Putting up an online storefront is an innovative method of starting a business or generating sales by expanding the reach of your current business, and whether you are opening your shop online for the first time or have already started down the path, you can boost your online sales through techniques that are helping todays online businesses thrive. Any or all, or some of these strategies can be integrated to help increase traffic, and drive more people to your site and make it more attractive to prospective customers.

As a marketing strategy for increasing a site’s relevance, An Leeds SEO considers how search algorithms work and know what people are lookingfor. An Leeds SEOs efforts may involve a site’s coding, presentation, and structure, as well as fixing problems that could stop search engine indexing programs from fully spidering a site. Other, more helpful stuff may include adding unique content to a site,and making sure that the content is easily indexed by search engine robots, enabling the site to look more appealing to users.

Leeds SEOs Can Help Generate More Sales

An Leeds SEO may help generate a return on investment. However, search engines are not paid for organic search traffic, so their algorithms may change, and there would be no guarantees of continued referrals. However, due to this portent for the lack of guarantees and certainty, a company that relies much on search engine traffic could suffer major losses if the search engines stop sending or attracting web visitors. According to notable web analysts, operators should liberate themselves from dependence on search engine traffic. A top ranked Leeds SEO blog, Leeds SEOmoz.org, has analyzed that “Search marketers, in a twist of irony, receive a very small share of their traffic from search engines.” Instead, their main sources of traffic are links from other websites.

Keywords Are Crucial In The Web

Search terms are important. Even ones most frequent and loyal customers are likely to discover your site by searching. Having relevant keywords in your page titles, product titles and links could make all the difference when one tries to lead customers to your site. For those with established sites, it is imperative not to t forget that keeping your keywords current and relevant is an everyday thing. Ensure that you check your Web logs regularly to see what visitors search for on your site, and identify pages and products appropriately.

Relevant Content Matters

Adding as much relevant content as you can to your site improves your customers appreciation an experience, as well as the positioning of your site on the search engines. The important term here is relevant. Content that isnt related to your products could work against you, as it may confuse the potential customers and gives search bots the impression that youre tricking them. A better method to add relevant content to your site is to add descriptive paragraphs about each of your products, which are placed next to your photos. Use as much detail as possible and necessary, and be sure to use the terms people are most likely to enter when searching.

Here are five shortcuts that will help anyone engaged in a link building campaign to get better results, faster.

1)Remember The Link Building Exponential

Google has many ways of telling when a webmaster is creating an artificial network of links to a page, but savvy Bristol SEOs will avoid trouble by considering the link building exponential. This is a measurement based on the premise that incoming links to a page should increase more or less at the same rate as the popularity of the page. In other words, adding too many links too fast to a page that does not seem to merit them blow-up in your face. Avoid this setback by taking your time and get quality links.

2)Get Links From Pages That Are Closely Related To Your Own

My experience has shown me that some of the most valuable links you can possibly get are from web pages that use not only the same key words that you do, but which have links from the same pages that link to you. Get links from these perfectly related pages and the effect on your rankings will seem almost magical.

3)Identify Directories That Are Relevant To The Content Of Your Page

There must be tens of thousands of directories on the web and that number will only continue to grow. Some Bristol SEOs waste their time by registering their web page in any directory that will accept the listing, but I have found that it is worth spending the extra time to register the directories that have a direct relationship to the web page I am trying to place. I do not get as many links, but the links I do get have a much stronger effect on my rankings.

Finding the directories that are a good fit for the page you want to place is easy if you use two of Googles operators: INURL and INTITLE.

Say, for example, that you are trying to position a web site dedicated to graphic design, logically you would want to find all the directories that have a Graphic Design category and see them ordered by relevancy:

INURL: phrase returns all of the pages that contain phrase within its URL.

The search in Google would be:

INURL: web design + add url, or, INURL: web design add url, or, INURL: web design + add your site

Another option to find directories relevant to your web page is to use the operator INTITLE which shows all the pages that have the keywords in the title.

In this case the search would be:
INTITLE. phrase , which returns all the pages that contain phrase in its title.

The search in Google would be:
IN directory + web design

These simple steps can save countless hours in finding the right directories, and the links you can build from these focused sources will give your page more weight.

