Check out this article: Mike Grehan Lets Slip the Secret of Search Engine Optimization by William Slawski over at his blog, SEO by the Sea.

Now, this article may be old, but it addresses a very good point.

What is the value of your site to your visitors?
It’s quite obvious that people gravitate toward the sites that are useful for them. Search Engines are a prime example of this. Another would be Web-based email. However, being as both of these things have already been identified as necessary by the population, they have been exploited by businesses which are much larger than my one man army. This means the rest of us are left with two possibilities: niches and new ideas.

Niches
One of the largest niches I refer to as private information. Essentially what this blog is. It doesn’t provide any features or frills that you can utilize to achieve a goal. It only contains information from a private source. While I once believed this to be a mainstay for individual webmasters on the internet, this may be slipping away as well. When we look at a site like wikipedia, we see that information can be provided by a large site, or a site run by a community of people, which can take away the individual niche that is private information. While blogs will maintain that personal touch that only their authors can give, I wonder if this too may be overshadowed by some new, great idea one day.

New Ideas
By using the term “New Ideas” I’m talking about something that hasn’t been done before. Or, something that hasn’t been done in a specific way before. For example, maybe you would like to set up a site with forums specifically devoted to vacation destinations. While this has most likely already been done, you may be able to think of some specific niche where your new idea could gain a foothold. One thing often forgotten in the planning of a new site is how to handle growth. Lets say you have a new, great idea. Once it hits the web it may explode and be the new cool thing. If you’re ill prepared, the novelty may wear off prior to you being able to capture the market base. Companies like Google and Microsoft could provide competition for you in just a few weeks. Even more quickly if they notice a huge potential. Try to be as prepared as possible for whatever may come your way.

Seeking Inspiration
I recently developed a new site of my own, Professional Service Trade. While this site is still in its infancy, it will act as a good example due to the manner in which I came up with the idea.

Inspiration is all around you, think about it. Do you hear people complaining about something on a regular basis? Pay attention to what it is and try to think of a solution. My wife is one of my biggest sources of inspiration. For example, the inspiration for Professional Service Trade came from her talking about wanting to trade her services with other people. You could consider hearing, “I wish there was some place where I could find more people to trade with.” It’s not a big leap from that statement to my new site. But if I hadn’t been listening I would have missed the opportunity to fill a need. With the launch of her blog, The Modern Hippy, she has been confronted with numerous problems that I can only imagine hundreds or thousands of other people have, or will experience at some point in time. Some of these are related to using HTML in posts on her blog. I remember teaching her how to reference an image via the tag, and how to define it’s width and height. Although this has most likely been done before, consider this spawning an idea for an HTML link or image tag generator. Something that would accept an input of a URL such as http://male.themodernhippy.com and output <a href="http://male.themodernhippy.com">THIS IS THE DISPLAY TEXT</a> or in the case of an image, input http://male.themodernhippy.com/images/my_pic_thumb.jpg, and output <img src="http://male.themodernhippy.com/images/my_pic_thumb.jpg">. In fact, I thought this was a good idea, so I just made it.

SEO at the Source
Although there can be no substitute for a great idea, or finding a great niche. Proper SEO planned for at the beginning of the design and development process can make even a plain site popular. I shutter to think at the amount of QUALITY information that is buried in the search results because of the myriad of Search Engine Optimization specialists that have promoted other sites. Remember, if you’re looking for information on a topic such as gardening, when you search google or yahoo for the term “gardening,” you’re being shown websites which may or may not contain quality information. One thing that these sites do have in common is they have EXCELLENT SEO. This leads me to make two points, 1) Don’t settle for the top few results on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page), dig a bit deeper and you may find that quality information you were looking for, and 2) If you’re trying to figure out what to do for your own SEO, look at what the pros are doing. If you have a site relating to SEO, Search for the term Search Engine Optimization in google and view their pages source code. (Firefox: View > Page Source | IE: View > Source) Check out the information they have listed in their meta tags, how did they structure their page titles? This is probably a perfect lead in to my next section…

What are the Basics of SEO?
One thing that has surprised me in my searches for information regarding SEO is the lack of direct information. It’s almost like the authors don’t want to tell you everything at once so that you will keep coming back looking for more. While the world of SEO is always changing, there are a few essentials which everyone should know. They are out of the scope of this article, but I will make a post within the next few days explaining each of them (that I’m currently aware of) briefly. I’ll then create individual posts with more information pertaining to each one.

