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Informative Articles

An Action Plan For Marketing Your Web Site (Part 2)
ADD YOUR URL TO YOUR MARKETING MATERIALS A couple of months ago, I met with a client who launched their Web site in 1999. They were discouraged because their site was generating poor traffic. When I asked them if they had added their URL to their...

How to Build a Business Website
A recent report done by Yankee Group, a Boston-based market research company, states that at the end of 2004 around 34 percent of small and medium sized businesses in North America are selling goods and services on the Internet and another 25...

How To Sell Your Website Fast
Dear Website Owner, If you have an existing website or domain name you no longer need and wish to sell it to an interested buyer for a one-time profit, or if you’re a speculator looking to build a steady source of revenue by buying and...

Search Engine Optimization: Site Structure and Popularity
In the Global Internet era the industry presence is undoubtedly related to the company online presence. Where is the scope of the online presence limitations and does it refer only to the search engine optimization aspect or it broadens into...

Tips On Winning A Virtual Assistant Position AND Keeping It
Although still considered an uncommon profession, the Virtual Assistant role is fast becoming the best recognized choice for companies, particularly web-based companies, to pursue nowadays. A Virtual Assistant (VA) is much like a...

 
Google's Sandox is Alive and Well - Official !

Sandboxes and Google



Sandboxes are used to "quarantine" things in the real world (you keep all the sand in one place that way, in theory, but then again have you seen the trail from a kids sandbox?, still I digress), the term being also used with computers in relation to "dangerous things" like Active X controls etc.



Google on the other hand are using it to "quarantine" nothing more harmless than new websites. Why are they doing this? They would say because so many new websites are (a) awful and will soon wither, so why bother with them, or (b) that they are the "creatures" on SEM companies whose sole aim is to artificially increase the rankings of another website through interlinking, and that therefore we are going to ignore them too.



The Sandbox Effect



Websites can linger in this Sandbox for 3 - 6 months and whilst you can reduce the detention period, it's difficult to break a website out. Worst still, there is it appears a Sandbox Effect that lasts for up to 2 years! The effects here are mostly seen for high value (most searched for) keywords, where again research has shown that "new" sites (built after 2003) have little chance of good rankings on the Google engine.



The Power of the Lesser used Keyword



So what does this mean for businesses that want to get the most out of the internet and the promise that it


offers? Simple, (a) don't rely on Google alone (there are other engines out there) and (b) target the lesser keywords. You'll be amazed just how many variations there in the words that people use when searching. Sure there are some that are used more often, but access to these is in effect barred to all new websites on Google (and can be hard to get for new websites anyway until they build up some momentum ) and besides all that, the number of searches for these "lesser" keywords is, when added together HUGE (just like your shopping receipt at Tescos - "How the hell did it add up to that, individually everything was so cheap?" being a thought that many must have had when reaching for the wallet/purse).



So, if you are interested in getting the best out of your shiny new website, remember those "lesser sought after keywords" they could well be the answer to your problems for the first few years of your websites life.



Graham Baylis Internet Marketing and Promotion Specialists www.TheWebIsTheWay.com "Making sure your needle is found in the Internet Haystack"

About the author:

Graham Baylis is the Director of TheWebIsTheWay Ltd an online marketing agency dedicated to increasing its customers profits. Born in 1957, Graham first entered the world of IT in 1986 and has never looked back, working in the CCTA in London as well as AT&T in Redditch (where he set up one of the first Intranets in the UK).