4)Position For Certain Regions Or Countries

Google determines the location of a page by the extension of its domain (ex. .uk, .es, .com.ar, etc). In the case that the domain has a generic suffix, (such as .com, .biz, .net, .org, etc.), Google will assume that the country of origin is the same as the country where the page is being hosted.

Depending on the content of the page I am working on, I will sometimes want to position the page in international AND country specific search engines. If this sounds like a strategy that would help you, simply concentrate your efforts on obtaining links from pages and directories which, in the eyes of Google, reside in the country you want to target.

5)Vary Your Anchor Text

Too many Bristol SEOs use only their main keywords in the anchor text that links to their page. I have found this to be bad practice, since search engines interpret these links to be unnatural when they find too many of them.

Get around this by switching the order of the key words in your anchor text to create new variations. For example, say you want to build links to a web page that specializes in link building, your anchor texts could read: link building service; cheap link building; effective link building, or link building company. Get 500 links using these four different descriptors, and you will get more than twice the effect as 1000 links using only link building. This strategy has worked for me, and it should work for you, too.

Who doesn’t want to get Top Ranking Positions in Google? 1st Page Placement in Google is NOT difficult, you need to follow Google Optimization Guidelines, and this Article has Summary of the Seven Fundamentals for Google Optimization.

Google optimization is about following Google guidelines, Google likes ethical Liverpool SEO practices, those Liverpool SEO practices which are to help website owners as well as Google and it has published guidelines for Liverpool SEOs here: http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/Liverpool SEO.html

Top 7 Fundamentals for Google Optimization

Fresh and Original Content

Clean and Validated Code

Easy and Accessible Navigation

Good Interlinking of Web pages

Healthy and Relevant Incoming Links

Domain Age and Registered Period For

Same Contacts at Site and Domain Registration

Fresh and Original Content
Google love fresh and original content on web page, selectable content/text copy of your web page, google can’t read content on images or at pics.

Clean and Validated Code
Clean and validate code helps google to crawl deeply, try to put content at the beginning of your web page, ignore nesting, javascript or comments, in fact try to shorten the text format with the help of external CSS.

Easy and Accessible Navigation
Text or image base navigation helps google to read, google bot can’t read javascript, dhtml, flash base navigation, try to avoid using these practices which google doesn’t like. Keep your navigation at top or left side of the web pages, make sure to add a sitemap page which will guide web surfers and web bots to each and every page of your website, if you have huge website then make sure to add at least all main categories’ links at sitemap page.

Good Interlinking of Web pages
Web links are like roads and streets at website, make sure all website’s internal links are text base or image base, with relevant content.

Healthy and Relevant Incoming Links
Google likes referred websites, specially referred from quality and relevant resources. The more referrer links the more top rankings. Here one thing should be remembered that one relevant incoming links is better than hundred irrelevant links.

Domain Age and Registered Period For
Google started keeping new registered domains in sandbox since April 2004, in sandbox almost all new domains kept on probationary period for 6 to 8 months, in some cases for longer period, Sandbox domains don’t get good rankings.

Google also likes to rank better to those domains which are registered for longer period like for 5 or 10 years, because whoever registered domains for longer period shows how much s/he is serious with her/his business and most probably won’t do SPAM with those domains.

Same Contacts at Site and Domain Registration
Google likes true businessmen and a true businessman doesn’t misguide his website visitors, google likes those websites which have physical mailing address to their contact pages and google compares it with that physical mailing address which is used in domain registering.

While the home page and Desktop Search will be an undeniable boost to Google’s share of the Search market, and maybe even a threat to Microsoft’s desktop dominance, it’s the pre-installation of the Google Toolbar that will be of most interest to SE marketers and optimizers around the world.

Currently a specialist ‘industry tool’ used predominantly by SE practitioners, the Google Toolbar may soon be automatically available to hundreds of thousands of mainstream computer users. As a result, Google PageRank and, by extension, search engine marketing and optimization look set to become part of mainstream vocabulary. (Well, maybe that’s a little optimistic… Perhaps they’re more likely to become part of the vocab of the computer savvy mainstream.)