What is the google sandbox?

The google sandbox appears to be a popular term for an effect which may not be applicable only to google. This term, also referred to without adding the name google, as in: the sandbox effect, or sandboxing, refers to new domains and an increased difficulty in ranking well on any of the search engines. Although not confirmed and highly debated, sandboxing could be one of the largest problems faced by webmasters, web designers, and web developers attempting to grow a new domain. Not only may they have to compete with the myriad of other sites in their niche or market, but, if sandboxing exists, they have to compete with roadblocks placed by the search engines themselves to keep the new domains locked (sandboxed) out.

Is the sandbox effect real?

In my experience of designing, developing, and preforming Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for websites, I have noticed that some things work better for older, established domains than for new domains. This observation essentially proves the sandbox effect does exists to some degree. However, it is the degree to which the sandbox effect exists that is the main question, rather than if it is real. And in my experiences, the sandbox effect appears to be different depending on the search engine, Google, Yahoo, or MSN.

• Google Sandbox: The Google sandbox is one of the most prominent. In fact, due to the harshness of this search engine in regard to the sandbox, the term Google Sandbox is more prevalent than the term sandbox itself.
• Yahoo Sandbox: The Yahoo sandbox is more forgiving than the Google sandbox, but not by much. I would say that if the Google sandbox is the hardest to overcome, the Yahoo sandbox comes in at a close second.
• MSN Sandbox: While I have seen proof of an MSN sandbox, it is no where as pronounced as that of Google or Yahoo. In some cases this search engine even appears to reward new websites and new content with higher rankings.

To sum up, yes, in my opinion the sandbox is real. However, it exists to a different extent on each of the major search engines.

How to overcome the sandbox effect.

While the theory of the sandbox effect may never be 100% proven, I have seen somethings which appear to work better for some search engines than others:

• Google Sandbox: While the Google sandbox is the worst, there is also a fairly clear cut, albeit difficult to stomach technique to dealing with it. First off, the Google sandbox requires good, solid SEO. Secondly, it requires time and patience.
• Yahoo Sandbox: The Yahoo sandbox is the second hardest to overcome but I have noticed one thing that seems to effect it to a greater extent than it effects the Google sandbox. Inbound links. It appears as if Yahoo search places more importance on inbound links earlier in the life of a domain than Google.
• MSN Sandbox: The MSN sandbox is the easiest to overcome. In fact, if it wasn’t for a few instances where I have noticed it, I would almost say it doesn’t exist. In order to overcome the MSN sandbox, simply perform your normal SEO routine and you should see results.

Although I believe the sandbox effect to be real in some degree and form on each of the major search engines, there are many out there who do not. You may hear of specific people stating that they have had a website list in the top 20 for a competitive keyword or search term within the first month of a domains life, but I believe these to be more publicity stunts then common place occurrences. Look a little further into the person that made the claim to see if it bears fruit. In my experiences, these people are selling something.

To Summarize:

• The Google sandbox is the worst, and hardest to overcome. Specifically focus on good SEO practices and remain when attempting to deal with this sandbox.
• The Yahoo sandbox is easier to deal with than the Google sandbox, but it is still no slouch. As with all websites, performing good SEO will help. Also, focusing on inbound links may be the trick to overcoming the Yahoo sandbox.
• The MSN sandbox is the easiest of the three to overcome. Simply focusing on good SEO should be the ticket to success on this search eingine.

For further consideration:

In a 2005 interview with Senior Google Engineer Matt Cutts, the following Q and A was produced regarding the Google sandbox:

Q: Does the sandbox exist?
A: Matt said here comes the audience part? How many feel there is a sandbox? How many feel there is no such thing as a sandbox? SEOs normally split down the line. There are some things in the algorithm that may be perceived as a sandbox that doesn’t apply to all industries. He knows it works to keep some spam out.

Wikipedia.org is an amazing site. While they may not have / have had a wealth of information on this topic at the time of me posting this, things may have changed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbox_Effect

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