed as I had assumed. I moved this site back into the index by changing 4 words. I jumped over 16 million positions changing four words. I had to make another change though, because 100 position sucks, and I am still overoptimized. See in my forum reading I started beliving these yahoo's (people not search engine) that said my key word density should be between 3 and 7 percent. When I looked at my competition they are between 0 and 1%. I was over 4%. Now I have to work to keep reducing my density and as I do that I expect my rankings will continue to improve.
Before today if someone asked me I would have said on page optimization is crap, and nobody needs to do it. I change this statement now and say onpage optimization will not get you good rankings, but it will absolutley blast your site if you do too much of it. See I didn't think that Google would weight the factors within my control so much, when it comes to improving rankings, they may not, but boy they will just delete you right out if you are over optimized. The only problem I have is I have now dropped in my rankings on MSN because they like high densitys. Thats ok though, I want a good position on Google, I will get MSN later.
So to those people in the forums stating that they have been sandboxed for 6 months, change your strategy. There is no way that Google is holding you back for 6 months but putting my sites on in 2 weeks. I am no different than you. I don't know Matt Cutts and I don't have ANY clue what the algorithim is. But I do get to page 2 sometimes within weeks of launching new sites. So if someone told me this, I would be going back to my site saying ok what am I doing wrong here.
Oh yeah also, don't contact me to link to your site. One of my major linking strategies is I do not exchange links, nor do I put a single outbound link on my site even to one of my own sites. Why? As far as I have seen anybody in the universe can link to my site and it doesn't hurt me, but I can get a penalty for linking to someones site. Therefore I don't link out to anybody. - 15634
I will start with the Sandbox, because from my prospective it is easy. I read all the time about the 3-6 month sandbox and that if you have a new site that it is impossible to rank high in the search engines regardless of your keywords popularity. I say this is crap. I just started promoting about 3 sites in November, they were all brand new and within a few weeks they were all on page one.
I can't say for sure that there is no Sandbox, even though I like to, because it is different from most of what you read, and I love to be different and cause a fuss. I will say however, that my three sites all got to the top with no problem so I either have really good luck, or I just can get around it. If there is a sandbox I missed it with three sites, so maybe it is just that my methods are better than everyone on the forums that talk about this horrible sandbox.
Now we go to overoptimization, I am sure this exisits, and this won't just hurt your rankings it will bomb your rankings. The overoptimization filter is like an atom bomb to a website. The good news, it is easily fixable and you will see rankings improvement in a few days. Here was my test for that. I had a very competitive keyword, two weeks after launching my site I was number five on Google, great promotion, everything going good, then one day I searched just because I do that every day because I am so proud of myself, and the site was gone. I don't mean it had dropped from page one, I mean it was gone from the index. I went through every page of Google for that keyword and it was gone. When I searched for my domain name including the dot com I didn't even rank on the first page for that.
I thought maybe they were proving to me there was a sandbox. Then I was in a state of panic for months. What about these other sites that ranked so good, would they drop too? I let the site sit for about a month and a half without changing anything, continued promoting it, but did no other optimization just to see if I popped out of the sandbox. No results. So about a week ago, I changed one thing. The first thing Googlebot would see is my H1 tag that was my main keywords, I changed that H1 tag to something completely different that does not contain the keywords.
Now I am not watching my rankings so close. I know that the problem with this particular site was that it was overoptimized not sandboxed as I had assumed. I moved this site back into the index by changing 4 words. I jumped over 16 million positions changing four words. I had to make another change though, because 100 position sucks, and I am still overoptimized. See in my forum reading I started beliving these yahoo's (people not search engine) that said my key word density should be between 3 and 7 percent. When I looked at my competition they are between 0 and 1%. I was over 4%. Now I have to work to keep reducing my density and as I do that I expect my rankings will continue to improve.
Before today if someone asked me I would have said on page optimization is crap, and nobody needs to do it. I change this statement now and say onpage optimization will not get you good rankings, but it will absolutley blast your site if you do too much of it. See I didn't think that Google would weight the factors within my control so much, when it comes to improving rankings, they may not, but boy they will just delete you right out if you are over optimized. The only problem I have is I have now dropped in my rankings on MSN because they like high densitys. Thats ok though, I want a good position on Google, I will get MSN later.
So to those people in the forums stating that they have been sandboxed for 6 months, change your strategy. There is no way that Google is holding you back for 6 months but putting my sites on in 2 weeks. I am no different than you. I don't know Matt Cutts and I don't have ANY clue what the algorithim is. But I do get to page 2 sometimes within weeks of launching new sites. So if someone told me this, I would be going back to my site saying ok what am I doing wrong here.
Oh yeah also, don't contact me to link to your site. One of my major linking strategies is I do not exchange links, nor do I put a single outbound link on my site even to one of my own sites. Why? As far as I have seen anybody in the universe can link to my site and it doesn't hurt me, but I can get a penalty for linking to someones site. Therefore I don't link out to anybody. - 15634
About the Author:
Brent Sweet is a busienss owner. He considers the core competency of his business to be Search Engine Optimization. That means each day for each unit he has to focus on that. His businesses offer things like Cheap Hotel Rates, Legit Online Jobs, Decorative Bird House, and he runs an SEO Blog.
