Time Outs (Google Absurdity)

Recently I read an excerpt from an interview with Google employee Matt Cutts. During the discussion, the interviewer asked a question about the sanbox, to which Matt Cutts began to answer. Naturally, the interviewer interrupted saying, "Wait a second, are you admitting that there's a sandbox," to which Matt started to wiggle his way away from the topic. But the most notable (and most telling) part of the "wiggle" was that Cutts did NOT deny it.

If that's not enough evidence for you, consider this:
Pin Bottle ranks #1 on MSN for Boston Website Design, #3 on Yahoo and around #530 in Google. Subsequently, Pin Bottle Boston Website Design ranks #7 for "allinanchor:Boston Website Design," it's whole site is being indexed around every 5 days, and it's blog entries are indexed almost immediately (at least that's what is seems like lately). Unfortunately, our domain is only 3 months old, so it ranks behind sites about cookies, flowers, jewlery and bicycles. Why do these sites rank higher? Because in their footnote the phrase "Boston Website Design" exists reffering to to the fact that their site was created by a web designer. (Pretty absurd huh? And one more note of absurdity: Is it really necessary to bury a site 500 results deep? When was the last time someone searched for something and actually digged 500 results deep? It's like Google is saying, "We realize you're trying to be a 'Boston Website Designer,' but quite frankly, we just don't trust you. In fact, our trust in you is so small that we'd rather steer the searcher toward a completely unrelated topic before we ever sent them to your site!" Personally, when I search for something and get results that have nothing to do with what I searched for, it pisses me off and I end up navigating away from the site).

Google tells us to play by the rules and with a quality site with enough White Hat SEO, our sites will rank well, but what they don't tell us that if our site is not well-aged, with well-aged back-links, we will have to sit in Time Out until they tell us we can come out and play again (just had an elementary school flashback).

As the above examples demonstrate, the sandbox undoubtebly exists, so why not just come out and admit it? In my opinion, sandboxing new sites contributes to poor SEO practices, which then triggers a snow-ball effect of SEO malpractice, like this scenario:

New web owners who are frustrated when they find out they're black-listed will likely want to find out why. As soon as they learn the word "sand-box," they then stumble upon the word SEO, and all that it entails. Next, looking for a quick-fix, they read bad advice and bogus info on the net, and start focussing on Page Rank, keyword density, and reciprocal linking. They flood their pages with keywords, and trade links with bad-neighborhoods until by the time they learn that these techniques will only hurt their chances of getting out of the sandbox, it's too late!

Lets face it, sometimes people don't always make the best decisions, especially when they're given bad advice from so called "experts" on a topic they know nothing about. These people are most likely Small Business owners with families just like you and I, trying to put food on the table. There's no question that Google is an American Business success, but has Google become so big that they've forgotten about the little man? It just seems like they hinder a lot of honest working people from making a buck by not explaining the sandbox in detail.

There IS a solution, but it takes some leg work. Instead of starting a new domain from scratch, search and find an expired domain that has been around for at least two years and has at least one page indexed by Google. A two year old domain will cut down dramatically on any "time-outs" handed down for any keywords, and if a page is indexed, it means that it hasn't been banned. At the very least, this is a better start, but if you really want maximize your results, dig further. Find a domain name that's related to your niche, and then research it's back-links and answer these questions: Are they from bad neighborhoods? Are they related? Do they include your keywords in the anchor text, and if so, is the anchor text used identical? How many total back-links exist? Gathering this information will certainly help you find the right domain, and if you happen to find a good one, you won't have to spend as much time in TIME OUT (If only I'd gone this route for Pin Bottle Boston Website Design!).

