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 don't know if the Sandbox exists or not. It is like being 8 and questioning Santa Clause. I am not sure if it is there or not, but as long as I continue to believe then I am careful, or in the Santa Clause instance I get presents. Now I would love to come out and say it doesn't exist because I would probably be the only SEO that would make such a claim. All I know is that I either have a superior method to all the people that talk about the Sandbox, or people talking about it have other problems than just some sandbox.
Now as for the overoptimization filter, that does exist, and it will hammer you. I had a site that I started promoting and had excellent results. I was about number 5 on Google for my keywords, and then one day, I was gone. I dont mean gone like moved down, I mean gone. I didnt even rank number one for a search for my domain name including the dot com.
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 took a huge weight off my shoulders. I moved right up from not being indexed to position 100 by changing 4 words. Now I have made another change because I still want to reduce my keyword density. I found that my personal keyword density was about 4%. This came from all my forum reading. These Joe Blows, who probably don't even have a ranking for anything saying it should be between 3 and 7%. When I looked at the top 10 sites for my keyword, none of them, for the phrase, even have a density of 1%. I have a lot of work to do, but I am doing it one step at a time so I can see what works.
Up until this time I have been a firm believer in off page optimization, my theory has always been that there is no way they can weight on page optimization that much because it is so controllable by the webmaster. What I have learned in return is that on page cant help too incredibly much, but it can kill your site. Pay attention to the density of top sites and do your best to fit in those numbers. If you are over optimized kiss your income and your site good-bye on Google. The problem: MSN and Yahoo reward key word density so in increasing my rankings in Google I have partially damaged my MSN and Yahoo rankings, but I think it is worth it. I want to be on top of Google then worry about MSN and Yahoo.
So if you have been sitting around reading forums thinking your site is in the sandbox for 6 months, I want to tell you to change your strategy. Something you are doing is wrong. If you can seriously sit around for 6 to 12 months hoping to magically jump out of this sandbox to number one you are nuts. Make some changes to your site and see if anything happens, what do you have to lose? You aren't indexed, instead of doing the natural thing and adding all your keywords and stuffing them, see if you need to remove some. I get on page 2 in no more than 2 months with every site I launch, at least thus far, so I don't think there is anything to this sandbox.
Oh yeah also, don't contact me to link to your site. One of my major linking strategies is I do not exchange links, nor do I put a single outbound link on my site even to one of my own sites. Why? As far as I have seen anybody in the universe can link to my site and it doesn't hurt me, but I can get a penalty for linking to someones site. Therefore I don't link out to anybody.
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 don't know if the Sandbox exists or not. It is like being 8 and questioning Santa Clause. I am not sure if it is there or not, but as long as I continue to believe then I am careful, or in the Santa Clause instance I get presents. Now I would love to come out and say it doesn't exist because I would probably be the only SEO that would make such a claim. All I know is that I either have a superior method to all the people that talk about the Sandbox, or people talking about it have other problems than just some sandbox.
Now as for the overoptimization filter, that does exist, and it will hammer you. I had a site that I started promoting and had excellent results. I was about number 5 on Google for my keywords, and then one day, I was gone. I dont mean gone like moved down, I mean gone. I didnt even rank number one for a search for my domain name including the dot com.
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 took a huge weight off my shoulders. I moved right up from not being indexed to position 100 by changing 4 words. Now I have made another change because I still want to reduce my keyword density. I found that my personal keyword density was about 4%. This came from all my forum reading. These Joe Blows, who probably don't even have a ranking for anything saying it should be between 3 and 7%. When I looked at the top 10 sites for my keyword, none of them, for the phrase, even have a density of 1%. I have a lot of work to do, but I am doing it one step at a time so I can see what works.
Up until this time I have been a firm believer in off page optimization, my theory has always been that there is no way they can weight on page optimization that much because it is so controllable by the webmaster. What I have learned in return is that on page cant help too incredibly much, but it can kill your site. Pay attention to the density of top sites and do your best to fit in those numbers. If you are over optimized kiss your income and your site good-bye on Google. The problem: MSN and Yahoo reward key word density so in increasing my rankings in Google I have partially damaged my MSN and Yahoo rankings, but I think it is worth it. I want to be on top of Google then worry about MSN and Yahoo.
So if you have been sitting around reading forums thinking your site is in the sandbox for 6 months, I want to tell you to change your strategy. Something you are doing is wrong. If you can seriously sit around for 6 to 12 months hoping to magically jump out of this sandbox to number one you are nuts. Make some changes to your site and see if anything happens, what do you have to lose? You aren't indexed, instead of doing the natural thing and adding all your keywords and stuffing them, see if you need to remove some. I get on page 2 in no more than 2 months with every site I launch, at least thus far, so I don't think there is anything to this sandbox.
Oh yeah also, don't contact me to link to your site. One of my major linking strategies is I do not exchange links, nor do I put a single outbound link on my site even to one of my own sites. Why? As far as I have seen anybody in the universe can link to my site and it doesn't hurt me, but I can get a penalty for linking to someones site. Therefore I don't link out to anybody.
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.
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar