Regina Streets Talks Search Traffic – the Sandbox

By Greg Hluska

Over the last few weeks, I have tried to write something of an introduction to web site marketing.  I tried to teach you how a search engine ‘thinks’, showed you the basic tools you can use to drive search traffic to your site, and wrote an article on some tools you can use to research various keywords.

Today, I am going to write about a topic that will especially interest people who have just started a web site.  The sandbox refers to a probationary period that all new sites must go through with major search engines.  I am writing about it because it is a topic that very few new webmasters know about it, despite the fact that it should play a huge role in how they plan and administer their web sites.Think of the sandbox effect as a probationary period in which major search engines don’t know whether to trust you or not.  While search engines will list you and return your URL in search results, they will not rank you highly for extremely competitive search terms.

Reginastreets.ca has only been online for twenty four days.  As such, we are firmly stuck in Google’s Sandbox.  When I login to Google Webmaster Tools (I promise to teach you how to use Webmaster Tools one day), I see that our URL is only actually returned on four searches!  My goal is to get Google to bring us thousands of people a month.  So, my goal is to get out of probation as quickly as possible…

So, what am I doing?  Basically, I am trying to be useful and I am trying to be part of a community.  Here are some strategies that I am using.

• We update frequently. Our goal is to give our readers at least one new piece of content every day.  If someone chooses to subscribe to our RSS feed, we owe that person something new every single day.  We hope that you find this useful.
• We link to good sites. Another one of our goals is to always use good sources.  Not only is this a tenet of good writing, it is also a tenet of good web design.  If Google sees that you link to good sites, it will assume that you are a good site.  If it sees that you link to garbage, it will conclude that you are garbage.  Good sites get out of the sandbox faster than bad ones!
• We use the reginastreets.ca whenever we can. I frequently hangout on the Joomla forums.  Not only are they a great place to learn more about using Joomla, they are also a great way to learn how to help people use technology.  However, this site gains from that forum as well.  You see, I put our URL in my signature on every post.  Not only does it give people a way to get in touch with me, it also shows search engines that our site is getting out there and putting content on other quality pages.
• We are keeping things stable. Our URLs all follow a pattern – they are all reginastreets.ca/date/title of the article.  That is a great format – not only does it give dates (which is useful for people and search engines), but it also gives the title (which is also useful for people and search engines).  But want to know something else?  We will definitely not change that format for the first year our site is in operation.  Try not to change the structure of your URLs and, if you have to, be prepared to spend more time in the sandbox!

Those are four solid strategies that you can use to minimize the amount of time you spend in the sandbox.  If you think about it, all of these strategies come down to trust.  When your site is new, your number one priority should be showing both your users and search engines that you can be trusted!  Best of luck with your sites!