SEO Outsourcing

Online video and TV streaming are clogging the copper arteries of the information superhighway.

It’s generally accepted by anyone and everyone in the know that the internet is growing exponentially. To give you an idea of how much and how fast, consider that last year YouTube alone used as much bandwidth as was needed for the entire internet in 2000.

Trouble is, this growing demand for video and TV download services such as the Beeb’s recently launched and already successful iPlayer is overloading networks so badly that some particularly gloomy experts are predicting the internet could simply grind to a virtual standstill by 2010. They are calling it the broadband crunch.

The problem lies not in the fibre optics and underground cables of the main internet ‘motorways’ which have huge capacities and are constantly upgraded with new technologies but with the ‘last mile’ routers, switchers and copper wires running from exchanges directly into the home.

“There are going to be some real crunches, some real hard times coming. It’s because of the market and the business models which don’t see a way of making a profit,” commented Scott Bradner, technology security officer at Harvard University ahead of an ‘End of the Internet’ debate happening in Boston this month.

Essentially, internet providers are too busy undercutting each other to maximise short-term profits without considering the long term implications of neglecting the infrastructure.

“There will not be a fibre-to-the-home network in the next 20 years,” according to BT spokesman Mike Bartlett. “It would be a massive call to say, “Let’s fibre up the nation.” It would take many years, cost billions of pounds [actually estimated at around £20billion], involve digging up all the roads and we don’t know if people really want it.”

There are new technologies in the pipeline that could eradicate these problems, such as nuclear research organisation Cern’s fibre optic linked servers that run 10,000 times faster than broadband. But timescale and guarantees are hard to come by.

As Larry Irving, co-chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance so eloquently puts it, “We’re not saying it’s going meltdown, but you could have latency. It’ll be like trying to get from point A to point B in London on a Wednesday afternoon. Good luck.”

The broadband crunch

Technorati Tags: The broadband crunch

V9 NEWSLETTER - DECEMBER 2007

Vietnam - a surging new market?

Vietnam has attracted a record $15 billion in foreign direct investment so far this year, up nearly 40 per cent from the same period last year, an official said. The amount strengthened booming Vietnam’s reputation as the new Asian magnet for investment, thanks to low wages, high literacy and a youthful population. Of the fresh capital, more than $13 billion come from 1,283 newly licensed projects and the remainder from the expansions of existing projects, said Phan Huu Thang, director of the Foreign Investment Department under the Ministry of Planning and Investment.

“Most of the new projects invest in services and technologies,” Thang said, adding that investors from Asia make up most of the fresh investment capital. South Korea took the lead with $3.68 billion, or 24.5 per cent of the total of newly registered capital, followed by the British Virgins Islands with $3.5 billion, Singapore with $1.55 billion and Taiwan with $1.14 billion. “The figures show that Vietnam is becoming a more attractive destination in Asia for foreign investors,” Thang said. Thang forecast that the total inflow into Vietnam would exceed $16 billion this year, a substantial jump over the initial target of $13 billion.

This report, published in the Bangkok Post adds credence to other recent resportse that Thailand has been downgrading its status as an investment destination, whereas Vietnam has been working in the opposite direction.

Last year, the Thai interim government implemented increasingly nationalistic policies and the investment climate here has deterred many would-be investors.

Only a few web companies are operating successfully out there at the moment but, with Vietnam’s business environment expanding as it is, we conclude it won’t be long before all this changes. It extends our Asian exposure to boot. With this in mind, we have set up a strategic partner in Ho Chi Minh City with the long-term view of gaining market share.

In just four days following the launch of www.vietnamwebdesign.net, the site got to #15 on Google and #2 on Yahoo! for “vietnam web design”. It just goes to show how little the Vietnamese market is saturated with web design companies competing for business. We’ve just returned from a week’s fact-finding mission, which went very well.

We have also launched webdesignbeijing.net and will be setting up the same deal there some time soon.

Online marketing and our new year’s policies

For the past couple of years our online marketing rates have remained stagnant. Most people would concur that search engine marketing could be counted amongst the most obscure, deafeningly dull subjects to discuss over a quiet beer, even though there’s big money in it.

This year we have adjusted our rates slightly upwards and have excluded SEO from our overall package prices. After research, we found that we have been significantly cheaper than other companies in the market, so we are now asking for a performance bonus on a results-based platform, which we feel is a far fairer model for our clients - and us, of course.

For more information, you can download our new, unique pricing model by clicking here.

