Google Sandbox effect. If a beginner blogger hears it may look like some weird thing.
Are you a new one just started a new blog or waiting to start a blog, then you should know about the term “Google sandbox”.
If you want quick answers, then navigate to the questions section.
Table of Contents
What is the Google sandbox effect?
Google sandbox is an observation period, in which google restricts you from ranking in search engines.
During this period, your website will drive a very limited amount of traffic.
You can also consider this sandbox period as a trial period, in which google needs some time to consider all aspects of your website.
Why is the sandbox period important for Search engines?
The sandbox period helps search engines like google, to identify the black hat SEOs and spam websites that tend to rank higher in search engines.
This sandbox effect helps to maintain the search engine quality by identifying the websites that use black hat SEOs to quickly rank higher in SERP.
Does the Google sandbox effect exist?
It is a quality question to be asked here. Even Though Google doesn’t confirm the existence of the google sandbox effect, many SEO experts are confirming its existence.
Look at the video below from google webmasters, which was explained by Matt Cutts.
He says, after buying your website, just add what’s coming to the page and build your website. Once the website is ready after 2 to 3 months, it will be more useful.
How long will sandbox period exist?
The sandbox period is usually for new websites, who wish to rank in search engines.
The sandbox period is usually anywhere between 4 to 6 months. Sometimes it could be 12 months or 2 months, it is based on the niche where your website is working in.
In the above video, Matt cuts said that.
“The difference between a domain that’s six months old vs one-year-old is really not that big at all. As long as you’ve been around for at least a couple of months, you should be able to make sure that you can show up in search results.”
– Matt Cutts
So you have to wait at least a couple of months to make sure your website is ranking for keywords.
It shows that, even with good SEO techniques, the website will take some time to get rankings.
My opinion is to wait at least 2 to 3 months, to get your keywords to start ranking.
Does google sandbox effect is a punishment for new websites?
No, it is not a punishment or penalty for new websites. This google sandbox period is mostly for new domains and not new websites.
If you are having a domain that has some well-ranked and indexed pages and you are changing the website design in the same domain, you can rank easily.
This sandbox period helps google to find and eliminate the websites that use black hat SEO practices.
The black hat SEOs just created a website overnight and published some articles, and created tons of low-quality backlinks to rank higher.
So, the sandbox time is needed to find out the quality websites which provide value to the users.
Definition for Google sandbox from Wikipedia.
How to eliminate the Google sandbox period
Is it possible to eliminate the google sandbox effect?
It is not possible to eliminate the google sandbox time. But you could reduce this sandbox time to quickly see your keywords in search engines.
Are you the one who just started a website?
Here are some tips to reduce this probation period on your website.
Create topical relevance
As you have started a new website, Google doesn’t have any clue what your website is about.
So, you have to tell Google what your website is about.
This can be done by creating articles under the same relevant topic. If you are creating more articles under relevant keywords, it forms a topical cluster.
It clearly shows what niche you are in and what types of keywords you are targeting. It is the first thing; we are communicating with google about our website.
If you are creating any news website that covers topics around many topics, then it could lead to an increase in your sandbox time.
In this case, initially, you have to focus on any single topic and create articles around it.
It helps to reduce your google sandbox period.
Find low volume keywords
Everyone likes to rank for high search volume keywords, then why should I need to focus on low volume keywords?
The high search volume keywords have high competition, which is ranked by high authority websites.
So it is difficult to break the higher authority website with your brand new website.
So focus on low volume keywords. Find the low-volume keywords, which has a search volume of around 50 to 200.
The modern-day SEO experts mainly focus on long-tail keywords. The long-tail keywords are key phrases that have over 3 words.
Most of the time the keywords have low search volume, but higher conversion rate. The lengthy keywords exactly match the user’s intent.
The combination of low search volume and long-tail keywords make the best keyword to choose for a beginner.
You can also use software like SEMrush to find the difficulty of that keyword.
Google will initially choose the low-volume keyword from your website, to try ranking your website. It helps google to find the user-experience of your website.
So avoid a highly competitive niche.
Create quality content
If you missed producing the quality content, then there is no guarantee about ranking your article.
At the initial stage of blogging, take your time to write quality articles. Initial few articles in your blog should be of high quality and longer articles.
These articles are your pillar articles. This article connects all your relevant articles.
So, start writing lengthy quality articles in the starting days of blogging. It also helps to improve your writing style.
- Read – The ideal length of the blog post – (data driven answer)
- Read – Quantity or quality of the blog post – what to be considered.
Try to avoid publishing many 500 word articles, instead create in-depth articles that solve user queries.
Follow good SEO practices
Don’t try to follow any black hat SEO practices. Don’t try to be too aggressive.
Just publishing 5 to 10 low-quality articles and creating a thousand of low-quality backlinks on automation, doesn’t help to rank your website higher.
Instead, it will lead your website to spam. Google algorithm is getting smarter, so it could find your black hat techniques.
If once your website is caught in black hat techniques, then it takes more time to recover from it.
So follow good SEO practices and learn to write SEO friendly articles.
Manage link building
As I mentioned above, just buying thousands of links doesn’t help you better.
But building links in the proper way helps your website to rank higher.
Maintaining the link velocity. The link velocity is building the backlinks based on the number of blogs published.
Just you have published 2 blogs and buying 1000 backlinks will lead your website to spam.
It is common sense to think of how everyone links to a website that only published 2 articles. It is worthwhile to think.
So maintain your link building velocity. You can increase your backlinks when your number of articles on a website is increasing.
So, only try to create quality links.
Spread your blog
Just don’t keep on only writing the blogs, do some promotion.
Just do the things to take your blog post in front of an audience. Share it on social media.
If you are not using social media, then create today and share it. Most successful bloggers use social media, it helps to take your blog directly to the people.
If people love your blog, your content will be shared. These are all some positive things that help to rank your content better.
You can also try Pinterest. It has become more popular among bloggers over the past few years. Pinterest is one of the trusted sources of traffic to your blog.
If many people read your blog, then you will get shares and comments, which makes some sense in ranking your content.
It also helps in creating more social signals.
So do some promotion for your blog. It also helps in faster indexing of your articles.
A quick way to avoid Google sandbox period
Buying an Active website. If you are ready to invest money and quickly get the things done, then this is the best option.
You can buy websites that are already getting more traffic. These types of websites are already out of the google sandbox and already getting some rankings.
You can buy websites from sellers, but good websites will cost you more. Usually, these websites cost you 20x to 30x from their monthly revenue.
If more pages get indexed, then it will be an additional benefit. If you are the one who is creating and selling your website, then you can also follow this technique.
You can also get 6 to 10 months old websites for a couple of hundred dollars. It will help to save you 6 months of time.
But if you completely want to learn to blog, then creating a new website from scratch is the best thing.
Read – How to index a website faster in Google
Related questions with quick answers
Google sandbox is a period, at which your website is stopped to get organic ranking. It is also considered as an observation period, that Google is looking at the quality of the website.
Normally, the Sandbox period will be anywhere between 2 to 6 months. There is no proper duration. It also could vary depending on the niche where you are working, it will be more or less.
Three main things to focus on to reduce your sandbox period is,
creating quality content on regularly consistency.
Creating high-quality backlinks, Focus on quality backlinks not quantity.
Create more user signals like social signals, dwell time, lower bounce rate, and many more. These signals give more positive feedback to the search engines.
Conclusion
If you have the correct plan and execution of the things, then your Google sandbox time will not more.
Don’t do any illegal link building activities to quickly rank your website, it leads to spam.
I hope this blog has given some understandability about the google sandbox.
Thank you for spending your valuable time reading this article. If you find this article useful, kindly share it.
Did you suggest any other technique to reduce the Google sandbox effect? Comment below.
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