Are You A New Site? Get Out of the Google Sandbox with These Five Tips

Intro

Here's a common, frustrating scenario: You're an entrepreneur that's launched your new site to promote your products or services. You've spent hundreds of hours (and dollars) to build the Sistine Chapel of website designs. And now you've spent just as much time creating your SEO strategy to match with a winning content calendar.

But there's a catch. Your pages will just not rank.

Google isn't indexing your site and this process suddenly feels like it will take years to gain any sort of return on your investment.

Congratulations, you've experienced your first SEO hurdle dubbed the "Google Sandbox".

Luckily, this is just a small stone to hop, but if you're on a tight deadline and need to get your site indexed quicker, there are a few ways you can speed up the process.

But first, What is Google Sandbox?

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While this is not an "official" term from the Google gods themselves, it is a general term used to describe the process where new sites are held back from SERPs (search engine results pages) until they have proven themselves.

After all, Google's main objective is to provide the user with the best information from the most credible sources on the web. With over 250,000 new websites being created every single day, you can bet that you're going to have to demonstrate to the search engines your authority and credibility in your niche first.

Many SEO experts define the Google Sandbox a bit differently. Most concur that it simply refers to the duration of time between when your site is first published to the time your first page is indexed by Google. Others will take it a step further and apply the sandbox effect to those that rank within the first few pages of SERPs (not page fifteen).

However you decide to define it, the result is the same. Google isn't playing ball with your new site just yet and you need to need them to start taking you seriously.

How Long Does the Google Sandbox Last?

Typically, you should see your site get indexed within a few weeks of publishing high-quality content in a specialized niche. However, this Google purgatory can take a few months or stretch up to a year for particularly unproven or "shady" domains.

If you have created a brand new site with white hat digital marketing efforts, then relevant sites should only deal with the Google sandbox for a month or so.

Five Tips To Get Indexed Quickly

If you’re not seeing the progress in a timely manner or you need to jump-start your indexing to meet marketing metrics and deadlines, then here are five effective strategies you can employ right now to get out of the sandbox quickly.

Tip 1: Submit Your Sitemap and Request Article Indexing on Google Search Console

If you want Google to know about your site's existence, then you need to tell them (obviously). The best way to do this is by submitting your sitemap through the Google Search Console.

An xml sitemap is a file that outlines all of the pages on your website and how they are interconnected. This helps google (and other search engines) understand the structure of your site. You’re essentially giving them a map to your site so that it can easily crawl and understand your topic and how your articles are interconnected.

Once you have created your sitemap, head over to the "Sitemaps" section in the Google Search Console and submit it for indexing. Google outlines this entire process.

Next, once you've published your newest article, be sure to go over to Google Search Console to let them know your site has a new article published. Populate the URL of the new published article, and click "Request Indexing".

This lets Google know that you've recently published new content quicker than letting it find it by itself.

Tip 2: Create a Knowledge Graph for Search Engines

If you’re a new site, Google is going to need to understand what your company or site is. What topics are you an expert in? Do you sell a product or service? What specialized knowledge do you have that will help users?

Creating a knowledge graph helps google (and other search engines) answer these questions by understanding who you are as well as what niche you fall into. This can help improve your chances of being indexed quickly because it tells google exactly what kind of site they are dealing with.

In Google's recent rollouts, they've repeatedly discussed how they rank sites that are written for users, not search engines. In the September 2022 Helpful Content Update, they explicitly wrote that if you answer “yes” to one of these questions, it’s a red flag or warning:

“Are you producing lots of content on different topics in hopes that some of it might perform well in search results?”

Case in point: It's not a good idea to write about the best laptop for remote workers and then the next week write about the best desserts you can find at Disneyland. Search engines will be confused about what your site is about and where your expertise lies.

Here are some effective ways you can improve your knowledge graph:

• Keyword Research: Some niches are more competitive than others, which will affect the time it takes to get out of the Google sandbox. Are you jumping into the finance niche? It's going to take a lot longer to see your site ranking. Are you going to write about the best pool equipment for above-ground pools? Then you'll likely see your first page ranked a bit quicker utilizing low competition keywords.
• **On-Page Optimization: **This is the process of making sure your website and individual webpages are set up in a way that google (and other search engines) will understand. This includes things like using proper titles, headers, meta descriptions, and keyword usage. There are many search engine optimizers that can help you achieve this.
• High-Quality Content: Remember, Google's number one priority is providing searchers with high-quality content. So if you want to get indexed quickly, make sure your content is top-notch. This includes well-researched articles that are free of grammatical errors and plagiarism. If you're really looking to finally be sandbox free, then be sure to publish often and consistently. Luckily, AI writing tools will help you increase your production efficiency.