Flash and the art of motorcycle maintenance

Once upon a time on a dusty maidan there hung a rectangular flag. It was solid purple except there was a thin ring-shaped hole that had been cut out of it through which one could see the sky.

The ring resembled the numeral zero, which had yet to be invented; it was millennia hence before an Indian mathematician made it so. The flag, at the time, proved to be a mathematical impossibility.

One fine day a tortoise walked by the flag and admired its beauty but had no reason to analyse it. By chance, just at that moment, he was greeted by Zeno, a Greek philosopher from Elea.

Zeno said to the tortoise: “It is not wind nor flag; neither one is moving. The Fifth Patriarch taught me that reality is at once immutable and unchanging; only plurality changes; motion is but a mere illusion of the senses.” The tortoise merely nodded in confused agreement.

Google could well be a product of the great Zeno himself as it too doesn’t recognise “movement”, and in fact uses this post-invention argument detrimentally to websites that employ such “pluralities”.

The moral of this story: use Flash as an element, not as the site itself, as Google can neither read nor understand it; it thinks it is “pure illusion”
when it comes to being recognised and, as such, is summarily ignored.

Websites do not achieve good rankings when wholly developed using Flash. And for those who do: sorry, but zero does now exist. You may have a cracking website but the Flash paradox ensures you will receive no online revenue from it.

Best Real Estate Web Awards 2007

V9 Design & Build was nominated last year for the Best Real Estate Web Awards 2007 for the development of the Soho Properties website.

Not that we won, but it was a surprise to be nominated and an accolade to our efforts in making the site what it is.

Google’s downgrading - should we worry?

We must admit to being absolutely mortified one afternoon in late October last year when we were demoted from having a Google PageRank™ (PR) of 5 to that of 3; but it didn’t affect placement and we still retain #1 positions.

No one except Google really knows for sure why PR dropped for some news sites, but it certainly looked like an extension of last September’s paid directory massacre. At the time, Google targeted some well-known sites in the search marketing world and mainstream news too. Sites included heavyweights such as:
* Washington Post (from 7 to 5)
* Washington Times (from 6 to 4)
* Forbes.com (from 7 to 5)
* New Scientist (from 7 to 5)
* Seattle Times (from 6 to 4)

Google reported that: “selling links muddies the quality of our links-based reputation and makes it harder for many search engines (not just Google) to return relevant results.”

One enlightened reader responded: “The Google conundrum is such that although it doesn’t count its own paid advertising text links results, it does count everyone else’s…and they affect algorithmic results. In my opinion, that’s the flaw in the model.”

As per usual, one rule for Google and another for the rest of us.

Political Corner: What has broadband got to do with the new government?

Mid-way through December last year, Cisco exec Howard Charney, a 35-year veteran of Silicon Valley, lectured at an information and communications conference in Bangkok.

The emphasis of his address was that “education was the route to a better life and the internet has the potential in providing it, even to remote rural areas via wireless communications”.

In Thailand, only 11 to 12 percent of people currently use it, but the hope is that in the future this figure will grow exponentially to empower all Thai people.

That’s all very well and good but steady on here tiger: unless Thailand’s communications infrastructure is vastly improved, by the time this growth happens there will be more people like me who have fallen victim to Tourette’s Syndrome because of access speeds. To become “an operational base for knowledge-intensive industries to operate”, this incentive will inevitably fail unless something is done about the network.

Let’s hope the new government will seriously address this issue, for all our sakes.

CD-Rom Cards: outdated technology or social opportunity?

It’s old, neglected and gimmicky but the giving out of CD-Rom cards instead of 125gsm plastic with your name and logo written on it, whilst not all that practical, could well catch on as a valuable alternative at networking meetings.

In fact, the term “networking” could take on new meaning: on exchange of cards, you plug a networkee’s card straight into the lappie you’re wearing around your neck instead of actually listening to what they have to say. Conversation killers such as this may be the very blessing in disguise you had been dreaming of at such events.

If you find this in any way appealing, take a look at our own CD-Rom Card.

Profile: New clients round-up, 2008

The Light of Buddhadharma Foundation International: I chose this site not particularly for its design - because we didn’t design it; we updated it - but because LBDFI acts as the primary sponsor of the Pali Tipitika Chanting International Council which meets all the living expenses of bhikkhus who travel to ceremonies from within India. It’s an organization endorsed by His Holiness The Dalai Lama.

MegaBooks Thailand: This is a novel idea, if you pardon the pun. We created this site for Richard Murray, who will be selling books and magazines online at discounted prices and delivered straight to your door. It’s about time we had greater access to literature.

