SEO CheckList

Not too many people know what the Google sandbox is, or at least not too many people who aren’t involved in any way with SEO. And among those who do know about it, not all believe in its existence. So what is the Google sandbox?

Basically, the Google sandbox is when your web site doesn’t rank in the SERPs for competitive keywords for quite a period of time even if your traffic and PR are both high. Experienced web masters assume (based on what they themselves have gone through) that it takes about nine months before you’re out of that sandbox.

Does this mean your site’s totally down in the dumps? No, not necessarily. You’d be surprised, you might actually rank well for other keywords but probably NOT for the keywords you’re targeting in case you’re in a competitive niche. Many have asked if anyone gets to avoid the sandbox effect. There are those who say you can’t but there are those who believe that you CAN. Although personally, I find the latter a bit hard to digest because I believe “aging” is something which can’t be faked from the eyes (not literally speaking, of course) of the Google algorithm. But of course, not everyone has the same experience and there will always be those who’ll successfully accomplish what you haven’t been able to.

With that said, how do you get out of the sandbox? To get out of the sandbox, you must, of course, do the very basics of SEO: develop a gamut of pages of original content, build backlinks from trusted web sites (high-ranking ones, .edu, etc.), and wait for your site to age, age, age. Web sites are like wine to Google; the older, the better. And you better wait your turn to rank in the SERPs. Don’t worry, if you played by the rules of the game, chances are, it won’t take too long for you to rank.