Stuck In the Google Sandbox?

Heres a rough set of criteria for you.

• Your site is indexed and appears with the proper title, snippet, and url (www, or no www whichever you picked) type site:www.yoursite.com into Google to check this.
• Your site has PageRank (use the google toolbar, or nichebot.com to find this)
• It is regularly crawled, and the cache dates are newer than 10 days
• On your keyword, you rank in the top 20 for allinanchor, allintext, and allintitle. To check this, type, e.g. allinanchor: and see if you’re in the top 20.
• You do not rank within the first 1000 places for the keyword the site was designed for

Does the Sandbox Really Exist, or is it Just the Google Algorithm?

This is a big controversy. Everyone has a different opinions.

Don’t listen to guys who handle bluechip companies – they optimize older, high PR sites. It’s your everyday mainly-new-sites webmaster who knows this problem intimately. In fact, all the big sites need to do is place the keyword in the title and they’re on the first page. This gives them an unfair advantage not unlike what the media elite has enjoyed for decades.

Regardless of whether the sandbox is a separate phenomenon from the algorithm, the degree of prejudice against new sites has hurt quality of Google’s search results. This is especially true with products and topics both new and urgent. The bigger sites may not be covering it, but searchers end up there without high quality answers.

The common wisdom now is that if you’re looking for new websites, go to MSN or Yahoo instead. Neither of these sites is using this kind of filter. Many websites rank in the top 10 (for their targeted keywords) on these two search engines, yet are nowhere to be found in Google.

Why Would Google Do This?

Google frowns upon SEOs who try to overly influence ranking, so they needed to find a way around SEO factors to deliver quality results. So they’d look for signs of SEO in websites, e.g. how consistent the addition of backlinks is, and how repetitive (vs. natural) the anchor text of backlinks is, and they consider the age of the site and its backlinks.

Redesign Penalties

Similarly, websites that have made the mistake of too comprehensively redesigning their look, content, or navigation have been shocked to find that they get penalized for this updating. Google seems to prefer a frozen in time or moving like molasses kind of internet. But to be fair, this is something that had to be included to beat spammers who were buying old websites and refueling them with keyword spam.

Why Do You Get Sandboxed?

Some sites have gotten out of the sandbox in a week, while others can take up to a year or more. No one knows if any one contributing factor gets you out sooner rather than later. Some point to the age of inbound links, or the frequency with which your site acquires them. Some say that getting too many inbound links too quickly appears artificial, and is flagged as spam. But others argue that Google can’t know how fast a site should acquire links. A website that received national news coverage, for example, could acquire hundreds or thousands of links in a day.

It’s likely that no one outside of Google fully understands how the sandbox works. The problem has been noticed and discussed for nearly 2 years, and no one has given a satisfactory answer. What’s crystal clear is that Google has made it so complex that it cannot be reverse engineered.

How Long Will You Be Making Sand Castles?

The delay seems to vary anywhere from four to 11 months. Since we don’t know exactly upon what and to what degree the filter depends, it’s likely a different magic combination for every site- and this fits with webmasters experience. So keep your head down, develop content, get inbound links, and eventually you’ll get out.

Some suggest that when you come out of the sandbox, you are not fully free. They notice a rationing or gradual increase in traffic from Google. In the meantime, older sites may rank better than you, regardless of the quality of their look, feel, and content. Deal with it. Keep your head down and keep working.

Another wrinkle: some webmasters suggest that sandboxing can occur at the page level, not simply at the site level, and that it is the bigger money/traffic keywords that get sandboxed. Again, this could simply be due to the level of competition on that keyword, as the entire site is not sandboxed if you’re getting rankings and traffic from other keywords.

Is There a Way to Trick the Sandbox Filter?

Some webmasters have talked about finding cracks in the algorithm¦ and they mainly involve backlinks. For a while, there was a lot of linkspam on blogs, but everyone Google, bloggers, and blog providers have cracked down on that exploit.