X2 Resorts: This was purely an SEO exercise and site hits have grown immesurably after we turned three Flash sites into html sites to get the inside pages indexed. The manager said he wanted to kiss me on the strength of it, which was complimentary but nervy in the extreme.

Thann: I included this site for one specific reason: the marketing executive is the fussiest, pixel-perfect client known to man. It took eons to get it exactly right and when it was, he changed it until it wasn’t. It’s a massage and therapy website, based in Brunei. I have an eerie feeling it’s not quite finished, even yet.

FileVault: This is a New Zealand online back-up system website that was expertly thought through. Its director is not too dissimilar to the man from Thann and again, the end-product needed to be “perfect”. Interestingly, neither men were that fussed with online marketing. Maybe they should be talking to Zeno rather than us?

Vietnam, foreign direct investment up 40 percent

Technorati Tags: Vietnam, foreign direct investment up 40 percent

When one looks at the SEO industry for services, you will inevitably find packages on offer such as “Basic, Silver and Gold”. These packages are progressively costed according to the “number of keywords targeted” and “guaranteed number of keywords”. This doesn’t make any sense to us; it’s too vague and opaque.

In practice, the industry tends to charge a monthly fee for these services (in the case above $100, $200 and $300) for research analysis and implementation, when this is a one-off exercise. This, we feel it is unethical, as it ties the client into monthly installments for work that has already been completed. In contrast, V9 offers a one-off site optimization fee of $250 for up to 20 pages (larger sites are charged pro-rata).

To further compound package costs, these companies then add to their SEO services by charging exorbitant fees for link building (i.e. obtaining links from other websites). Again, in the case above, they tend to charge figures such as $1,200 for 100 links that have a Google PageRank™ of 3. We charge $100 for the same but with quite a few sites that have a Google PageRank™ of 4 and above.

Some might be tempted to ask: “Clearly your pricing policy is utter madness? Why don’t you charge more?” Because we charge by the hour, not by the link; because we charge on results, not on false guarantees; and because we have developed a much fairer system of results-based pricing, which is only payable once we have secured these results. Okay, you might say, so you have got our site’s keywords to #1, but what if they’re not searched on? We thought of this too and have built a safeguard into the model.

V9’s Placement Bonus
Before starting a campaign, as a team (the client and V9), we identify and agree on five keywords we will be competing for traffic and identify the corresponding number of “clickthroughs”, taken from the three major search engines (these rates are merely used to determine keyword popularity). Bonuses are then based on three levels of performance: the #1 position; the #2 or #3 positions; and in the first twenty. We calculate the bonus using the combined results of Google, Yahoo! and MSN from seobooks.com as a guide; we then factor in a price in US$ from a defined range to arrive at the final sum. This is so you know from the outset what fee would become payable if we secure placement. We obviously choose the best keyword performer for our bonus but have built self-regulation into the model, so that even if a keyword reached the #1 position but had 0 clickthroughs — and is not that popular— the Placement Bonus would also be zero. Obviously, we wouldn’t have suggested it in the first place, but it’s an example of how the bonus system works.

Six months following the initial review and on-site keyword implementation, we then review your website to determine how each of the five keywords we agreed on performed. At that time, we also discuss how the next six-months’ campaign is to be run and rewarded.

But also, we ask for a Placement Bonus, based on the above figures. To be fair, we weight the top result according to the search engine’s popularity stats. As of August 2007, the percentages were: Google: 64%; Yahoo!: 23%; MSN: 8%; Ask: 3.5%; Others: 1.5%. So, if for example, we achieved the #1 position on Google for any of the targeted search terms which received 1,000+ clickthroughs, a $750 bonus would become payable; if on Yahoo!, 23/64*$750, or $269; and if on MSN, 8/64*$750, or $94 would be payable. This weighting effect balances the bonus out equitably.

Timing and patience
Directory submissions do take time to filter through, sometimes up to three months, and new sites can take up to six months due to Google’s “sandbox” which inhibits links during that initial period. We know this only too well and have structured our model taking the long-term view. So, for new sites, we do ask for more time.

In conclusion
Our associates, Soho Properties, receive on average 700 unique hits per day which, when converted into sales, makes up a sizeable percentage their overall business revenue. We think our Placement Bonus is fair price to pay for this.

SEO packages -  a unique and fairer pricing model

Technorati Tags: SEO packages -  a unique and fairer pricing model

ChaCha is a search engine which brings a fundamentally different kind of intelligence to the problem - human brain power.

The current implementation of ChaCha offers a combination of automation and people-powered search. The results can be organized by a vertical, like images or news. Also it has a set of related searches. But by far the most interesting and unusual aspect of ChaCha is its people-powered search.

