What is Google Sandbox?

Firstly we need to know what exactly is the google sandbox ~wether it’s a myth or fact (no one knows) but we need a ‘name’ isn’t it? SEO players believe that when you do ‘certain things’ that would necesarily mess with Google’s algorithm – like gaining a lot of links in a relatively short period of time for a new site or an established site, the site would be sent to a sandbox where it will be spending some time, not getting traffic from the relatively high traffic keywords that you might be targeting.

It’s debatable how much time a site would spend within this sandbox, but most SEOs believe it to be 6-8 months. Not something that you want to be sent into right?
How to prevent/minimize the effects of Google Sandbox?

1. If you’re already in the Sandbox, patience is the key. Don’t try ordering more links because you will ultimately be left in the No man’s land longer by the search giant.

2. Try maintaining a natural link profile. Don’t order too many links too soon. When you get around 1000 links within a single day for a brand new site, anyone can see something fishy is going on there.

3. When you’re starting a new blog, register the domain as soon as possible and set up a temporary home page. Then, link to it from another site that is already indexed in Google. This will ensure that by the time you get your whole site online, it will already be in the Google’s index.

4. If you should go ahead and buy links, make sure you put quality before quantity. It’s better to get a few good quality links than a lot of high quality links.

Well, is it connected to SEO contest? relatively yes! So why did I said it is connected to the sandbox term, a simple explanation is: search engine hates perfectly matched search query strings. Anyone know that every SEO contestant (including the popular Busby SEO Test) will always try to flood their content with those ‘perfectly-matched search strings’ in hope of getting higher rank on google’s search result page. It’s fine to you (bloggers) but it mess up the search engines!

So be careful with the challange and good luck!