The real sandbox solution is not a trick – unless you define everything done by the SEO-aware as tricky. The answer is to grow your content and backlinks naturally over time. Don’t look for the quick buck, the quick ranking, or the easy way out. Go back to basics and build websites that people can use and enjoy. Exchange links with quality websites.

To avoid frustration, I’d suggest, if web building is what you do full time, that you begin a new site every month or two eventually, if you’ve worked consistently on all of them, you’ll have one after another emerging from purgatory and flourishing in the rankings.

5 Simple Steps to Great Search Engine Rankings

Having your website rank well in the major search engines is crucial to a successful Internet business. However, the information on doing so, which abounds on the Internet, can be perceived as complex and contradictive. Many website owners end up overwhelmed by all the data and simply quit and move on to other areas of promotion. By following the handful of steps presented in this article you will be well on your way to solid rankings.

Primer

Each webpage is its own unit, which has its own title and theme. A theme is most commonly referred to as keywords or a keyword phrase. The theme should be based on the most dominant data for that webpage. Therefore, if you have a webpage that lists ten types of coffee cups, “coffee cups would be the likely choice for the theme. However, if the theme is too general then you should work to compact it as there will be far too many results in the search engine to contend with. Perhaps your webpage lists ten types of coffee cups which all have American symbols on them. Two of the various possible themes would then be American coffee cups and patriotic coffee cups.

To determine if a theme might be too broad, search for the theme at a popular search engine and see how many results come up. It is typical to see up to a few million results for any theme. However, one hundred million results would be extremely high and a different theme should be chosen.

Step One:

The title of your webpage means a lot. A website should never have a loose and thoughtless title. The title should be clear, compact, and related directly to the main theme of the webpage. Let us look at three title examples for a webpage that sells different types of red coffee cups.

• Bad Title: Welcome to Joes!
• Better Title: Joes red coffee cups.
• Best Title: Red coffee cups.

Notice how we trimmed the title down to simply the main theme. In the bad example, the title does nothing to describe the products offered on the webpage and therefore will end up hurting the search engine rankings for this webpage.

Step Two: Use the H1 tag.

On the top of your webpage put the main theme in a H1 tag. This will help establish what the webpage is about and Google will take the data enclosed in the H1 tag more seriously which helps boost the overall theme in its ranking algorithm. This should be at the very top of the webpage if possible and include only the main theme. Using our title example above, you would insert the following on top of the webpage:

Red coffee cups

Step Three: Utilize the written word properly.

The main keyword phrase (theme) must be printed on your webpage multiple times. It must appear natural in the flow of writing and not just thrown on the webpage somewhere a few times. After massaging your keyword phrase into the copy, bold one instance, underline one instance, and italicize one instance.

Again, basing this example from the one above:

• Bold One Instance: My name is Joe and I sell red coffee cups.
• Italicize One Instance: Our red coffee cups ship directly to your front door.
• Underline One Instance: Order today and receive free shipping on all red coffee cups!

By doing this you will help enforce the theme of the webpage and achieve better search rankings.

Step Four: Establish incoming links.

Before going any further, I recommend you visit google.com and install the Google toolbar. This will allow you to see what is called PR (page rank). Knowing a websites PR is extremely helpful, and basically mandatory, for this step. It is more important to have links today than ever. To rank high in the search engines, you must have people linking to you. Failure to acquire incoming links results in low or non-existing rankings. Here are some techniques to build up incoming links:

• Submit your website to directories. Once listed, directories, such as the ODP (dmoz.org) and business.com, will increase your incoming links. When viewing a directory, check to see if they have PR. The higher the number the better.
• Purchase text links. Many websites today sell text links at varied rates. Purchasing a text link can help you gain traffic and will increase your incoming links. Text links must be purchased or placed only on websites that have either the same or related theme as yours. If your website is all about coffee a link from a website about oil changes is not going to help you much and could actually harm your website rankings in the future.
• Link Research. Find out who is linking to top ranked websites under your keyword phrase (theme) and try to get listed on them. The idea here is to not reinvent the wheel, rather do what already works. To find out who is linking to top websites, visit Google and type the following text in the search box: link:site.com where site.com is the website URL.