So what does this all mean to Leeds SEO and SEM? In my humble opinion, the four most important implications of the Dell-Google agreement are:

1) Business decision makers will finally ‘get’ Leeds SEO

Although not overly helpful to SEMs and Leeds SEOs, Google PageRank is an ideal hook for busy decision makers. It’s very simple (in that it’s just a mark out of ten) and measurable, and it’s just THERE; you don’t have to go out of your way to see the PageRank of a site. It’s exactly what decision makers need to get their collective heads around Leeds SEO. They don’t have the time or inclination to understand the complexities of SERPs, IBLs, spiders, indexing, keyword phrases, metatags, article PR, Leeds SEO copywriting, etc. For better or worse, PageRank eliminates all shades of gray, leaving the two colors many decision makers understand best: black and white.

2) Business will become aware of the importance of PageRank

While most business decision makers are aware that a good search engine ranking is good for business, they’re not yet aware that a bad PageRank is bad for business. But with the Google Toolbar at their disposal, they soon will be. Decision makers will immediately start to use PageRank as a one-shot assessment of the credibility and authority of every website they visit. And in the process, they’ll become painfully aware of what their own PageRank says about their company.

3) Business will be more Search-proactive

Once decision makers realize that a bad PageRank is bad for business, they’ll be more likely to be proactive about their search engine ranking.

4) More businesses will dedicate a budget to Search

PageRank will become just a part of ‘doing business’. Just like TV, radio, and newspapers, it will be proactively communicating with decision makers, each and every day. While the mechanics of a high search ranking will remain a mystery to most, the Search DOMAIN will no longer be considered a black art, and SEMs and Leeds SEOs will no longer be considered witch-doctors. This will make decision makers far more comfortable dedicating a budget to Search (especially as they now have something measurable to grab a hold of – see point 1 above).

Conclusion

It appears that Google has once again made a very astute business decision. For better or worse, they’ve improved their position in Search and made significant inroads into the desktop software market. Will they threaten Microsoft’s desktop dominance? We’ll have to wait ‘n see. Will they enrich the SEM / Leeds SEO industry? In my humble opinion, yes! Google may not be everyone’s favorite search engine, but if they bring PageRank into the mainstream, the Search industry will finally attract the percentage of corporate advertising spend it deserves.

(See http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,18080942%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html for further details of the Dell-Google agreement.)

-Clean code and use of a CSS. It is still imperative to write in clean code and avoid proprietary tags or server side extensions such as the ones created/required by certain web design programs. Use a cascading style sheet to reduce attribute clutter.

-Keyword density. The accepted parameters call for keyword presence on each page in order to rank well for the particular term. Too little density and the search engines will not rank the site well and too much will be viewed as spam.

-Unidirectional and reciprocal linking. The more sites linking to one and the better the site will score. Note: reciprocal links are being discounted by Google in particular because of rampant, free for all link exchange abuse. Make sure anchor text reflects the keywords being targeted when conducting a link campaign.

The standard above guidelines are what many Liverpool SEOs are focusing on to help websites in the top rank arena.

While these are still the basics, we are seeing a a shift in the ranks where sites rank extremely well for a keyword without such term even being present on the page. How is this possible? The only possible explanation is the contextual text relationship or theme of a site.

Google seems to be at the forefront of this technology: the sites that are doing well even for terms that are not present in the text or anchor links are very rich in related content. Also, very important, the site relates to the particular key phrase. Let’s try an example: when searching for “market timing”, a site is in the top 3 in Google. The site has hundreds of pages indexed and deals with market research for stocks, stock buying and investment decision tools. A human being reading through the site found by searching for market timing will find the site extremely informative and pertinent to the search. Then, how is it possible that Google could rank it high if it is just blindly indexing the text to find the exact keyword? The answer is ontological text recognition. By reading the contextual relationship between words and paragraphs, Google is capable of “understanding” that the site, without mentioning a particular keyword, will be relevant when a user searches for it.

What does this mean for you? Simply put, a lot. Copywriting is king. Well written content, informative article writing in conjunction with standard Liverpool SEO techniques are the new search optimization reality. It means more work but also the advantage of maintaining more solid ranks over time as no competitor site can just easily tweak some code to rank higher. We have been focusing heavily on this new aspect to find the best way to create user friendly and rich content that will be positively received by search engines and searchers alike.

