Google Sandbox | Did Your Marketing Website Lose Grip on Its Rankings?

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Google Sandbox is generating a lot of buzz in the SEO field, although is not well understood and is feared by many webmasters. As a website owner, you should learn as much as possible about the topic, how and why your site could find itself there and what to do should you find your site buried under the sand, so to speak.

What Puts A Site Into Google Sandbox?

Google Sandbox is generally used for websites which are newly launched and then arouse the suspicion of Google, usually by adding a large amount of new content in a very short period of time. This appears to Google as spam; and the Sandbox is essentially a spam filter which watches for suspicious activity, reasoning that a site which adds enormous numbers of new posts, pages and content instantly is probably filling itself with duplicate content or engaging in search engine spamming.

When this happens, these sites are put in the Sandbox and sidelined from the main Google index until it can be established that the site is not spamming the search engines. Of course, not every new site is considered to be Sandbox material and SEO experts are not entirely sure what specific triggers can result in a site being consigned here; it is believed that there are triggers as well as factors which have to do with the prevailing conditions on the web at the time that a site is launched.

For instance, if you launch a site about sports betting at a time when there have been many spam betting sites being set up, it will most likely be more difficult for your site to avoid being sent to the Google Sandbox and more difficult to dig your way out if it is.

It’s not only new sites (though these do make up the majority of sites which end up here) which may be sent to the Sandbox; older sites can see the same thing happen, usually as the result of tripping the same kind of triggers. Usually, this is the addition of too much new content all at once or a barrage of new links being added, especially following a period of inactivity.

What Happens if I Get “Sandboxed”?

When your site is put into the Google Sandbox, your site is still indexed and crawled, but you will be set aside when it comes to actual Google searches. Until you make it out of the Sandbox, you won’t show up in Google’s search results.

How Can I Get Out of Google’s Sandbox?

One thing you can be thankful for if your site is sent to the Google Sandbox is that this is not a permanent condition as being de-indexed is. While it’s definitely not a desirable place to be, you can get your site back into the main index by making the right kind of changes.

While your site is in the Sandbox, your responsibility is to demonstrate to Google that your site isn’t spam. One of the best ways to show the search engines this is to build incoming links to your site which are of high quality; the best links to add are those which come from sites whose content is relevant to your own and are themselves popular sites in terms of page ranking. Building these links can prove to Google that your site is filled with useful content rather than spam.

Speaking of content, you’ll also find creating high quality, unique content to be useful in getting your site out of Google Sandbox and back into the mainstream index. You should not copy content from other sites and if you ever repost anything from another source, you should do so with extreme care – providing completely unique content is essential to showing the world (and more importantly, the search engines) that your site is whitehated.

This content should not be packed with keywords; this is a sure-fire way to raise red flags to Google. Use keywords naturally and write for readers, not the search engines. Content that is well written and relevant to the topic at hand will contain your keywords enough to work for the search engines while being content that your visitors will actually want to read. Good content also helps your site to get more high quality links; the better your content, the greater value your site will have to others and the more links you’ll see coming in.

So, remember, if you find your site in the Google Sandbox, the best way to start digging your way out is to regularly add unique, genuinely useful content to your site and promote it through quality backlinks. Keep this up and your site will soon make it out of the Sandbox – fail to do so and it could be a very long time indeed before your site emerges.  

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