Tip 3: Start Your Off-Page SEO Campaign Early

In a world with millions of sites, how are search engines able to determine which content is created by credible sources vs. shady bots generating quick content with no valuable expertise?

The answer is off-page SEO. When there are a lot of links coming from highly respected, credible sites, this serves as a credibility factor. Think of this like you’re at a high-end dinner party and one of the guests is “vouching” for you. It works the same online. When many sites that are already in the exclusive circle “vouche” for you by giving you a link from their site, this gives search engines a clue that you may be a quality site to rank for users.

So how do you accomplish this? You very well can’t ask for Forbes to just throw a link from an article for you. Link-building (the process of getting links to your site from other credible sites) is difficult and arduous business. Luckily, there are many ways to accomplish this and AI seo tools that can help you out as well. Here are a few tried and tested white-hat methods:

• Guest Posting: Writing an article for another website in your niche and including a link back to your site. This is often a win-win for both parties as you provide high-level content for free while obtaining a link for yourself.
• **Purchasing Backlinks: **This is frowned upon by many search engines, but it’s done anyways. Make sure to take these considerations seriously.
• Broken Link Building: This is where you search for websites that have broken links and offer to replace those links with a link to your website. You can use some link building tools like Ahrefs.
• Resource Page Links: Create a resources or tools page on your website and then reach out to other bloggers/websites in your niche to see if they would like to be included The more high-quality links you have pointing back to your site, the higher you will rank in google.
• Social Media: Social media is a huge part of off-page SEO. This is because google (and other search engines) view social media sites as reliable sources of information. If you already have a social media channel or video that's viral, insert your links to your webpage to direct organic traffic.

Just remember, QUALITY OVER QUANTITY. It's better to have one link from an authoritative website than 100 links from low-quality websites.

Tip 4: Purchase an Active Domain

An active domain is a domain that has been previously registered and then sold or abandoned by the owner. These domains are valuable because they already have backlinks that have been established and indexed by Google.

When you purchase an already active website, you can reap the benefits of the previous owner's SEO efforts and get a head start on your own SEO campaign. Just be sure to change all the DNS (domain name server) settings and redirects so that google knows the new owner of the domain.

On the surface, you may be wondering why doesn't everyone do this to get ahead quicker? This is a bit trickier than many come to realize. Here are some domain factors you should consider before purchasing a domain, as you don’t want to regret it later.

• **The Age of the Domain: **One factor to consider before purchasing an active domain is the age of the domain. Domains that have been registered for a longer period of time are generally more valuable than those that have been registered for a shorter period of time. This is because older domains are more likely to have established website traffic and backlinks from other websites.
• **The Cost of the Domain. **Another factor to consider before purchasing an active domain is the cost of the domain. They can vary in price depending on a number of factors, such as the age of the domain, the extension (e.g., .com, .net, .org), and the popularity of the keywords associated with the domain. It is important to compare prices from multiple domain registrars before making a purchase.
• **The Backlink Profile of the Domain: **Like we mentioned before, not all backlinks are created equal. A backlink from a high-quality website is worth more than a backlink from a low-quality website. If you're choosing between one domain that has 10,000 backlinks from low-quality spammy sites and another domain with 100 high-quality backlinks, the latter is the better investment.
• **Check Out Their User Signals **New to user signals? User signals are a great way to measure the quality of a website and can be easily found by Google Analytics. They include things like organic traffic, dwell time, bounce rate, and pages per visit. Checking out a domain’s user signals can give you an idea of how popular the site is and how much engagement it gets from its users.

Remember, black hat link farming techniques can incur a Google penalty, so a bad purchase can not only leave you without the results you were looking for, but can also penalize you and leave you worse than if you had started with a fresh clean slate.

Tip 5: Utilize Social Media To Your Advantage

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Social media platforms are a great way to increase brand awareness and build relationships with potential customers. In addition, social media can also be used to improve your website's SEO.

If you're a business that already has a great social media presence, then this will help you get out of the Google sandbox quicker. Why? Because google takes social media into account when ranking websites. So, if you're actively engaging with your customers on social media, google will see this and rank your website higher in its search results.

Here are a few things you can do to make sure your social media posts are helping your website's SEO:

• Include links to your website in your social media profile descriptions.
• Make sure the links you include in your posts lead to high-quality pages on your website.
• Use relevant keywords in your social media posts so that google can index your content and include it in its search results.
• Social signals are becoming increasingly important for SEO, so it's important to make sure you're utilizing social media to your advantage.

Take Home

While we don't have "confirmation" that a Google sandbox exists, I think it's fair to say that new websites will not be ranking on the first page of SERPa right away. It’s reasonable to expect a bit of a waiting period. However, brand new websites can follow the tips above to help them speed up the time for them to see indexed pages.