Still, what is Leeds SEO? Since there is no ultimate, fully comprehensible definition for “Leeds SEO”, the only way to go is to take a look at several definitions and try to merge them in order to have the right perspective.

Wikipedia : “Search engine optimization (Leeds SEO) is a set of methodologies aimed at improving the visibility of a website in search engine listings. The term also refers to an industry of consultants that carry out optimization projects on behalf of client sites.”

Fakezilla : “The changes that are made to the content and code of a web site in order to increase its rankings in the results pages of search engines and directories. These changes may involve rewriting body copy, altering Title or Meta tags, removal of Frames or Flash content, and the seeking of incoming links.”

The Web Search Workshop : “The term used to describe the marketing technique of preparing a website to enhance its chances of being ranked in the top results of a search engine once a relevant search is undertaken. A number of factors are important when optimizing a website, including the content and structure of the website’s copy and page layout, the HTML meta-tags and the submission process.”

6am Media : “The process of improving web pages so that it ranks higher in search engine for targeted keywords with the ultimate goal of generating more revenue from the web site. There are many Leeds SEO techniques. In general, these techniques can be categorized as On-Page Optimization, On-Site Optimization, and Off-Site Optimization. There are also two schools of Leeds SEO: white hat Leeds SEO and black hat Leeds SEO. White hat Leeds SEOs are those that play by the rule (actually guidelines provided by search engines). Black hat Leeds SEOs are those that push the limit of Leeds SEOs and employ some questionable or prohibited techniques (according to the guidelines). These black hat Leeds SEO techniques are also commonly known as spam.”

Website NOVA : “acronym for search engine optimization. This is the process of making a website ‘search-engine-friendly. Search engine optimization is primarily used to increase rankings in SERPs, and effective Leeds SEO can increase the potential of your website and bring in more traffic.”

Thousands more definitions are available, almost as many “Leeds SEO guru’s” you will find online (“The Guru Problem” is actually the title of another article to be published soon).
As you can see, no definition is like another, but they all tend to converge to a certain common understanding.

There are numerous techniques and tools used to achieve Leeds SEO goals, and they should NOT be included within a definition.

Since it is not correct to define a concept through its tools, here is a definition I have come up with after long deliberations. The suggestion is to define Leeds SEO as follows:

Leeds SEO = abbreviation for “Search Engine Optimization”, the process of optimizing and tuning a web site and gaining online awareness for it, in order to deliver targeted visitors and ensure high conversion rates.

When done correctly, Leeds SEO activities must:
- make search engines crawl the site;
- make search engines index the site;
- ensure a high ranking among SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for given keywords;
- achieve a high page rank;
- drive targeted traffic;
- achieve high conversion rates among the site’s visitors.

Since nothing is definitive and ultimate in the world of Leeds SEO, I’d like to receive your feedback and comments: TeaWithEdge.com is a way to contact me and speak up about your Marketing concerns.

The toolbar is not accurate, and it has limitations.
If you visit a page that is not in the index, but Google has a very similar page indexed that is very close to yours, then the toolbar will estimate its PageRank.
Also, Google represents PageRank through the toolbar, but since the nature of
PageRank is linear (a multiplier) and the toolbar is not, there are limitations.
Note: Please read A few more words on PageRank in my Google Best London SEO
Practices Part 4 article to find out more about this subject.

The information the toolbar displays is outdated.
There is a big difference between toolbar PageRank and actual PageRank. The data you see in the toolbar is 4 to 6 months old. Google tracks and assigns PageRank in real-time, but does not update the toolbar in the same fashion. There are multiple tools that estimate future PR, but they are just that, estimates. Keep this in mind.

Best London SEO features: highlighting & backlinks.
You can highlight all instances of the search term on the page returned from your search. This helps you see how many times your competitors use these keywords on their pages, so you can adjust your London SEO campaign accordingly. Also, the backlinks feature displays all the pages that link to yours, which Google counts towards your PageRank. Like I said above, remember this is outdated information.

