SEO Weirdness

[Aminka Ozmun]

When I had a site with just a coming-soon placeholder page, I ranked very well for my top three keywords, which, for the niche, are fairly competitive.

Now that I've actually added content, I've lost a lot of ground on those keywords!

All this happened within a little more than two months. Is that enough time to form an opinion of things, SEO-wise?

Assuming that the content is relevant, etc., any idea what else could possibly be happening? Could someone actually be sabotaging my efforts, even?? (There are three people in my personal life who know about my site, and all three are "pranksters," shall we say, especially online.)

Just curious. TIA!!

[splok]

New sites get a bit of a SEO bonus, but it goes away after a while. Your new content could have triggered an update, but it would have happened sooner or later anyway. In theory, it's possible that someone could try and sabotage your site, but it sounds highly unlikely.

[Aminka Ozmun]

Originally Posted by splok

New sites get a bit of a SEO bonus, but it goes away after a while. Your new content could have triggered an update, but it would have happened sooner or later anyway. In theory, it's possible that someone could try and sabotage your site, but it sounds highly unlikely.

Interesting...I've read that new sites are "sandboxed" (or whatever the term is) until they gain "trust"....

As for my pranksters, yes, I don't think it too likely, even for them, but I thought to ask since it just doesn't make sense that a one-page site should have ranked so highly for three top keywords while now that I'm over twenty pages of content I should have dropped precipitously!

[mainstreetcm]

The sandbox doesn't exist. When your a new site the algo sends your site dancing. To stablize it you need to tell the algo (Google) exactly what your site is about through a variety of methods.

The most popular are on-page SEO and backlinking. Social media is starting to play a bigger roll. For example a site could explode over night on Facebook and Twitter, and once Google see's the algo will better understand what your content is all about.

I've seen sites start to rank for competitive keywords solely because their content was spot on (original, fresh, informative) and thousands or millions of people picked it up on a social network and ran with it.

That said, your site is new. You'll dance around the SERP's until you do something to stabilize it like ensuring your using a healthy keyword density on-page and getting a variety of links from related sources naturally.

As for why you ranked well when you first put the site up? Google loves fresh content and thrusts it to the front pages for many keywords and then the algo digs deeper. It see's that you haven't fleshed out your link profile, you have little social media presence, and your on-page content cannot yet be trusted.

SEO is quite the beast and many 500+ page books could be written about it... and then re-written a week later because something changed.

[Aminka Ozmun]

Thanks, mainstreetcm!

Yes, "freshness" is probably the explanation here. I'm aware of the principle but had discounted it because my single coming-soon placeholder page was barely 150 words. Yet now that you've brought it up again, I just realized that even one very short and very simple page must count for a lot in the niche that my site deals with!

Also, this site has now got a lot of pages without any content whatsoever, now that I've opened it up publicly (due to technical issues). I suppose that's really bad to Google's spiders, following links to empty pages.

Another thing I've noticed: millions more results have been indexed by Google for my keywords, surely influencing the results....

Anyway, thanks for setting me on this train of thought here. I think I'm finally divining more and more of this mystery!

[chadcharlie]

Originally Posted by mainstreetcm

The sandbox doesn't exist. When your a new site the algo sends your site dancing.

There is a "sandbox" to the extent that the weight of certain factors in the algorithm could impact your listing and lower you relevance in Google's eyes. That is mathematically certain. ...it is not an offline repository that developers use, and thus you're put in a different category of listing.

Here's my take on rankings. Google's mission is to return the most relevant and accurate search results to its customers. Since it does that well, we come back, more eyeballs hit their site, and they earn buckets in ad dollars.

SINCE Google drives the most traffic, clever developers work hard to figure out the algorithm and use various ways to get listed higher. This eventually starts filling the first page of results with obvious Spam sites. Google eventually catches wind of it and changes the whole thing around, causing bounces in people's ranking ect.

Social Networking becomes relevant and changes the algo, ect.

Anyway, Google made changes lately that many developers are reporting as affecting their rankings. If you're on the side of good content (which would be more than one page), it should catch up with you.

[mainstreetcm]

Originally Posted by chadcharlie

There is a "sandbox" to the extent that the weight of certain factors in the algorithm could impact your listing and lower you relevance in Google's eyes. That is mathematically certain. ...it is not an offline repository that developers use, and thus you're put in a different category of listing.

There is no sandbox. If you get stuck in the "supplemental index" you can easily get out by stabilizing your link profile.

The sandbox, as explained by most is some algo-altering space where your site sits miserably for months on end. It's not 2006 anymore. The sandbox does not and never did exist.

How do I know this? I sent nearly 20 websites packing to the "supplemental index" only to pull it out with a quality press release.

In 2011 and soon 2012 you're either well ranked, dancing, in the supplemental, or completely de-indexed. There is no middle ground and thus no sandbox of peril.

[chadcharlie]

Originally Posted by mainstreetcm

There is no sandbox. If you get stuck in the "supplemental index" you can easily get out by stabilizing your link profile.

The sandbox, as explained by most is some algo-altering space where your site sits miserably for months on end. It's not 2006 anymore. The sandbox does not and never did exist.

How do I know this? I sent nearly 20 websites packing to the "supplemental index" only to pull it out with a quality press release.

In 2011 and soon 2012 you're either well ranked, dancing, in the supplemental, or completely de-indexed. There is no middle ground and thus no sandbox of peril.

That was my point. The algo by nature will have weights in it that might affect your listings, but there is no separate section of the internet, a "sandbox," like a programmer might use to try out new code, or mockup a new site.

[Aminka Ozmun]

Thanks for the clarification, guys!

Now I think my site sank due to me creating a bunch of pages without much content...I know -- doh! But I was thinking I'd set up a skeleton first, then flesh things out, but it looks like Google's really quick and picked up on things before I was able to get back to them and finish properly!