Google Sandbox/Aging Delay

[Redline21]

Has anyone out there had trouble getting a new site ranked well on search terms with Google? I've heard of the "sandbox" theory and I think my site is in it...how long did it take you to get out?

[Jill]

It's about a 9 month deal.

[Dimitry]

Can you guys explain a little bit about this? My website is about 2-3 months old and I'm learning as much as I can about SEO while developing the website, going to school full time and part time work. So lot's of things on the go.

Would be great to get the website up at least within a reasonable range on searches. For now I'm doing it with Google ads.

[trevord92]

Hi

Wikipedia has an article on the Google Sandbox effect at Sandbox Effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Trouble is, everything is down to Google and they aren't telling you their policy. So even if an article or reply is correct today, it may or may not hold true tomorrow. And if your site covers something Google want in their index because there are no results but people are searching for the subject, then they may not follow their own "rules" in that instance.

Bottom line is it takes time. How much time varies and you may fluctuate in and out of Google in the process, depending on the data centre serving you, your country and a few other factors.

General school of thought is build a good web site, get good incoming links, eventually you'll probably get indexed. Personally, I'd also suggest not putting all your eggs in one basket in case something happens that's out of your control that causes your site to be dropped or perform worse in the results.

Oh, and remember, traffic doesn't just come from search engines. Links elsewhere are also good and don't depend as much on the vagaries of a computer algorithm.

Hope this helps,

Trevor

[Dimitry]

Oh yeah, I'm definitely experimenting with other forms of advertising right now. I do get decent google placement through AdWords for my niche (Garage Sales). I'm usually averaging 2-3 place for the key words I want and it's not that expensive. Decent traffic from there for now.

I'm also going to focus on the social networking sites as much as I can too as any free hits are great. Starting with Facebook Groups and will expand to others later.

Just at the moment with my website, I'm in the chicken/egg situation with content. I need hosters to start posting garage sale listings for viewers, but for hosters to come, it once again needs to seem like a worthwhile place to post an ad (at the moment based on listings once again, later on based on other features that will come).

[Redline21]

Originally Posted by Dimitry

Oh yeah, I'm definitely experimenting with other forms of advertising right now. I do get decent google placement through AdWords for my niche (Garage Sales). I'm usually averaging 2-3 place for the key words I want and it's not that expensive. Decent traffic from there for now.

I'm also going to focus on the social networking sites as much as I can too as any free hits are great. Starting with Facebook Groups and will expand to others later.

Just at the moment with my website, I'm in the chicken/egg situation with content. I need hosters to start posting garage sale listings for viewers, but for hosters to come, it once again needs to seem like a worthwhile place to post an ad (at the moment based on listings once again, later on based on other features that will come).

I agree with you, go social networking in the meantime. You should get some backlinks from this strategy too. Have you done any press releases? If you can get some media outlets to pick up on your website it will definitely help!

[Dimitry]

I'm planning on hosting a garage sale for charity and then handing out my cards there. I will also give out a stack of business cards to friends who visit garage sales so they can give them out to people also.

That's the best I can come up with. Only problem is it's local. While that's great for the first few months, I'm trying to think ahead and how I can market this to North America and get people to start posting content themselves.

Any suggestions on how I can approach other social networking sites and put word out there? Are there websites/blogs that run Steve style that review e-businesses and dot.coms? It would be great to find a way for a few blogs/websites to write reviews on me to get traffic/links that way.

[Gene]

Originally Posted by trevord92

Hi

Wikipedia has an article on the Google Sandbox effect at Sandbox Effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Hope this helps,

Trevor

Thanks for the link to the article at Wikipedia which is well worth reading as are some of the links listed at the bottom of the article there.

[CeciL]

It takes a while for good search engine results. The best thing you can do for Google is make it easy for them and conform to their new crawl system... Google SiteMap... I've seen fast results this way.

http://google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/siteoverview

There you can also see when Google spiders your site, your spot on queries, keywords and other interesting data.

For now just keep plugging at social networking. Also if you haven't done it already compile some articles and submit them into free article directories. Just google "Article Directory".

[Dimitry]

CeciL, didn't know about the article directory. I am planning on creating articles related to garage sales later on so that might tie in well into this.

Thanks!

[Redline21]

Here are a few article directories I've used Dimitry. Make sure you create a few anchor links in the article for the keywords you are targeting. Not only will this help boost your ranking, but you'll gain a little extra traffic

ezinearticles.com
articlealley.com
contentdesk.com
ideamarketers.com
e-topic.com
articlesbase.com

As for your approach to social marketing, I would get established in the communities at places like digg and del.ici.ous. If you can integrate yourself there first you'll get a better response when you post your site. Otherwise the people there will see you blatantly trying to market your website and regard it as spam.

[jpfieber]

With my ITsVISTA site, after about 4 months I jumped from a 0 PageRank to a 4 (and about a month later to a 5). I'm not sure if that's the main indicator that you're out of the sandbox or not. I was always getting some Google traffic since the site first started, and it seemed to increase smoothly as I added more content, and more time passed. I also focused a lot on all the SEO things you should do (meta tags, proper titling, use of keywords, etc), as well as keeping good content coming, and finding ways beyond the search engines to get people to the site (social bookmarking, talking about it in forums, etc).

[Redline21]

I don't think having a PR relates to being in or out of the sandbox. My site was just given a PR last week and the SERPS haven't changed. You're right though, focusing on other ways to bring in traffic outside of Google is key.

[Redline21]

Yay, Google finally let me out of the Sandbox...only took about 3 months of hard work but my SERPS went from #150 to #8 overnight. Coincidentally I got listed in DMOZ several days prior, so not sure if this gave me a final boost to lift me out.