The toolbars most hidden feature: indexing.
Ever wondered how can Google index pages with no links to them? Well, here is how its done: if you are browsing the web with the toolbar installed, (I am not saying just visible or enabled), Google is recording every page you visit and simultaneously checking to see if the address to it is in the index or not. So what if its not? It will be indexed on the next schedule. If you dont want a page to get indexed yet, the make sure you dont have the toolbar installed in your browser while getting it ready.

Demystifying the pagerank dependency.

PageRank is only one of the 100+ algo components of Google, and it is overrated.
Dont rely solely on the toolbar to determine your link partners. You want links from related pages with high traffic, not high PageRank alone. And my final advice: Make sure you have at least 2 browsers, one with the toolbar (if you need it) and one without (to visit your not-ready pages).

By Dedicated London SEO Consultant: Jose Nunez

Enter the Google era, where many webmasters seem to have tossed this conventional logic aside in favour of a Google-tunnel-vision. It is true that Google is the most popular search engine in the world today reaching 380 million unique users per month. According to ComScore Media Metrix they have a 42.3% share of the search market. These numbers should make webmasters stand up and pay attention, but it should not make them neglect everything else.

Many Bristol SEOs (search engine optimizers) will exclusively talk about obtaining a high ranking in Google, as if that is the one and only way to drive traffic on the web. Other Bristol SEOs see the web in a larger sense and, instead, treat Google as one piece of the puzzle (albeit an important piece). The good Bristol SEOs recognize that while most searches may originate at Google, there are a lot of potential website visitors and customers coming from other engines that deserve some attention too. Fortunately, many of the search engines determine the importance of a site using similar criteria, so optimizing for one engine should give you a boost in all the others as well. But if your Bristol SEO is giving you ranking reports that only say Google, it may be time to start asking where you rank in the other engines. After all, no webmaster is prepared to say that a customer coming from a website other than Google is a customer they dont want!

List Yourself in Web Directories

Your website traffic and customers can come from all over, so you want to make sure that wherever customers looking, theyll find you. There are a lot of different web directories on the Internet. Some catalogue all sorts of sites, while others focus on a particular niche market. By taking just a little bit of time you can launch a web directory campaign that gets you listed in all the directories your potential visitors may use. Best of all, many web directories will let you submit your site for free, so this is a cost-effective way to generate targeted traffic. The best directories are those that offer a direct link back to your site. This way, your directory campaign also becomes a link-building campaign, and you boost your ranking on most search engines, including Google. (Two birds with one stone, not too shabby!)

Find Those Niche Sites

The web was built based on links. Its how web surfers move from one site to another, following an endless flow of information. You need to take advantage of this by making sure that your site is linked to along this path. If you are selling t-shirts, try to find a site that is dedicated to the topic of t-shirts (or fashion, in this instance). In this day and age, you are almost guaranteed to find a site with t-shirt resources. Look for ways you can generate a link to your site from theirs. If you have some marketing dollars to spend, you may be able to buy text or banner advertising, which will also provide a link back to your site. You can send a quick, polite email to the webmaster requesting to trade links (after all, that sites wants links too!), or maybe you can contribute content somehow and include a link to your site in your author bio. There are a lot of different approaches you can take, and as long as you end up getting a link to your site, youll increase the likelihood of attracting visitors who are following that information path.

The world wide web is a big place and its only getting bigger. You should devote a good amount of resources to the more important traffic drivers, like Google, but you should not fall into a trap where thats the only thing you can rely on. By diversifying your incoming traffic resources and listing yourself in web directories, you will be better prepared for what the future may bring.

You hear all the time about bad Birmingham SEOs. Bad Birmingham SEOs are offering worthless services, failing to deliver on their internet marketing promises, polluting the search engine resultswell, a lot of bad things. But how much ever gets said about bad Birmingham SEOs’ spiritual counterparts: bad Birmingham SEO clients?

As an Birmingham SEO, I can see things from the other side of the table. You see, despite trying hard to make it clear I’m a good, ethical, results-oriented, smarter marketing, white-hat Birmingham SEO, I have gotten no end of inquiries from bad prospective Birmingham SEO clients. Sure, no one who gets cheated is ever entirely to blame, and some cheated businesses are entirely blameless. But the bad Birmingham SEOs would have too small a market to stay in business if it weren’t for almost-as-bad clients.

