Affiliate Programs

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Seems like anytime the subjects of SEO, Google and Affiliate    Marketing come up, the first thing people mention is the Google   Sandbox for new websites.

I see people post about “My site’s been in the Sandbox for a year, when will Google let it out?”

Now I’m not going as far to say it doesn’t exist, although I do have my doubts. There are a lot of real SEO Experts out there who do believe it exist so I won’t say “never”. You see, I’ve made several content rich sites last fall. I then got them indexed within a week into Google (that’s a story all by itself). I watched the rankings each week as they climbed in the SERPS.

One of those sites is now in the top 10 of Google SERPS for its keyword.

It’s in the health and fitness category. That’s a pretty competitive sector. It’s a very defined niche with some big hitters in the SERPS. 

My second site is in the top 20 Google SERPS for its keyword.

These all made their way up the rankings with relative ease. Where’s the sandbox?

Here’s my theory. It’s worth what you paid for it.

Each site serves a niche in a very broad and competitive sector like Heath & Fitness. I started each site with 20-30 content rich pages that I researched and wrote myself. I continually added 1 to 4 pages each week. Now each site has about 50 - 70 pages of very rich, optimized content. If there was a sandbox, it was shallow.

I believe that a lot of people who talk about the “Google Sandbox” create sites with little to no Original content, poorly optimized content pages or both.

Also I believe that their domain names may be at fault. I’ve read that Google doesn’t like domains such as - my_domain_name.com. It would rather see - mydomainname.com. It’s also be said recently that Google devalues sites in the SERPS with domains that have dashes, ie; my-domain-name.com.

I’d also bet there’s an alarm in Google headquarters that sounds off when a website with a name like; www.buy-viagra-now-for-99-cents-while-supplies-last.com shows up.

I’ll also mention that on the two above mentioned websites, that I spent hours upon hours (and I still do), adding links to both sites. I was very careful who I traded links with. I was able to add a host of medium to high PR websites with a little sweat. I also researched & wrote about 30 articles for both sites and submitted them to Article Directories. I had increasing backlinks to my sites, many of them were one way!

My biggest “secret to get out of the Google Sandbox” was to build sites that web surfers would like. Like I said, I researched and wrote the articles and other content myself. I think this is very important when creating a site. I also did not worry about whether or not they would be Indexed in the top 10 of Google. I knew no matter what tha the traffic would first come from MSN and Yahoo Search Engines. I was “okay” with that.

Why am I telling you all of this? It’s not because I think I’m a SEO expert, because I’m not. I’m not telling you this to brag either because I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer but I have been able to get a few websites ranked in Googles top 20 and many of those in the top 10 with some pretty competitive keywords.

I’m telling you this so you won’t be discouraged when/if your new website bogs down on it’s way to the top. There are many reasons why you webisite stops advancing in Google SERPS. I’m telling you not to worry about it, just keep creating original content and publish it to you website and keep optimizing each and every page. Then sit back and watch your site climb in the other 2 major search engines; Yahoo and MSN.

(Pssst….just between you, me and the fence post…..there’s a crapload of traffic on MSN and Yahoo…..and the buy stuff too!)

If I ever create a site that jumps up into the top 10 in both MSN and Yahoo and it stays at #176 on Google SERPS for 3 months then hits #1, then I might, MIGHT, believe there’s an animal named Google Sandbox that preys on new websites. Until then, stay tuned for my rant on what a lot of people are calling the Google Duplicate Content penalty (Google dupe penalty as it’s called).

Don