ChaCha employs people to help users sift through the results. This is cleverly done using a familiar chat interface. When you first come to the site, you are presented with a standard search box. Type in a query and you get back a traditional list of matches. In the testing we did, we found both the performance and quality of the results to be quite good.

If for some reason you are not happy with the quality of the results, you can request a chat session with a (human) Search Guide to help you find what you’re looking for. The Guides get paid for this service - the one I spoke to told me she gets paid $5 per search hour, which is the level for Guides after they reach “pro level”. She also said there are about 10,000 Guides in total, working from home.

ChaCha, a search engine with a difference

Technorati Tags: ChaCha, a search engine with a difference

No one except Google really knows for sure why PR dropped for these sites but it certainly looks like an extension of September’s paid directory massacre. This time Google targeted some well-known sites in the search marketing world and mainstream news too. Sites include:
* Statcounter (from 10 to 6)
* Engadget (from 7 to 5)
* AutoBlog (from 6 to 4)
* Problogger (from 6 to 4)
* Copyblogger (from 6 to 4)
* AdesBlog (from 7 to 5)
* Search Engine Journal (from 7 to 4)
* Quick Online Tips (from 6 to 3)
* Search Engine Roundtable (from 7 to 4)
* Blog Herald (from 6 to 4)
* Weblog Tools Collection (from 6 to 4)
* JohnTP (from 6 to 4)
* Coolest Gadgets (from 5 to 3)
* CyberNet News (from 6 to 4)

It looks like mainstream websites that were selling links were also penalized:

* Washington Post (from 7 to 5)
* Washington Times (from 6 to 4)
* Charlotte Observer (from 6 to 4)
* Forbes.com (from 7 to 5)
* SFGate.com (from 7 to 5)
* Sun Times (from 7 to 5)
* New Scientist (from 7 to 5)
* Seattle Times (from 6 to 4)

According to Matt Cutts, Google’s spokesperson: In an earlier post I said that “The best links are not paid, or exchanged after out-of-the-blue emails–the best links are earned and given by choice.” Given the recent discussions of paid links, I wanted to talk about this issue in more depth.

“SEO geeks may remember the SearchKing lawsuit regarding link selling that was filed in 2002 and dismissed in 2003. Or they may have read through our quality guidelines, especially the part that says “Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank.” Those people can probably guess that Google does consider buying text links for PageRank purposes to be outside our quality guidelines.

“But for everyone else, let me talk about why we consider it outside our guidelines to get PageRank via buying links. Google (and pretty much every other major search engine) uses hyperlinks to help determine reputation. Links are usually editorial votes given by choice, and link-based analysis has greatly improved the quality of web search. Selling links muddies the quality of link-based reputation and makes it harder for many search engines (not just Google) to return relevant results. When the Berkeley college newspaper has six online gambling links (three casinos, two for poker, and one bingo) on its front page, it’s harder for search engines to know which links can be trusted.

“At this point, someone usually asks me: “But can’t you just not count the bad links? On the dailycal.org, I see the words ‘Sponsored Resources’. Can’t search engines detect paid links?” Yes, Google has a variety of algorithmic methods of detecting such links, and they work pretty well. But these links make it harder for Google (and other search engines) to determine how much to trust each link. A lot of effort is expended that could be otherwise be spent on improving core quality (relevance, coverage, freshness, etc.). And you can imagine how the people trying to get link popularity have responded. Someone forwarded me an email from a “text link broker” that included this suggestion:

“The email later suggests “to use unique locations for ad links like within content.” At the point where people are recommending ways to make paid links less detectable (e.g. by removing any labels or indication that the links are sold), I wouldn’t be surprised if search engines begin to take stronger action against link buying in the near future.

“A natural question is: what is Google’s current approach to link buying? Of course our link-weighting algorithms are the first line of defense, but it’s difficult to catch every problem case in adversarial information retrieval, so we also look for problems and leaks in different semi-automatic ways. Reputable sites that sell links won’t have their search engine rankings or PageRank penalized–a search for [daily cal] would still return dailycal.org. However, link-selling sites can lose their ability to give reputation (e.g. PageRank and anchortext).

“What if a site wants to buy links purely for visitor click traffic, to build buzz, or to support another site? In that situation, I would use the rel=”nofollow” attribute. The nofollow tag allows a site to add a link that abstains from being an editorial vote. Using nofollow is a safe way to buy links, because it’s a machine-readable way to specify that a link doesn’t have to be counted as a vote by a search engine.”