Breaking Habit

How many people these days go to the library or the book store for information? Truth is, when it comes to technology, it's usually outdated by the time it's collecting dust in your local library. That's why I hit the net for the latest info, and I think it's safe to assume that the internet is the preferred source of information for most people. Since I started my SEO education, I've mostly been using Google to find related forums and articles on the subject, but for some reason, I never searched anywhere else. But thankfully I stumbled upon some good blogs and began to think, maybe there's more out there Google isn't telling me about? So I hit Technorati and Wordpress and discovered a whole new portal of information. The blogs I found are probably indexed by Google, but like most people, I've fallen under the habit of viewing the first few pages of a keyword, and then perfoming a new search if I can't find what I want. I do this because I'd rather not sift through 10's of pages that may or may not even be related to my search. The problem with this is you're not always finding the best sites, just the best "optimized." Depending on your niche, the website that could provide you the best information may not be that popular, simply because the topic isn't that popular, and therefor wouldn't have a lot of back-links. Of course this means it wouldn't rank high in Google either. But Technorati and Wordpress opened my eyes to a whole new world of information that I never would have found otherwise. Makes me want to steer away from Google more often, and maybe even try some directories for a change.

Back-links 1 vs. 100

Most of my SEO knowledge has come from reading and participating in a few forums. Most posters include a link to their homepage in their signature, but it got me thinking: if they post 1,000's of times, what will Google make of their back-link? What I mean is, if a poster who uses his homepage in his signature makes 1,000 posts on the same site, wouldn't Google see this as spam? (Certainly it would if they were posted all at once, but we're assuming the posts were made over a long period of time). If a back-link is considered a "vote," then how many times can one site vote? And furthermore, if multiple votes are cast, do they count?

If I had to make an educated guess, I would say that the more links that are found on one site, the more they're devalued in the eyes of Google. So if I were to use a link in my signature, I may use it a few times with different anchor text, but then I'd remove it from my signature. Of course, if I wanted to drive traffic from the forum, this would be dumb, but for SEO purposes, I'd assume that 5 links with different anchor text would carry the same weight as 1,000, even if different anchor text is used for all 1,000.

It should be noted that the same theory would apply to a blog. If you have a link on a blog's index page, if the blog is archived frequently, multiple back-links will be created. So if you thought you had a big-time back-link from a blog, it may be devalued by Google with every archive.

Firefox II

This doesn't have a whole lot to do with SEO, but I thought it would be worth commenting on Firefox's new browser, and especially, my favorite new feature. If a link commands the browser to open a new window, firefox now just opens a new tab (what an invention!). If you've ever used an oler computer, you know quite well that windows/programs don't always open as quickly as you'd like, so being able to view the new page within a tab is pretty convenient for those of us without fancy processors. In addition, Firefox gives you the ability to change this feature in the options, if opening new windows is your bag. Personally, I'm used to right-clicking a url, copying the url, opening a new tab and pasting the url in the address bar, just because it's faster and more convenient than opening a bunch of new windows. Now I don't have to go through all those steps. It may have only saved me seconds, but those seconds couldturn into days over a period of many years :)

Yahooooooo!

Great news for Pin Bottle! We jumped from 126 to #3 in Yahoo. Does Yahoo use a sandbox? I'm awfully curious as to why the sudden jump. The change occured after Yahoo's last visit to our site. I did add some content and make some minor changes, but I can't imagine it was enough to cause such a dramatic jump (chances are it's just a coincidence). I must admit, I know very little about Yahoo optimization, since I focus most of my efforts on the search engine king Google, but I can't figure this one out. Was there a particular back-link that weighed heavily that wasn't discovered until recently? Did I hit some magic number for keyword density when I tweaked my pages? Regardless, it's certainly nice to rank in Yahoo finally!

On a side note, I recently read an article that talked about the relationship between Google's sandbox and Adwords. it's main point was this: While you suffer, Google benefits tremendously from it's sandbox program:
1) New websites will not rank organically due to the sandbox program.
2) New companies who want to be found in Google will have to use Adwords.

Securing you as a customer is the hardest part, keeping you is easy......

Google has created an effective strategy to gain new customers.

Getting indexed while in the sandbox

I find it unusal that Google seems to love to index my site (every 5 days now) but continues to box me in the sand. If they like to visit my site so often, how 'bout a little keyword love too?

How do I Know if I'm Sandboxed?

Just wanted to check in. I haven't posted because of the featured article I posted a week ago. I wanted to give people a chance to check it out before I continued anymore blogging.

