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 think it is best if I address the Sandbox first. It is easy because I don't believe it exists. If it does exist I have found the magical way around it with all of my sites. I don't know what this way is because I have done different things in the beginning with each one of my sites, but within 3 months for any keyword I am getting on page two or even page one. I put up 3 new sites in November and all three are in the top 30 of Google, one is on page one, and the other is on page two, and we are going to talk about site three in the over optimization filter section of this article.
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.
The results of this test were impressive. I jumped from not being indexed to being just over position 100. I have since made another change reducing my keyword density some more. I found that my keyword density for my main keywords was about 4% which people in forums, who I dont believe know a lot, say is good, somewhere between 3-7 percent. The sites ranked for this keyword have a density for the phrase somewhere between 0-1%. I am now waiting to see what this reduction does for my rankings.
Until today really, I was a believer that no matter what, it made no difference what was on your site, if you had a good method of building links, which I do, you would rank well in Google. The reason is I didn't think Google could weigh much on what a webmaster could control. What I really learned is that changes to your page may not improve your rankings a great deal if you are already ranked good, but they sure can kill your page. You have to watch the density of your competitors and test out what modifying the density does for your rankings. If you overoptimize for any term, your site will get blasted there is no doubt. My major problem is to get a good ranking on Google I had to lower my density which was doing real good on MSN. I think though that I can handle MSN, because all my sites still rank better there than they do on Google.
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.
My secret tip of the day, what do I do so differently? Here is one... I don't link to anybody. I don't exchange links nor do my sites have a single outbound link on them. Why? Because I know for sure that I can be punished for people that I link to, but not for the people that link to me. Therefore I just don't link to anybody and I avoid this issue.
I think it is best if I address the Sandbox first. It is easy because I don't believe it exists. If it does exist I have found the magical way around it with all of my sites. I don't know what this way is because I have done different things in the beginning with each one of my sites, but within 3 months for any keyword I am getting on page two or even page one. I put up 3 new sites in November and all three are in the top 30 of Google, one is on page one, and the other is on page two, and we are going to talk about site three in the over optimization filter section of this article.
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.
The results of this test were impressive. I jumped from not being indexed to being just over position 100. I have since made another change reducing my keyword density some more. I found that my keyword density for my main keywords was about 4% which people in forums, who I dont believe know a lot, say is good, somewhere between 3-7 percent. The sites ranked for this keyword have a density for the phrase somewhere between 0-1%. I am now waiting to see what this reduction does for my rankings.
Until today really, I was a believer that no matter what, it made no difference what was on your site, if you had a good method of building links, which I do, you would rank well in Google. The reason is I didn't think Google could weigh much on what a webmaster could control. What I really learned is that changes to your page may not improve your rankings a great deal if you are already ranked good, but they sure can kill your page. You have to watch the density of your competitors and test out what modifying the density does for your rankings. If you overoptimize for any term, your site will get blasted there is no doubt. My major problem is to get a good ranking on Google I had to lower my density which was doing real good on MSN. I think though that I can handle MSN, because all my sites still rank better there than they do on Google.
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.
My secret tip of the day, what do I do so differently? Here is one... I don't link to anybody. I don't exchange links nor do my sites have a single outbound link on them. Why? Because I know for sure that I can be punished for people that I link to, but not for the people that link to me. Therefore I just don't link to anybody and I avoid this issue.
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.
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