“One reader commented: “The Google conundrum is that although Google doesn’t count it’s own paid advertising text links for anchor/ inbound link benefit in its algorithmic results - Google does count everyone elses text advertising links…. and they affect the algorithmic results. In my opinion - that’s the flaw in the model…

Or, “You (and indeed all SEs) should be aiming for a nice, dynamic equilibrium. Link spam will happen for as long as links are a part of the ranking algorithm. Get used to the idea, and think about how to manage it. I also find it a shade distasteful that Google, who had more than a little to do with the birth of the text link industry when you introduced the Toolbar PR meter, is now trying to kill it off. It feels like I’m watching someone throttle their own kids.”

And, “Some Authority sites make a living out of selling advertisements (e.g. Internet Yellow Pages, Price Comparison, News, Content portals, Niche Directories like hotel guides etc.). Flash ads, Jpeg ads, Net Sky-Scrapers – Their main purpose is to create brand exposure and pass traffic, I can’t see why Text ads should be different in the SE eyes. An advertiser buys web presence in order to gain users coming into his site, if this helps in getting better ranks – in many cases its just a byproduct, not the main issue. Most site operators don’t know the rel=”nofollow” and it’s not really a Consensus yet. Maybe you just need to focus on the relevancy of the Linking page/media so you could determine that dailycal got very little to do with poker, or is it?”

According to WebProNews: “Google sells links and should not penalize others for selling them too. Why should Google be able to tell me how to link and whom to link to? What is wrong with linking and why should I have to put a no-follow tag on a link when I genuinely like a site? How does their algorithm know that I received payment for a link? Google is simply out to crush competition. Don’t they remember their roots? It was the webmasters who were the first adopters of Google’s search engine. It was us who made you rich Google!  One blogger called it a Google “bitch slap!” Is Google retaliating against me for criticizing them in my blog?

Google drops visible PR of many blogs and mainstream news sites

Technorati Tags: Google drops visible PR of many blogs and mainstream news sites

PageRank is a numeric value from 1-10 that represents how important a page is on the web. When one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself is. The importance of each vote is taken into account when PageRank is calculated. It is one of the key factors that determines a page’s ranking in the search results. It isn’t the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one. PageRank is also known as “PR”.

Not all links are counted by Google though. For instance, they filter out links what are known as link farms. Webmasters cannot control which sites link to their sites, but they can control which sites they link out to. For this reason, links into a site cannot harm the site, but links from a site can be harmful if they link to penalised sites.

How is PageRank calculated?
To calculate the PageRank for a page, all of its inbound links are taken into account. These are links from within the site and links from outside the site.

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn))

In this equation ‘t1 - tn’ are pages linking to page A, ‘C’ is the number of outbound links that a page has and ‘d’ is a damping factor, usually set to 0.85. We can think of it in a simpler way: PageRank = 0.15 + 0.85 * (a “share” of the PageRank of every page that links to it); “share” = the linking page’s PageRank divided by the number of outbound links on the page.

A page “votes” an amount of PageRank on to each page that it links to. The amount of PageRank that it has to vote with is a little less than its own PageRank value (its own value * 0.85). This value is shared equally between all the pages that it links to. From this, we can conclude that a link from a page with PR4 and PR5 outbound links is worth more than a link from a page with PR8 and 100 outbound links. The page that links to yours is important but the number of links on that page is also important. The more links there are on a page, the less PageRank value your page will receive from it.

If the PageRank value differences between PR1, PR2,…..PR10 were equal then that conclusion would hold up, but many people believe that the values between PR1 and PR10 (the maximum) are set on a logarithmic scale, and there is very good reason for believing it. Nobody outside Google knows for sure one way or the other, but the chances are high that the scale is logarithmic, or similar. If so, it means that it takes a lot more additional PageRank for a page to move up to the next PageRank level than it did to move up from the previous PageRank level. The result is that it reverses the previous conclusion, so that a link from a PR8 page that has lots of outbound links is worth more than a link from a PR4 page that has only a few outbound links.

Note that when a page votes its PageRank value to other pages, its own PageRank is not reduced by the value of that voting. It isn’t a transfer of PageRank; it is simply a vote according to PageRank value.

Internal linking
A website has a maximum amount of PageRank that is distributed between its pages by internal links. This maximum PageRank equals the number of pages in the site x 1. The maximum is increased by inbound links from other sites and decreased by outbound links to other sites. We are talking about the overall PageRank in the site and not the PageRank of any individual page. The maximum amount of PageRank in a site increases as the number of pages in the site increases. The more pages a site has, the more PageRank it has. By linking poorly, it is possible to fail to reach the site’s maximum PageRank, but it is not possible to exceed it.