Shades of Bad Birmingham SEO Clients

First, let me make clear what I mean by bad Birmingham SEOs. Bad Birmingham SEOs are bad because they either do unethical things to get e-marketing results, or because they consistently fail to deliver results. A good Birmingham SEO delivers results and does it without trampling over other people’s rights (like submitting automated comments to their websites or trying to get good sites de-indexed).

A bad Birmingham SEO client, in turn, is someone who will only be satisfied (albeit temporarily) with a bad Birmingham SEO. Because they refuse to consider ethical web consultants or smarter marketing strategies, they are creating markets for the e-marketing charlatans and black-hats. There are two basic types of bad Birmingham SEO clients: crooks and fool–oops, I mean, ethically challenged and judgmentally-challenged.

Ethically-Challenged Birmingham SEO Clients

I haven’t gotten so many inquiries asking for out-and-out unethical services. Still, I’ve been asked about blog-sp@mming software and other shady internet marketing tactics a couple times. A colleague shared this gem with me: Have you thought about just scanning a book from the library and using it for web content? Or is that too high-risk? (Seriously, someone asked him this.)

Of course, judging from the amount of comment sp@m and Birmingham SEO-motivated hacking on the web, there is plenty of demand for this stuff.

Judgmentally-Challenged Birmingham SEO Clients

A much larger group of bad Birmingham SEO clients are simply those who insist on putting themselves in the way of fraud. Yes, that’s right: I’m blaming the victim. Someone who goes looking for a $5 gold watch can’t cry too long if the watch turns out to be fake or hot. With Birmingham SEO, there are a few more nuances, but it’s the same essential idea.

The overwhelming majority of these judgmentally challenged souls are private individuals whose only business is the business-in-a-kit variety. Yet they are also sometimes representatives of actual successful companies. The real businesspeople tend to be quicker to let their misconceptions go (after all, they can afford the real Birmingham SEO alternatives), but not always. Let’s look at some representative types of this group, straight out of my own inbox (note: these are inquiries from prospects, not actual clients).

1. Something-for-(Little More than)-Nothing Clients

Really, I tend to think these people should be in the ethically challenged group, but maybe that’s just the remnant of my work ethic making me be mean There are actually two kinds of these clients:

* The ambitious but cheap client: I’d like to get to the top of Google for the keyword, ‘mortgage’ so I can turn over $100,000/month in revenue. I can spend up to $1,000.
* The Adsense-is-my-business-plan client: you wouldn’t believe the numbers of inquiries I get from people who only plan to make money off Adsense or other on-site advertisingthey don’t even have a plan for getting repeat traffic, nor do they have content to synergize with the Birmingham SEO effort. By buying promotional services, they would essentially be buying advertising in order to make money off advertisingyou see where that could be a problem?

Another way of looking at it: why wouldn’t I just create a site myself and keep all the profit from my efforts? In fact, most Birmingham SEOs do have their own project sites, which are often monetized by Adsense. The money we could otherwise get from Adsense is one very low baseline for pricing our services. Legitimate Birmingham SEO clients are typically selling goods or services at a profit rate that works out to ten or more times what they could get from Adsense.

In addition to the greedy, I also see a few other kinds of less common, but still problematic prospective Birmingham SEO clients:

2. Birmingham SEO-Starry-Eyed Clients: Search engine traffic is definitely the best way for me to get pet-sitting clients in my tiny Himalayan village.
3. The Little-Knowledge-Is-a-Dangerous-Thing Client: Don’t tell me about keyword research, content, anchor text, or natural linking strategy, just get me the PageRank (or links, keyword density, or whatever the fad is).
4. Gullible-and-Not-Letting-Go Client: I know of at least two services that will submit my site to thousands of search engines for $29.95. If you can’t do that, I’ll take my business elsewhere.
5. I-Will-Never-Trust-Birmingham SEO-But-I’ll-Consider-It-Anyway Client: No one can guarantee a good search engine ranking so this is all pointlessI’ll just go with that $29.95 search engine submission package someone just emailed me about. At least it’s cheap.