Step Five: Work to ensure anchor text from incoming links contains your main theme.

When other websites link to you, try to get them to use the keyword phrase for the webpage they are linking to as the anchor text. This is not always possible and that is ok. You simply want to try and get as many links on target as possible. Not all links need to go to your homepage because having incoming links to a webpage within the website is beneficial also.

Search Engine Optimization – Free Tips and Help – Part One – The Title Tag

search engine optimization is a widely misunderstood industry. Many webmasters, including myself, have been mislead by industry forums, and Internet “chatter”. Having tried many different approaches, starting in 1996: It is ironic that the methods I used back then, still hold true today, to a great extent.

Today’s article is on the infamous Title tag. Often overlooked, occasionally abused, but still effective.

What belongs in this Title? Quite simply: Your strongest Keyword, or Keyword Phrase – usually followed by your business name or personal name, seperated by a comma or dash.

You will notice that when you search for pages at Yahoo^(TM) or Google^(TM), you will often see the very words you used to search with, at the beginning of the result. These words are bolded, signifying relevance.

The truth is, the day and age of Meta Tags is nearly dead. What is not dead, however are the Title and Meta Description tags.

What is the best way to use the Title Tag?

Arguments will vary, but my approach follows this example: * the symbols <> have been replaced with [ and ].

[title]Widgets, John Smith[/title]

Perhaps, ultimately, only your main KeyWord, or Keyword Phrase should be present in this tag; however, it is customary to include your name, or business name. When deciding which link to follow, the end user is given more information when you include a business name.

Mathematically, the KeyWord weight of your Title tag is calculated as follows:

KeyWord Characters = K

Total Characters in Title Tag = T

Keyword Weight = K/T

In our example above, “Widgets” is the Keyword Phrase, and is a total of 7 characters(K). The total number of characters in the tag is 19(T).

K/T = 7/19 = .368 or 37%

35-50% Keyword Weight is about ideal. Repetition of Keywords in the Title used to a good technique, but I highly discourage it now. Make sure you research your Keywords well! Having problems with your dynamic (.asp .php) documents not being indexed. Make sure your code includes the ability to produce unique Title and Meta Description tags for each page. Meta Keyword tags, are, for most part useless and necessary. Title and Meta Description however are still crucial!

Keywords effect your conversion rate

Keywords are important for two reasons.

Firstly by using the keywords which relate to your reader you get listed by search engines accordingly meaning that people can find you. Notice that I phrased the last sentence carefully. I said keywords which relate to your reader. It’s important to understand that what you consider key words might not be the keywords your visitors are using to reach you.

Secondly and from my point of view more importantly keywords help to qualify your audience after they have arrived at your web site. If you click through from a search engine to a web site and the headline or first paragraph don’t strike you as relevant to what you’re looking for you’re likely to bounce. The key words you use help to assure your visitor they are in the right place.

Good use of keywords embedded in your copy and content will firstly help you to attract the right kind of people and secondly help to effectively qualify them as being in the right place. If you manage to attract and qualify them, the reader is then more likely to click through to find out more about what your website is about. If they do that, there is a much higher chance that they will convert to your desired goal.

A good SEO or SEM company in my opinion is one that understands that its about answering the visitors needs, not simply packing the website with related key words and phrases.

.com Not Listed in Regional Yahoo? Dont Despair!

If you’re a non-American business with a .com web address, and your regional Yahoo ranking is important to you, then my story might interest you.

Recently my copywriting website dropped out of Yahoos Australian rankings. For quite a while, it had been at number 1 for my primary keywords advertising copywriter, copywriter, and website copywriter. But then it suddenly disappeared. I clicked through about 10 pages of results, and it was nowhere to be seen. I then searched for my domain, and Yahoo couldn’t find it.

Something smelt fishy.

I’d done nothing to my site to warrant a ban, and I still had heaps of links to my site (actually, I had more than ever before).