Anyway, lots to talk about:
I discovered a Google operator called "inanchortext:" It ranks websites depending on how many back-links they have with a particular keyword in the anchor-text. (I know, it's confusing, but bear with me). Normally, this wouldn't mean much, but I found it especially interesting for determining if your in the sandbox or not. Normally, a site with good on-page seo, that's well-aged and has a number of quality back-links will rank well in the SERP's. You see, a site with all these qualities should not only rank well, but also have a high ranking for the same keyword's "inachortext:" search. We assume this because Google places the majority of it's SERPs weight on back-links.

So in conclusion:

A site that has good on-page optimization, is well-aged, has a number of quality back-links and (breath) is ranked well in the keyword's "inanchortext:" query, yet buried in the same keyword's actual search results, is most likely SANDBOXED......

Much Ado About Nothing

Not a whole lot to report. I updated my Google and Yahoo sitemaps as well as a adding a few two-way links. When I checked my Google sitemap diagnostics, it showed that a file I moved was turning up a "404 not found" error, which is not a good thing for Google indexing. The file was moved via 301 redirect, and when I checked my .htaccess file, the 301 was coded correctly. To play it safe, I just created the old file with a single link to the new page (as well as a link to my sitemap page and home page, which I place on every page for fluent navigation). This way, if Google isn't redirected by the 301 command, at least it won't turn up a 404, and will be led to it's new address.

I ran all my outbound links through a "fake Page Rank" tool, to ensure that I'm not linking out to any PR 0 sites. Any PR 0 sites I am linking out too are now accompanied by the "no follow" attribute.

Did some more forum posting, dropping my URL a few times. This will be an on-going thing, so nothing new there.

I also changed my meta title tags (again) to be 100% unique. I don't want any of my pages to end up in Google's supplemental index, so I figure this is one way to combat supplemental purgatory....

P.B. Is now turning up 36 in Yahoo for "Boston Website Design." This is good news, but I was hoping it would be a little higher. It's all about the back-link baby! I'll have to "stay the coarse," and be patient.

Still in Google's sandbox. Someday, I'll get out (hopefully sooner than later).

I may have an SEO project coming up for Silver City Bicycles. A keyword needs to be decided upon, and once I dive into the project, I'll keep you updated!

Sandbox Clarity

Well, I got an answer as to PR's relationship to the sandbox: There is none.....this is unfortunate, since I thought Pin Bottle was out with it's newly aquired Page Rank, but when searching for Pin Bottle in G, it's clear that we're still sandboxed (since we're nowhere to be found for competitive keywords). As far as getting out, we'll just have to wait. To speed up the process, I'm going to fix this blog's archive situation (we were archiving pages daily, which was creating duplicate content), and continue to play by the SEO rules to make sure we're not seen as a spam site (which is the #1 way of getting out).

Data centers are back to showing a PR of 2, so the fluctuation continues. Traded some links with a few sites today. Hopefully the back-links will get indexed....

Next up, applying to DMOZ as an editor to speed up the inclusion process. I've applied for site inclusion without a response (which isn't unusal for these people) so I figured this may be an alternative way of getting in. The fact that they take so long is disturbing, given the weight of the back-link that's gained once your in. Seems a little unfair that it should be determined by the luck of who your categories editors are, but that's life I guess.

MSN/Page Rank

Well, I guess we'll start with the good news: Pin Bottle now ranks #1 on MSN for "Boston Website Design." Previously 8-10, this is huge jump after MSN last indexed the site. MSN seems to count ALL backlinks when Google seems to be mysteriously selective. It's really baffling, since the 1 and only backlink Google shows for Pin Bottle is a site with no Page Rank. Regardless, topping MSN may seem easy to some, to a Website Designer who only recently got into the SEO game, it's a nice accomplishment.

Speaking of Page Rank, Pin Bottle is no longer showing a PR of 2. I've read that during an update, it can fluctuate violently, so I guess I'll just have to be patient for a while until the update has completely finished.

Next up, reciprocal backlinks. I know, I know, it's not supposed to be good, but the proof is in the pudding: Most of the sites ranked higher than Pin Bottle have reciprocals, so a few good ones can't hurt.