In short, if you are going to find good Birmingham SEO web consultants, you need: 1) realistic expectations; 2) a realistic budget; 3) solid information. Don’t expect something for nothing, do a little reading, and it’s much less likely you’ll fall victim to bad Birmingham SEOs.

Before explaining to the uninitiated just what the Sandbox is exactly, or what its purported to be, it warrants mentioning that Google officially neither confirms nor denies its existence. So from the word go we wade into mystery. Were forced to consider the Sandbox as either a modern quasi-myth of the Computer Age or an actual no mans land created by Google where Birmingham SEOs are pitted against the machine. Kinda cool, right? This would be a limbo, an undesired waiting room for web properties seeking quality recognition from Googles Search Engine Results Pages are, as I like to say, unSERPable. Incidentally, the stakes are very high, too, since higher rankings mean increased revenue.

The effects of the Sandbox are not in question. Websites listing with Google are simply beat down in their rankings for no apparent rhyme or reason, thus leaving the afflicted with no avenue of redress but time itself no magic linking is known to spring sites out. (Though its whispered that influential friends at Google can pull favors.) New websites and overhauled existing websites (often reworked, ostensibly, for better rankings) are its primary victims. It was first noticed or acknowledged in October, 2004. No one outside of Google knows exactly how or why sites are Sandboxed.

Here are some Sandbox basics: it only happens to English speaking websites; it is a .com-only phenomenon, no .edus, .uss, or .orgs need worry; it could last from weeks to a year before release into deserving results rankings; its effects are seen with Google only, so you can rank high on Yahoo and be in the Sandbox (or even rank poorly I have little info handy on poorly optimized websites mired in suspected Sandboxes); the Sandbox is by no means universal and not automatic. Its a crapshoot.

There is a minority of Birmingham SEOs who think that the Sandbox is the end result of better algorithms and not and specially created punishment. Believing, as I do, that Google has the best search results, this isnt implausible.

I believe Google intentionally Sandboxes websites because they can. Googles search share is largely unrivalled and growing strongly. What better way for Google to keep separating itself from the search engine pack than to have websites jumping through hoops in hopes to conform to Googles semi-secretive algorithmic wishes. And what better way to do this than through the secret sauce of unacknowledged spider block. Googles engineers keep the search world apprehensive and guessing so that Birmingham SEOs will employ conventional and anticipated optimization methods in hopes to evade the Sandbox.

Talk about your Jedi mind tricks: Birmingham SEOs are now optimizing in a fashion that suits Google with much less link bombing and more content emphasis. This aids Googles indexing efforts greatly. The Sandbox, being a phenomenon oft-alluded to and ill-explained, is totally logical when viewed in this light. Fearing the unknown (and the ire of clients) we optimize humbly, to start.

And I love this. No one knows is what most Birmingham SEOs will say about various Sandbox details. Someone knows. Someone besides in-the-know Google engineers always knows, but isnt saying. Birmingham SEOs will have you believe theyre giving away everything but their gym locker combination; to the point where youd think that there are no secrets in this business. Well, as in any other business, information is the most valuable commodity and there will be nothing that you will get for free; nothing of a proprietary nature will be shared that will not provide its source with either direct or back-end value.

Its tough to declare this, but I must: no Birmingham SEO has enough data or access to solve the Sandbox. Its not even worth trying and the best thing we can do is compare notes. Pretty sad, but its all we got. (Or is it?)

It is widely believed that Matt Cutts, an engineering guru at Google, acknowledged the existence of the Sandbox at SES NYC in March, 2005. Thats bunk. He didnt acknowledge anything, but he did answer his questions carefully supposing there was a Sandbox. He played with words and said some algorithms might affect certain websites in some circumstances that would, in effect, ape Sandbox-like results. Well, gee. Thanks, Matt. You didnt say anything, but legions of Birmingham SEOs rushed to the messageboards with their confirm reports like theyd just filmed Sasquatch. No free lunches, no free secrets. Mr. Cutts just stoked the fires- thats all. Good job, Matt, but Ill get you yet. Cheers.

Joseph Pratt
Media Analyst
ICMediaDirect.com

http://www.icmediadirect.com

e: joseph@icmediadirect.com