Gr1Innovations

Teaching you how to make money online since 1999

Poking the Panda

So there have been a bunch of theories floating around as to how the G Men are treating sites, namely how they have been slapping down sites that just seem to be getting off the ground. Sure that could be the sandbox, but it really doesn’t feel like it to me. I think there may be some very important on page factors that are signaling to Google that your site is (or may be) a spam site. Anyway that is why I will be beginning a little experiment to test out four theories that I have.

CS – First my control site… I started this one about a month ago and it went as I have described above… it climbed steadily (as high as 30th position for its KW) but now it is nowhere to be found at all in the SERPs. I built it just like I’ve been building sites for years with pretty decent success, but since panda… well really since the hubpages slap happened just after Christmas… the game seems to have changed.

S1 – On this site I strive for very low keyword density. I plan on using the keyword once in my post, so it might make it onto the page 2 or 3 times with the title etc, giving the site a max of 3% KW density (compared to my other sites which I will have the KW density at a higher than I normally would 7-10%).

S2 – On this site I will slow the backlinking down to a snail’s pace. I’ll leak links to it at a rate of 1 per day (as opposed to the other sites which will get 3-5 a day each). This site will no doubt climb slower than any other sites since it will be getting less links, but we’ll see where it ends up.

S3 – On this site I will be sure that all the posts have different titles and URLs (the homepage will be the only page with the main keyword). Typically on my site I use cousins or variations of my main keyword for the post titles. I may even give the posts search unfriendly titles like “experimenting with making sites rank real well by mixing things up” instead of a keyword title like “Google serp slap experiment”

S4 – I will be cloaking affiliate links on this site just to see if Google is not liking the fact that I have links to Amazon on pretty much every page I build.

Things I will control for:

  • All the sites will be on the same host
  • All the sites will use the same theme
  • All the sites will be the same age
  • All the sites will have similar content (length, quality)
  • All the sites will target the same keyword
  • All the sites will receive BMR backlinks

If anyone has any other suggestions for my little experiment I’d love to hear them. It would be great if other people would play along too and run their own similar tests, maybe with some variations of the factors they will be messing with. I’ll keep everyone updated on the results of my little experiment over the course of the next few months and we’ll see if we can’t crack this tricky little nut called the Google algorithm.

–Best of Luck

Justin DeMerchant

Starting a Link Building Campaign

One of the biggest mistakes people make when they start a site is pounding it with links. These days that can get you in hot water with google because if your site gets too big too fast (ie. too many links) and you climb the SERPs like a rocket they figure something must be up.

For those people who believe in natural link building (ie. suckers) it’s not an issue generally. For people who post all over the web from hubpages, to squidoo, to infobarrel, to facebook, etc. it’s not a huge issue either because you simply can’t pound out 100 of those a day (or a week for that matter).

No it’s the people who pay for things like the Keyword Academy’s PostRunner system, or BuildMyRank that end up getting tossed in google’s sandbox. Sure the sandbox is only temporary, but when you are working on a site and seeing consistent growth in the SERPs it really is a kick in the nuts to see its traffic fall to near nothing in a matter of hours.

Ok so what can you do?

1 – Start out slowly: Two or three links a day for a few months. This slow rate of link building also means that you should be investing some serious time in getting the links. Look for relevant sites to write high quality guest posts on. Build some pages on web 2.0 sites like hubpages, squidoo, infobarrel, and whatever else you can find. The nice things about building on sites like these is then if you get to a point where you have too much content and don’t want to link it all to your site (or if you have 2 links to send from 1 article like in postrunner) these are great places to link to your links.

2 – Ramp up slowly: Increase the number of links you send your site per day slow and steady. Stick with two or three for like two months, and then maybe ramp it up by one additional link every couple of weeks. Slow and steady wins the race.

3 – Hold off on the blogrolls: I wouldn’t suggest sending your site blogrolls for at least six months. Despite the fact that all the links are coming from one site, it is still a buttload of links to point at a site early on. You used to be able to get away with hammering a site with blogroll links, but I do not believe this is the case. Even when you do get to the six month mark I would suggest just doing one blogroll trade a month.

4 – Build for a wide range of keywords: Don’t just hit your site for your site for its main keyword but work on a range of related keywords as well. Use the odd “click here” or your site name, or even your sites URL. I also like to build links for some really short keywords that just relate generally to the category your site is about.

Anyway if you keep those four things in mind you should be able to keep your site out of hot water. If your site gets sandboxed anyway don’t feel bad, stop building links, or give up on making money online altogether (although I do love buying sandboxed sites off newbies for a fraction of their value). Just keep working until it comes out.

Best of luck!

The Google Sandbox Effect in SEO

One of the favorite things for people in the make money online and SEO world is to argue over theoretical concepts like “what is the best type of link?” or “how important is getting links from different c-class IPs?”. There are countless concepts out there like this, but few catch the attention of people like the google sandbox effect. Some people don’t believe it exists. Some people are so afraid of it that by the time someones site gets out of the sandbox they are getting their third link and are still on page 20 of the SERPs.

Ok so I’m getting a little ahead of myself I guess. First things first, the google sandbox effect is a phenomena where a site climbs in the SERPs too quickly and subsequently is applied a temporary penalty. The penalty can last anywhere from a couple of months to nine or more. A site that is seemingly going strong, climbing up towards a magical page one ranking, flies too close to the sun and gets knocked down a peg.

So what exactly gets a site relegated to the dreaded depths of the sandbox? Well this is where the debate truly heats up. We all know that the basic thing that happens is a quick climb followed by an even quicker fall, but there is more to it than that. A lot of people think that getting only strong links (in content, from high page rank, and high trust rank pages) will keep you out of the box. Others think the key is building links very slow and steady, not setting off any red flags. To be truthful I don’t have the answer to this question, but one can take a good lesson here anyway. Build your links naturally, which means slowly and from a wide range of quality sites.

Another thing to think about is why does google even have the sandbox? Well that isn’t too complicated to figure out, and since google is logical it also seems to be result that supports the theory. Google has the sandbox to, like everything they do, fight spam. Think about it, spammers are generally into sites for the short haul, the quick buck. When they run the risk of google slapping their sites down it deters them from building in the first place because unlike those of us who build a passive income they want a site to pay off short term.

A final question that is interesting to consider, and probably more useful is what to do if you think you are in the sandbox. The answer there is simple in the MMO world, keep building links. That’s all you need to do if you find yourself in the sandbox, or just in the midst of a normal shuffle. Don’t complicate things unless you’re just looking for some good mental exercise.

Oh and if you want to see the sandbox effect in action here is a good image of my site when it went in for NINE MONTHS! I kept working on this baby thought the rough times and it paid off well. Keep working.

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Gr1innovations.com launched way back in 1999 and was one of the first sites of its kind. Then, when the internet really became mainstream a few years later, it gained fame as the #1 ranked make money online blog in the world.