I think My Authority site just got Sandboxed

You've answered the question yourself. It's not about the quality of the content. Just keep doing what is working for you, but don't rely too much on a single source of links.

so... any way to get out of the sandbox?

Honestly, if your site is only one month old then it's still too early to tell whats happening.

Sometimes these things happen, and they can happen for no apparent reason at all, even with aged sites.

Just keep doing what you're doing for a few more weeks and then reassess.

The algorithm since the Penguin has changed regarding Sandbox.

My suggestion is to do a site analysis on your backlink profile using SEMRush or similar tool.

See the backlinks from your "crap" sites and compare it to the one you are trying to rank and make changes accordingly.

Hi Josh,

Let me guess, your website is a blog, right?

If so, this is normal, no sandbox, no penalty.

Sounds like you just experienced the normal ranking shift we all see with all of our pages, based on QDF, a temporary boost from the freshness factor. Your initial rankings were temporarily boosted by QDF and then sank to the currently earned rankings.

If you are using blogging platform, then it is likely that the swing in rankings was exacerbated by the content changing on the homepage from new posts being added while top ranking content posts dropping from the homepage. By design blogs intentionally focus on temporary ranking of posts on the homepage. You can expect wild shifts in rankings if you are using a blogging platform, that is the nature of blogging.

You can compensate for the blogging platform's homepage bias by promoting your permalinks to get authority focused on the internal pages, rather than concentrating it all on the homepage.

It's only been a month. Grab a beer chill out. This thread should be "wow, I was fortunate enough to get 350 visitors per day within a month and now I'm still getting 14!"

The lesson here is to have the right monetization strategy so that you can have success with initial burst of traffic so you can invest it back into the site for long term success.

Also, people need to rethink how they use the term "authority site".

Your site may very well come back.

I started doing something similar to you, and had the same thing happen. I was ranking for all kinds of stuff without a single link (well, not any links in a while anyway) and as the site was starting to grow and get good.....

I lost the traffic literally in one night.

I know mine will come back, but I have a very hard time with the whole "just keep creating quality content" rehash that people spew out without a thought to how much it sucks balls to "create quality content" that you know nobody is going to see anytime soon...it's just not fun.


With that..I think both of our sites will prosper in the end.

Why?

I don't know. I really don't.


Maybe because I've seen my sites bounce back lately, which means there is no true "penalty" but times where we simply have to wait and see what happens.

I have a site built with 100% blog network links back on page 1 this week after being "penalized" for 3 months.

They always come back, it just takes some waiting.


In the meantime.....just keep creating quality content...hahaha

A new site of mine ranked well after 5 days and one blog post. yes, one. I was on pr7 for that particular keyword. After adding content I lost 6 places in the SERPs and hovering on page 2. I'm getting more and more confused by the day

Agreed. Google sometimes put fresh content to the page 1 or 2.

Google Sandbox-ed a website because two aspect: low quality content or low quality backlink, or over optimization can aslo make you drop on sandbox

God bless you.

Just to add here that you should drip feed your content. Don't "blast out" your content or backlinks because it can put you in the sandbox quicker than you can imagine.

Consistency is key to make your link and content velocity looks natural.