Sandboxed, Banned, Impatient? Help!

[garyglow]

Hi, I run a small affiliate ticket website and have been having trouble getting into Google's search engine rankings etc. My site has been up and running for around 5 months now and I have yet to see any of my pages receive a page rank nor does my site show having any backlinks (at least on google). While I am fairly new to SEO and website engineering, I have had pretty good success getting my websites listed in google and getting a decent page rank. I've had my site verified in google site maps, use google analytics, have upwards of 1500 backlinks, and still no pagerank. In my sitemaps account google claims to have 500+ pages indexed but I am just not seeing the results in the search engine.

I realize that I have a few things going against me. 1). I'm in a highly competitive market 2). My site is still new 3). I acquired links pretty quickly (may have raised some google red flags).

Does this mean I am in the proverbial google sandbox? Has my site been banned by google? Am I just being impatient? It's frustrating because I have been working hard to get my site search engine friendly and I have no real way to tell if the things I am doing are good, bad, or indifferent. My site is The Ticket Lodge - Discount Sports, theater, and Concert Tickets.

If anyone has any thoughts, ideas, or suggestions I would appreciate it.

Thanks
Gary

[garyglow]

Bump... Anyone? Any thoughts?

[incrediblehelp]

4). Your an affiliate.

Affiliate websites hardly ever do good in Google. