What Is Google Sandbox?
The Google Sandbox is a long-debated theory in the SEO world. The theory is Google puts new websites on hold to prevent them from ranking at the top of search results. Have you tried setting up a new website and wondered why it won’t rank, no matter how much content optimisation you do?
While SEO takes time to take effect and achieve results, this ongoing hypothesis about the Sandbox and whether or not it exists has been a prime suspect in why new websites take longer to rank.
What’s the Google Sandbox?
Google Sandbox rocked the world of SEO professionals during its first introduction in 2004.
Well, actually, there’s no official or confirmed introduction because it was only an observation among SEOs. They noticed that freshly launched websites in Google struggle to rank despite their best efforts in keyword and content optimisation.
This led to the speculation that new sites are kept inside a “Sandbox” or “filter,” again unconfirmed by Google, for a period of time to prevent them from reaching the top pages of Google SERPs.
Why is this a big deal?
Initially, the Sandbox was meant to filter out spam and low-quality websites and highlight new websites that produce high-quality content and add value to the web.
Google allegedly uses this anti-spam algorithm to assess new sites and determine their trustworthiness before ranking them in the search results. It’s also a preventive measure for websites that use black hat SEO to reach the top pages of Google quickly.
Unfortunately, there’s also a downside. The Sandbox hinders many businesses from ranking their websites and reaching their goals right from the start. With the theory that new websites take longer to catch up to their competitors, many may feel discouraged from launching their websites for fear of missing out on potential traffic they could gain during the first few months.
It’s especially important for businesses that have just started reaching out to their target audience and relying on their website for online visibility and brand awareness.
Additionally, SEO is a costly investment. You’d have to spend money on resources and tools and dedicate time to ensure your website is well-optimised. Building a website on a limited budget and solely relying on future potential profits will pose a real challenge if you’re concerned about the Google Sandbox.
How Long Does a New Site Stay in the Google Sandbox?
There’s no real straight answer to how long websites stay in the Google Sandbox. Some say it’s for several weeks or months, while SEO experts argue it could last up to a year. It all boils down to the quality of your website, your competition for keywords, and your efforts in establishing expertise, experience, authority, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) with Google.
How to Rank Your Website Effectively (And Climb Your Way Out of the Sandbox)?
There’s no surefire way around the Sandbox. With millions of competitors constantly fighting for the number one spot in search engines, it has become even tougher for newer websites to establish themselves online.
Luckily, not all hope is lost. There are proven ways to guarantee your website’s ranking in the search pages.
1. Address Technical Issues
The first things you must address and fix on your website are technical issues like website speed, mobile friendliness, indexing, crawling, and optimising metadata.
2. Focus on long-tail, low-competition keywords
When starting a new website, it is important to target long-tail and low-competition keywords before entering the big leagues. This allows you to gradually drive traffic to your website and connect to an audience with a specific intent.
3. Establish relevance and authority
Showing expertise, experience, authority, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) in your niche will earn you valuable points with Google. Focus on producing high-quality content, covering different topics, and sharing personal insights to build trust quickly, not just with Google but also with your target audience.
4. Build a good backlink profile
Backlinks are one of the significant ranking factors in SEO and also the most challenging. But building a good backlink profile, with backlinks from relevant and trusted sources in your niche, will help you rank faster.
5. Match search intent
Always tailor your content to the search intent of your targeted keywords. Not matching search intent is a big mistake in SEO because you decrease your chances of getting on the first page by not providing what the audience is looking for.
6. Practise on-page SEO optimisation
Double-check your pages for unoptimised title tags, meta descriptions, URLs, subheadings, image titles, and alt text. Avoid keyword stuffing and ensure your content is readable and well-formatted.
7. Be patient
Ranking a website takes time. You need to accept that fact before you decide to build your own. What matters is your consistency in making the necessary efforts to rank. Spend less time worrying about how to make your website rank faster and more time focusing on building a high-quality and user-friendly website.