Inbound links
Inbound links (links into the site from the outside) are one way to increase a site’s total PageRank. The other is to add more pages. Where the links come from doesn’t matter. The linking page’s PageRank is important, but so is the number of links going from that page. For instance, if you are the only link from a page that has a PR2, you will receive an injection of 0.15 + 0.85(2/1) = 1.85 into your site, whereas a link from a PR8 page that has another 99 links from it will increase your site’s PageRank by 0.15 + 0.85(7/100) = 0.2095.

Outbound links
Outbound links are a drain on a site’s total PageRank. They leak PageRank. To counter the drain, try to ensure that the links are reciprocated. Because of the PageRank of the pages at each end of an external link, and the number of links out from those pages, reciprocal links can gain or lose PageRank. You need to take care when choosing where to exchange links.

The “rel” attribute
As of 18th January 2005, Google, together with other search engines, recognised a new attribute to the anchor tag. The attribute is “rel”, and it is used as follows: link text. The attribute tells Google to ignore the link completely. The link won’t help the target page’s PageRank, and it won’t help its rankings. It is as though the link doesn’t exist. With this attribute, there is no longer any need for javascript, forms, or any other method of hiding links from Google.

So how much additional PageRank do we need to move up the toolbar?
The values shown in the Google toolbar are not the actual PageRank figures. According to the equation, and to the creators of Google, the billions of pages on the web average out to a PageRank of 1.0 per page. So the total PageRank on the web is equal to the number of pages on the web x 1, which equals a lot of PageRank spread around the web. What Google does is divide the full range of actual PageRanks on the web into 10 parts - each part is represented by a value as shown in the toolbar. So the toolbar values only show what part of the overall range a page’s PageRank is in, and not the actual PageRank itself. The numbers in the toolbar are just labels.

Many people believe that the divisions are based on a logarithmic scale, rather than the equal divisions of a linear scale. Let’s assume that it is a logarithmic, base 10 scale, and that it takes 10 properly linked new pages to move a site’s important page up 1 toolbar point. It will take 100 new pages to move it up another point, 1,000 new pages to move it up one more, 10,000 to the next, and so on. That’s why moving up at the lower end is much easier that at the higher end. In reality, the base is unlikely to be 10. Some people think it is around the 5 or 6 mark, and maybe even less. Even so, it still gets progressively harder to move up a toolbar point at the higher end of the scale.

What is PageRank?

Technorati Tags: What is PageRank?

By Mark Daoust

If you pay any attention to the search engine optimization community, you have probably heard about Google’s sandbox. Knowing exactly what the sandbox is might be a little confusing, but it is an important concept to know if you hope to eventually be successful with Google.

What is the Sandbox?

Before we get too far into an explanation as to what Google’s sandbox is, it must be noted that not everyone even agrees that the sandbox exists. The sandbox is actually nothing more than a theory developed to explain what many different SEO experts have witnessed with their listings. Whether or not the sandbox really exists is actually irrelevant when we know that the effects of the sandbox exist.

Google’s sandbox is a relatively new filter that appeared to be put in place back in March of 2004. This happened after the widely publicized updates of Austin and Florida, and the implementation of what is known as the Austin update. If you are not sure what those are, there is no need to worry as those updates are now for the most part in the past. The sandbox filter seems to affect nearly all new websites placing them on an initial “probation” status. The effect of this is that new websites may get into Google’s SERP’s (search engine results pages) relatively quickly and may even perform well for a couple of weeks. When the filter is applied to the new website it is referred to as being put in the “sandbox”. The new website will still show in the result pages, but it will not rank well regardless of how much original, well optimized content and regardless of how many quality inbound links the site may have. The filter restrains new websites from having immediate success in the search engine result pages.

The sandbox filter seems to affect almost all new websites, with very few exceptions. It is important to note that the filter is not a punishment for anything the webmaster did with their new website. The filter is merely an initiation period for new websites.

The sandbox filter also affects more competitive keyword driven sites more than sites that key in on less competitive keywords. If your website focuses on very competitive keywords, you are likely to remain in the sandbox for a longer period of time than if you focus on keywords that are relatively non-competitive keywords.

Discuss Google’s Sandbox in Our Search Engine Forums

Why Does the Sandbox Exist?