I’m an Australian advertising copywriter. I’m based just north of Sydney and I host my website with a major Australian host. But my web address is a .com, not a .au. I started thinking this might be the problem.

So I emailed Yahoo support, explaining the problem, and sharing my thoughts on the cause.

And all of a sudden, nothing happened.

So I waited. And I waited. And I waited. And finally, after about a couple of weeks, I received an email from a Yahoo support representative informing me incorrectly that my keyword wasn’t featured in my page title or description. I should remedy this shortcoming and re-submit my site to Yahoo.

Frustrated, I replied. I repeated the important facts from the first email just to ensure they listened. They hadn’t even searched for my domain to confirm that Yahoo no longer recognised it.

When they got back to me this time, they had started paying a bit more attention. The support rep confirmed my suspicion that Yahoo had excluded my site because of its .com URL. Her very helpful solution was that I should change my domain to .au! She included some ridiculously complex instructions for how to do so, and sent me on my merry way.

As you might expect, I wasn’t satisfied. Nor was I merry. I explained to her that this was not an acceptable solution because all the links to my site on the internet are pointing to the .com and my email address uses the .com.

She was unmoved. She asserted that this was the best and only way to solve the problem. It might help if I added my primary keyword to my title and description.

My laughter was not good humoured! I wrote back expressing my displeasure at this solution. I painstakingly explained how Yahoo had made a mistake, and that if Google was capable of recognising my Australian business despite its .com addresses, I would think it’s technically possible. I also cited several other .coms in the first couple of pages of Australian results.

No response.

The situation didn’t look promising

If this sounds like a familiar story to you, don’t despair. A week or two later, I searched Yahoo Australia for my primary keyword, and surprise, surprise. My site was ranked number 1 again!

The moral to the story? Don’t be intimidated by Yahoo. Trust your instincts and don’t give up. If you’re an Australian business with a .com, and you’re not listed in Australian searches, this might be why. In fact, I would think this story is relevant to all regional Yahoos. (Of course, before making any accusations, it’s a good idea to make sure your site is properly optimised and that you have plenty of inbound links.)

Anyway, thats my story. I hope it helps someone.

And they all lived happily ever after. So far at least

Link Building that make logic: Who to Link To

When you are engage in building links to enhance your link popularity, who to link to? The query of where to link to enhance ranking can be puzzling. Logical thoughts is needed to attain link popularity in a natural means.

Google Page Rank

First and Primary, Page Rank is part of the algorithm of Google’s positioning in the search engine results. New search engines utilize link popularity in their algorithm to assess your website as well. But Page Rank is only one of the 100 plus criterion Google uses to assess your web pages. Use the thought of Page Rank as a “tool” to assist make decisions, there is no need to exist and die by the results. Link popularity itself is simply one way to progress your ranking.

Should You Link To Them?

Think about it. You see an excellence website; you see high-quality content. The website is a “Mom and Pop” site with little ranking. Thus what if the Google Toolbar says Page Rank 2/10? That 2/10 might one day be 8/10. More prominently, you are linking to it since it is good to link to for your guests.

What is The Google Sandbox Effect?

However the website is not hindered as much as the links that are reciprocated from other users. Newer links that are created are put on a probationary status until again they pickup in rank from other matured sites or placed directly by an ad campaign. The idea behind the hindrance is to prevent a fast ranking to occur on a new website. The usual holding period seems to be between 90 and 120 days before a site would start obtaining rank from reciprocal or back linking.

Some advice has been given to have companies you are going to reciprocate back add your link first to the website. This may help grandfather your site in, thus reducing the waiting time associated with new websites. People have noticed a 0 page rank when first signing up and receiving a bolstering 7 page ranking after 4 months. Why the delay? The fact is, that if people realized how easy it would be to get a high ranking, would that take away the credibility of the engine. It depends on whom you ask, but it does seem to be happening frequently to newer subscribers. Do not discontinue back linking, your rank will eventually appear.

Link Popularity – The Ugly, The Bad and The Good

Spamming

Link Manipulation