Blame It on Google Sandbox

No webmaster wants to offend Google. The God of search engines can permanently ban any webmaster that refuses to play by its rules. This would be catastrophic to almost all online businesses.

Many new site owners are terrified of the “Google Sandbox.” Despite claims from staff at Google that such a thing does not exist, these sites insist that new websites are penalized. Matt Cutts has stated that Google’s algorithm is based off of trust rankings. Trust is something that must be earned. Newer sites may not have earned trust yet, but they have not lost it either.

Most of the sites at the top of Google are older domains, but that probably has little to do with the fact that they are at the top of the SERP rankings. They have also had time to refine their content, build anchor-rich links and boost their PageRank. New sites begin with absolutely nothing and must work hard to prove to Google that they deserve to be on the first page for their target keywords.

The Google Sandbox Theory has made many website owners paranoid to optimize their site for fear that if they build more than a handful of links a day they will suffer Google’s wrath. This is obviously nonsense. Not only are they failing to optimize their site, they are not building a brand image for their website and generating quality traffic that is needed for the months before they can generate a traffic flow with Google.

They also must realize that their competitors are not going to stop link-building while they are on their own 5 a day rule. It would be impossible to ever get anywhere with SEO when you are always a dozen steps behind your competitors.

SEO is a very hot topic on the Internet, which means that it is bound to create a little bit of controversy and hype. Site owners sometimes get so caught up in the hype that they ignore Google’s own statements. If Google tells people they don’t penalize sites solely on the premise that they are new, why be so paranoid?

It is unlikely that you are going to rank for your target keywords overnight. The point is that you must not mistake this for being penalized because you have a newer site. With that logic, anyone could buy a domain and wait six months before they started building their site with the expectation that they would be able to rank better. Instead of worrying about the age of your website, you should use the time available to you to create trust. You will probably have a difficult time doing that if you are worried about the rules of the Sandbox that Google has already claimed does not exist.