Fast Track Access to the Google Listings - Cheating?

[simonm]

I released a new website about a month ago and have gone through the process of creating multiple inbound links and of course SEO on the site itself. This seems to have worked well with most of the search engines, I have been 1st page for my target key phrases for a couple of weeks on Yahoo and MSN and have had a steady increase in visitors. But Google? Well Google listed my site very early on but without any decent position on the search listings and effectively only against the domain name - sandboxed? and that position stayed the same till yesterday.

Why yesterday? Well I had this brilliant idea! On one of my existing higher ranking sites I made a direct copy of the home page of my new site, changed the IBLS on that site only so that they pointed to the copy of the home which in turn linked to the new site.

Success, Google now lists my copy home page against the search terms that I want on the 1st page of the listings. Traffic has gone up 5 fold! Okay, a proportion of visitors go to my fake home page initially but as soon as they select any of the menu options on that page they go to the real site. A small price to pay.

[budz]

hmm, sounds like you put a doorway page on a higher ranked domain ?

Not a very good practice.

[greeneagle]

Dangerous Games!
Ken

[simonm]

Yes, I agree and I am ashamed of myself. I'll leave it like it is for a couple of weeks and see how the PR of the new site builds up then take the pain of dropping the doorway page. What is interesting though is the quantum shift from say three years ago when smaller highly focused websites with domain names matching the key terms scored far better than bigger general purpose sites. I expect that this means that Google is female - its fickle. I suppose I had better pose that question in the breakroom - what gender is Google? Though I expect its there already!

[bhartzer]

simonm, the reason why what you did "worked" is because of LocalRank. We're now dealing with LocalRank, it really has nothing to do with the so-called "sandbox" (which some say is a time-related penalty).

Google got a patent a few years ago that deals with ranking and re-ranking web pages. If you're interested in reading it, go to the US Patent & Trademark Office, Patent Full-Text and Image Database and search for patent number 6,526,440.

[cbp]

I did it for one of my sandboxed sites .... I just copied the site map of sandboxed site A onto site B, put some internal links on site B to the site-map ---I called the page "Site B's Portal to Site A" - tidied it up a bit, made some changes to avoid duplicate content. The page will probably be a high PR4, so its valuable deeplinks to site A ..... this is the sort of thing that Google are forcing people to do to get out of sandbox ..... site is now out of sandbox (also did a lot of other things as well)

I did notice a newish directory (sorry did not bookmark) offering to do exactly this --- ie host the site map, called it "XYZ Directory Portal to Site X" --- gives deeplinks to all parts of the site.

CBP

[greeneagle]

What's wrong with a simple PR5 link from one of your own Sites, if the "target" Site is well designed and SE friendly?

IMO - Much less dangerous. They get indexed in a couple days anyway!

Ken

[cbp]

What's wrong with a simple PR5 link from one of your own Sites,

The site was already well indexed ---- I just wanted more deep links as one person speculated in one forum (and we beleive everything we read in forums) said that its a good idea to get more deeplinks into a site to get out of sandbox.... so I did that.

CBP

[greeneagle]

How effective was it?

Have we tried try on-line Press Releases, they still reach deep?, and the price has come way down speaking in relative value terms.
Let's don't forget, article submission and syndication, as well as effective blogging.

Can we hear a symphony?

As you know, we are not talking great expenditures , unreachable goals or even much expense at all to play in different channels, reaching much farther and wider than simple "Directory Submissions" can reach... not to discount their value, in any way!

Anyone that wants more info about the value and reach of Press Releases, either PM me or let's "split it wide open" here.

Ken

[cbp]

I do not know if it worked - the site came out of the sandbox ... but I had been putting a lot of other work into the site and it may just have just been a "time" thing and nothing to do with what I did.

I think the key point is, Google really forced me (and I assume a lot of others) into such "borderline" tactics to find a way out of the sandbox --- sort of counterproductive for them...

BTW - the site is now "kicking ass" and competitors are "dead meat" because of all the effort I had to put into it.

CBP

[bhartzer]

simonm, you're not cheating the system.
cbp, you're not getting out of the sandbox.

What you did (the extra linking fron on-topic sites) helped because it got you past the first set of ranking and into the second set of ranking.

We're now dealing with LocalRank, which essentially is two ranking processes. Here's how it works:

Say, for example, the keyword is Red Widgets. The first ranking process gets a list of URLs that could rank for Red Widgets. For my example, say we have 10k pages that are about Red Widgets. Of those 10k pages, they then calculate the REAL rankings based on the links that pages have from those other 10k pages. The rankings are based on 10k pages, not all the pages on the web that Google knows about.

By adding additional deep links to your site(s) from on-topic pages (that would be in the original list of 10k pages), you're essentially qualifying your site into the second round of the ranking process. And that's why your site suddenly appears to have gotten out of the sandbox (or whatever you call it). Personally, I like to call it what Greg Bosier calls it, the Litter Box.

So, to rank well now (or show up in the top 1000 results) you need to have a site about Red Widgets and have on-topic links (from other sites or pages about Red Widgets). Off-topic links and links from your own sites don't count, they're disregarded.

[simonm]

The reason why I suggested my tactic might be cheating and I guess Ken suggested it was risky was the nature of the link from my high ranking site to the new website. This being a direct copy of the new sites home page onto the existing site. So, a user doing a search for 'red widgets' sees my existing higher ranked domain name 'houseproudhens.co.uk' on the first page of the listing but with relevant description.

Ultimately I want a search for 'red widgets' to see the same description but associated with the domain name 'redwidgetexpert.co.uk' Also, though I am getting an immediate good position, the link building I am doing is for the new site so I will have to balance the immediate gain in being say position 5 to any delays in being No1 or 2 which is where I want to be.

[sem4u]

I would be very careful. You may be hit by the duplicate content filter. One site may stay, while one may not show up so well in Google.