How can i tell if i've been sandboxed or google slapped?

10 replies
  • SEO
  • |
I have been working on a site for 2 months now. I have written articles, i have submitted my articles to the social sites with rss. I have submitted the website to the social sites. I have built back links in a paced manner over the past 30-45 days and I am still not showing up on google organic search. I am indexed by google but I am still not ranking for my keyword phrases. Any advice?
#google #sandboxed #slapped
  • Profile picture of the author kassaf
    Forget sandbox fear and just make sure you are checking correctly and continuing the right activities.

    By checking correctly I mean: in Google check if your site and pages are indexed by the following command (in google search): site:www.yourdomain.com

    Whether you are indexed or not, in order to rank high for a specific search term you have to grow the links pointing to a relevant page of yours with anchor text that is identical to the search term you want to rank for.
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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Hi Charlie,

      You don't need to worry about being "Google Slapped" as that is something that happens to AdWords campaigns.

      If you understand the Google "sandbox effect" it applies equally to all web pages so there is nothing you can do to cause it, so no need to worry about that either.

      If your pages are not ranking for your targeted keywords you may need to improve your on page optimization, or if you have a lot of tough competition you just need to continue to promote your site using sound methods.

      I would recommend that you use the AdWords Keyword Tool to verify that your pages are optimized properly for your targeted keywords. When using this tool to analyse your site it lists keywords in order of relevance, if your targeted keywords are not at the top of the list then you are not optimizing properly.

      In addition to backlinks you should pay particular attention to your internal link structure. Use the inanchor and intitle search operators to analyze you internal as well as external links.

      If you are doing all of the above correctly and you are still not ranking then it is simply a matter of competition. If it boils down to competition then do a little more keyword research to find terms that get some search traffic but has less competition. You can optimize pages for those less competitive keywords to get traffic while you go after the more competitive keywords over the long term.
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  • Profile picture of the author Chris Koltai
    There's no real easy answer for this question without knowing what the keyword phrase is. If the keyword's competitive or just a broad term, getting any sort of ranking is definitely going to be an uphill battle.

    Have you been getting any high PR links? How's your on-page SEO? Do your URLs, titles and headers all match up reasonably well? Do your internal links match those?

    If you don't want to disclose the phrase you're trying to rank for, that's understandable, but could you give us an idea of what your competition is like? That'd make it much easier to give specific advice.
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  • Profile picture of the author Charlie Houston
    Thanks guys. My on page optimization should be OK as I have a subscription to Scrub the Web and when I run my page against the top three competitors I am equal to or better than them. This considers all metatags including title, description, keywords, H1 tags, keyword density etc, etc. I started off page optimization (link building) in earnest about 30 days ago but haven't seen much change. Maybe I am too impatient or maybe I haven't done enough yet. When I tried entering my domain with the site: prefix, there is only 1 return.
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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Hi Charlie,

      I built a new website about three weeks ago and Google has already indexed 137 pages from the site and I have only created a single backlink to it on my twitter account.

      How many pages does your website have? If you only have one page indexed after two months I would say there is definitely an issue with your internal link structure (unless you have a single page website).

      I recommend that you add your site to Google's Webmaster Tools and verify it. If they are having any issues crawling your site they will list details in the diagnostics section.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jenie0109
    what i only know if your keywords that already ranked up and then suddenly it cannot be found in any positions...
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  • Profile picture of the author maestro2010
    It can be G dance.
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  • Profile picture of the author hipnol
    Make one thing clear you don't have nofollow on your page meta tag or disallow in robots.txt - they hinder you appear in google
    Signature

    Check out Katreena Kaif - guess you will be interested in Wallpapers of Katrina Kaif

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  • Profile picture of the author SaSeoPete
    So you only have one page indexed? How many pages do you have so far on your site? Do you have a sitemap submitted to webmaster tools?
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  • Profile picture of the author peterzhang
    Be patient. It's only two months since you have done these optimization. Seo is a long-term work.
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