There is a lot of debate as to whether the sandbox filter is a good thing for Google to implement or not. Obviously webmasters who are trying to get their sites well positioned in Google do not like the sandbox filter as it prevents them from receiving the huge levels of traffic that a top listing in Google can bring. The filter was not implemented at random, however, and there is some good reasoning for the filter existing.

As the SEO community figured out the basic elements of Google’s ranking algorithm, inbound links, original content rich with keywords, and the proper use of anchor text, search engine spammers began to take advantage of these elements. Search engine spammers would setup websites that were in clear violation of Google’s policies with the knowledge that eventually their website would be banned from the listings. This, however, did not matter. If a search engine spammer could get their website to rank well in Google for even one month, the profits they could make from that one month would justify the cost of building the site in the first place. All they needed to do in the future was to rebuild their spam websites with different domains and slightly different content.
The idea for spammers was a simple one. Capitalize off of Google’s traffic for as long as they can (before they get banned), then do it all over again with a new website. The method was extremely effective and easy to implement.

What made this all the more easy to accomplish was Google’s extremely fast indexing. While other search engines would take several months to index a new website, Google could index a website in as little as one month (they are now indexing sites within a few days). Search engine spammers were living large off of Google’s generosity.

To solve this problem, Google determined that it would compromise. They would still index websites quickly, attempting to get as much new, fresh content out to the general public as possible, but they would not trust new websites implicitly as they had in the past. All new websites that were launched would be put on probation. As time passed, and as the sites continued to pass any spam filters they ran, the website will not be held back from performing well in the rankings. Eventually, after quite a bit of time had passed, a site would be allowed to “leave” the sandbox and join the rest of the established websites.

How Does This Affect My Website?

If you have a new website, there is a good chance that you will be placed in the sandbox. This should be expected, but it should not change the way you build your website or market it. You should use the sandbox filter to your advantage.

Google still ranks websites in much the same way that they had in the past. Websites are judged on the quality of their inbound links and the quality of their content. Google will continue to change how they evaluate inbound links and content, but the basic elements of their rankings will remain the same.

While your website is in the sandbox, you should use this time to build your traffic using regular traffic building methods such as writing articles, building a strong community of visitors, and partnering with websites that offer some synergy to your visitors. During your time on probation, you have an excellent opportunity to build all the elements that cause websites to perform well in the search engines. When you finally do leave the sandbox, your website should be very well positioned within Google.

Is My Website in the Sandbox?

When webmasters learn about the sandbox filter, their first question is always whether or not their website has been placed in it. Determining whether or not you are in the sandbox is a relatively easy task to do.

First, being placed in the sandbox is different than having your website banned. If you do a search for your domain in Google and they return zero results for your website (and you had been previously listed in Google), there is a chance that you have been banned. One of the best ways to determine if you have been banned is to look at your log files to see if Google is visiting your website. Banned websites typically do not see Google visit their websites, regardless of who is linking to them.

If you have not been banned, but do not rank well with Google, you should look at the quality of your content and the quality of your inbound links. You should also see if you rank well for non-competitive keywords. Remember how the filter affects competitive keywords more than less competitive keywords? Well, you can use this to determine if you have been sandboxed. Finally, if you rank well in all the other major search engines, but do not show up at all in Google’s rankings, you have probably been sandboxed.

Is There A Way to Get Out of the Sandbox?

The quick answer to this is yes, there is a way out of the sandbox, but you will not like the answer. The answer is to simply wait. The sandbox filter is not a permanent filter and is only intended to reduce search engine spam. It is not intended to hold people back from succeeding. So eventually, if you continue to build your site as it should be built, you will leave the sandbox and join the other established websites.

Again, if your website has been placed in the sandbox you should use this time to your advantage. It is a great opportunity to build your traffic sources outside of the search engines. If you have a website that does well in the search engines, you may be tempted to ignore other proven methods of traffic building such as building a community, or building strong inbound links through partnerships. However, if you establish traffic sources outside of search engines, when you finally leave the sandbox, you will see a welcome increase in your traffic levels.

Conclusion

Google has been going to great lengths to cut out on search engine spam. Some have faulted them on the lengths that they are going to claiming that it is effecting legitimate sites as well as the spam websites. While this is probably the case, as an owner of a website you need to place yourself in the position of Google and ask yourself what they are really looking for in a website. Google is looking for websites that offer quality content. Google still relies on the natural voting system that was first used to establish pagerank. They may change the way that they qualify content or inbound links, but the basic elements of a quality website will always remain the same.

No website owner in their right mind will “like” Google’s sandbox. However, a smart website owner will use the sandbox as an opportunity to build a website that Google simply cannot refuse.

