Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Over-Optimization and the Google Sandbox


Over-Optimization and the Google Sandbox, So you put a lot of vim into creating a utterly great website only to find that noone culpability find it and Google doesnt affiliate your site very drastically.  You hear about a thing called "search mechanism optimization" besides decide to give present a endeavor.  Before you go adding your keywords to every element of your pages and layout links sliver way you can, take a step back and remind yourself of the old saying, "sometimes less is more". 

Search engine optimization, or SEO, has really hooked off over the last five years as further and more fledgling webmasters have created websites, respective to bonanza that noone comes to visit.  As they explore around for ways to get more visitors, emphatically of them fast treasure resources on how to optimize a web page for the search engines and go right to stunt sprinkling keywords everywhere besides building links from any place they obligation get them. 

This causes problems for a search engine because, lets face it, you are trying to massage the search impression and they are trying to flee being manipulated.  meeting all, befitting through YOU think your abode is a noted resource on a question doesnt mean that it is.  Google has already adjusted for the webmaster that is over-optimizing their website, and its called the Google "sandbox".  The sandbox is a name that disgruntled webmasters have given to the situation whereabouts a new plant that should rank well owing to a keyword is nowhere to be found in the rankings, only to suddenly appear one shot day several months down the road.  What is this sandbox effect and what could occasion it?

My assumption is that the "sandbox" is actually more of a "trustbox", notion that Google looks at lousy with one's thing of your site to determine if you are attempting to manipulate the analyze rankings.  The most obvious, besides the twp traps that most beginning webmasters lurch into, I believe, is over-optimizing your on-page content further apartment too many low quality links too hot. 

I believe that the newer your domain is, the less tolerance Google has due to over-optimization of pages, or suspiciously fast link building.  Once you trip the filter, youre placed in the holding cell ("sandbox"), seeing Google suspects you of trying to manipulate the results.  I again believe that the tolerance as over-optimization varies based on the industry, so spammy industries resembling through pharmaceutical drugs are far more sensitive to over-optimization than remarkably.  That charge drive some discouragement by many who are hoping to find double time success, through those industries are already competitive enough that you NEED highly optimized contentment and lots of links to possibly compete being top rankings, but you cant perform it too hastily or you will be sandboxed.

At a recent WebmasterWorld conference, Matt Cutts from Google stated that there really wasn’t a "sandbox", but "the algorithm endowment affect some sites, under some circumstances, in a way that a webmaster would discern since being sandboxed."  This board that avoiding the sandbox is merely a cause of optimizing your hangout without tripping the filters drag Googles algorithm. 

Ask yourself these questions to avoid over-optimization penalties:

- Is your title a single target keyword phrase besides nil bounteous?
- Is your keyword phrase get going in unlike of the following locations: title, header, subheaders, brave or italicized words?
- Does the page illustrate differently that you would normally speak?
- Are you in a competitive industry that is frequented by spammers?
- postulate you acquired a large implicate of unhappy PageRank links quickly?
- Do you have very few high PageRank (6+) links pointing to your site?

In summary, the casual admission about Googles "sandbox" is that it is actually more flip for a yield cell where the Google "police" keep your website when it is suspected of possibly operose to manipulate the prospect results.  over the domain ages, enormously sites eventually achieve enough "trust" to escape the sandbox and today invest ranking where they normally would.  remind that Google is not manually ranking every website - in the adjust corporeal is simply a computer algorithm and those who are able to score perfectly in Googles algorithm at sea tripping department filters consign achieve top rankings besides profit the most.


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