I have spent a lot of time reading search engine tricks and techniques. During this time one thing that kept reappearing is the idea of a sandbox mode. I wanted to experiment with driving traffic to a few sites through expert links so I decided to create a blog. I chose Google’s Blogger tool hoping that somehow it would give me a boost to Google rankings or a higher PR from that link.
Google Sandbox Mode Demythified
I set up my blog Everything Ecommerce on December 17th. After setting up the site I then went around and submitted it to the major search engines, and began commenting on other blogs in order to increase the number of inbound links. I also noticed on the Blogger account tools a link to have ads by Google on your site. After completing the registration processes my site was approved for the Google ads in only 1 hour. That was something that really caught my eye. I had previously submitted sites that I wanted to run Google’s ads on and the approval process took much longer.
Next I setup the Google Adwords code on my site and began seeing public service announcement ads. I expected this since Google’s documentation stated that these ads are shown until GoogleBot is able to index the site and present relevant ads. In just a few hours of time from adding my first post my site began to show advertisements based on the content of my site.
I was stunned to have targeted ads showing up so soon so I did a search in the Google Tool bar for “everything ecommerce” without the quotes. My site came up #2 out of 1,840,000! Not too bad for a day’s worth of work and no real site optimization, just relevant content related to my site title and address. Within 2 weeks from the site going live the site is now #1 for searches on everything ecommerce. I doubted that I will receive any traffic from such a bizarre key word phrase, but I used it to just test if my site was indexed or not.
This little experiment has taught me a couple of interesting things.
1. If there is a sandbox it can be circumvented by the use of google adwords on the site.
2. Content is king. Well written content optimized for your target audience will deliver search results. I try to stress this to my clients, it was nice to see it working in practice.
3. Google still loves blogs. With their continually updated content and relevant long tail text, they are a great resource for bringing targeted traffic to your site.
4. Traffic comes from the strangest places. Looking at my referrers, I found 6 entries for google searches of Everything Britney Spears.
This is just the start of what I hope to accomplish with my blog. Over the next few months I will be actively trying to enhance it’s PR and incoming links. I hope that this will then raise the commercial sites that I am really trying to promote. Whatever the results, I’ll be sure to keep you updated.
I started working on internet related projects in 1993. Originally I
developed websites as a way to show my computer animation and virtual
reality projects. I spent my twenties growing up with the Internet,
and in the last 10 years I have built over 100 successful online
stores, countless other sites, got married, bought a house and started
a family. All in a career that didn\’t exist when I graduated high
school 12 years ago.
http://everything-ecommerce.blogspot.com