Mark Daoust is the owner of Site Reference. You can visit the site at
http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Search-Engines/Google-s-Giant-Sandbox.html

Google’s Sandbox

Technorati Tags: Google’s Sandbox

Coming from a London-based background, where the cost of running a web design agency was huge in comparison to the wage differentials in this part of Asia, V9 Design & Build is a leading web design agency based in Bangok, Thailand, providing web design outsourcing solutions for our overseas clients.

We focus on developing websites and applications using html and Flash and provide ecommerce shopping cart solutions in both php and asp, expert SEO, content management systems and WordPress integration, all at a fraction of the cost of developed countries.

Our team of quality designers and programmers deliver cost-effective interactive web technology and web site development solutions without compromising on quality for a wide a range of businesses and individuals.

We specialise in building websites and high-end ecommerce applications, providing both local and outsourcing web and expert SEO services, offering innovative and affordable web solutions. We now work for many clients in the UK, US, Australia, Austria, Singapore and Brunei, and the list is constantly growing.

web design outsourcing

Technorati Tags: web design outsourcing

Feed Reader
The best way to learn about blogs and blogging is to read, or at least scan, lots of blogs. One of the wonders of blogs is that you can have every new post from every blog you want to read delivered to your desktop or to online location via RSS, so you can easily read and scan the posts of many blogs in a very short time. Newsgator is a good online choice for feed reading and also has a version that integrates with Outlook. You can also use a free online service known as Bloglines.

Subscriber Centre
You need to make it easy for your blog visitors to subscribe to your blog’s RSS feed — so they can read your blog in their favorite feed reader. The best way to do this is to go to FeedBurner and burn your own RSS feed there and use the tools they provide to set up automatic subscriber links so people who want to use Bloglines, Google Reader, MyYahoo or Pluck, for instance, can click on one button to subscribe.

Email Subscription Option
A lot of people will never get the whole feed thing, but everyone gets email. Create an option for people to subscribe by giving you their email address — they will simply receive your blog posts like an email message. FeedBurner offers this service for free. FeedBlitz is another option or, if you already have an autoresponder email list service they may offer this service.

Blog and RSS directories
There are hundreds of blog and RSS directories and getting listed in many can be a good thing. I use a piece of software called RSS Submit, but you can also submit your blog and feed by hand via our submissions list.

Ping Service
Pinging is a term used for letting the various blog and RSS directories know when you have posted new content. Again, FeedBurner offers this as an automatic option called PingShot and you should activate it. PingGoat and Ping O Matic are other options but they require that you visit and update your record each time you post new content.

Bookmark Manager
As you surf around the web or hop from blog to blog you may find sites that you want to point out to your readers. Online bookmark managers allow you to bookmark and categorize web and blog pages as you collect them and are a great tool for managing all of the stuff you find on the web. You can use del.icio.us but BlinkList does a fine job as well.

Republish Your Feed Headlines
The ability to republish your blog posts on other web pages, sites you own or sites of strategic partners is a great way to expose folks to your blog content. One more time we turn to FeedBurner for a painless way to republish your blog post to any web page you choose with something they call BuzzBoost.

Essential Blogging Tools

Technorati Tags: Essential Blogging Tools

How do I start using RSS feeds?
The first thing you need is something called a news reader. This is software that checks RSS feeds and lets you read any new articles that have been added to them. There are many different versions, some of which are accessed using a browser, and some of which are downloadable applications.

Browser-based news readers let you catch up with your RSS feed subscriptions from any computer, whereas downloadable applications let you store them on your main computer, in the same way that you either download your e-mail using Outlook, or keep it on a web-based service like Yahoo!.

Once you have chosen a news reader, all you have to do is to decide what content you want to receive in your news reader, by finding and subscribing to the relevant RSS feeds. For example, if you would like the latest financial news stories, simply visit www.ft.com and you will notice an RSS button. This will lead you to a page that lists a number of different financial news feeds. Simply copy and paste the url into your news reader and the feed will then be displayed in plain text.

News Readers
A list of a few popular news readers are: Bloglines, My Yahoo!, Plus Pluck, NewsGator, Newz Crawler, FeedDemon and Newsfire.

Using RapidFeeds
You can also add content to your own site by signing up at www.rapidfeeds.com for free. Add all the RSS feeds you want to read into MySite. Then, after adjusting the settings — including colour, column width, display descriptions and number of stories, copy and paste the resulting code into your web page in the programming language of you choice.

Submitting Your RSS Feeds
By submitting your RSS feeds and blogs to well-established directories that will boost your site’s traffic tremendously, click here.