I just wanted to write something up to give some people some guidance. I get a lot of questions daily on the Sandbox and the Overoptimization filter on Google posed by my clients. I really wanted to address if they exist and how to fix any problems you may have. I have done some tests and finally have results that clear some things up for me.
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 am not sure I dont believe the Sandbox exists, however I know for a fact that there are methods to getting around it, even though I cant say definitively what they are. I mean how could 3 of my sites jump to page one if there was a sandbox within a month or two? If there is truly a sandbox filter, or a method that gets you put in it, I missed out on it with three sites, so maybe my methods are just superior to everyone out there who says there is a 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.
Right away I screamed Sandbox, read everything I could on it, and accepted that I would not be ranked for six months. I then pulled half of my hair out wondering if my other sites would drop like that too. As a matter of fact I obsessed over my rankings sometimes checking them hourly just to make sure they were still somewhere close to page one. You know Google rankings change a lot, I learned this during my little breakdown. After about a month of inaction because I assumed Sandbox I boldly made a move. At the top of my site in my H1 tags I had my keywords, I changed that tag, took the keywords out of it. A few days later, though not number one because I still am overoptimized, I was in position 100. Guess what? I wasn't sandboxed, I overoptimized.
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 everyone out there worried or talking about this Sandbox, if you think you are in it, you better try on page optimization because I am almost willing to bet you are over optimized, not in the sandbox. Especially if you havent been indexed in 6 months. I would be checking my strategies if what I was doing was not helping me get up there in 6 months. Every site I have had has made at least page 2 for competitive keywords in about 2 months.
Here is a tip from me. Don't link to anybody. What? That's right. I have several websites, they don't link to eachother and they don't link to anybody else. The reason? I know I can be punished if I link to someone that links to someone that sucks. Therefore instead of leaving my destiny in there hands, I just don't link to anybody including myself. - 15615
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 am not sure I dont believe the Sandbox exists, however I know for a fact that there are methods to getting around it, even though I cant say definitively what they are. I mean how could 3 of my sites jump to page one if there was a sandbox within a month or two? If there is truly a sandbox filter, or a method that gets you put in it, I missed out on it with three sites, so maybe my methods are just superior to everyone out there who says there is a 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.
Right away I screamed Sandbox, read everything I could on it, and accepted that I would not be ranked for six months. I then pulled half of my hair out wondering if my other sites would drop like that too. As a matter of fact I obsessed over my rankings sometimes checking them hourly just to make sure they were still somewhere close to page one. You know Google rankings change a lot, I learned this during my little breakdown. After about a month of inaction because I assumed Sandbox I boldly made a move. At the top of my site in my H1 tags I had my keywords, I changed that tag, took the keywords out of it. A few days later, though not number one because I still am overoptimized, I was in position 100. Guess what? I wasn't sandboxed, I overoptimized.
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 everyone out there worried or talking about this Sandbox, if you think you are in it, you better try on page optimization because I am almost willing to bet you are over optimized, not in the sandbox. Especially if you havent been indexed in 6 months. I would be checking my strategies if what I was doing was not helping me get up there in 6 months. Every site I have had has made at least page 2 for competitive keywords in about 2 months.
Here is a tip from me. Don't link to anybody. What? That's right. I have several websites, they don't link to eachother and they don't link to anybody else. The reason? I know I can be punished if I link to someone that links to someone that sucks. Therefore instead of leaving my destiny in there hands, I just don't link to anybody including myself. - 15615
About the Author:
Brent Sweet has several internet websites and google listings. His theory is number one on Google or no business success. So everyday his focus is optimization. Some of his businesses are Cheap Hotel Reservations, Legit Online Jobs, Bird house, and he offers Article Submissions.
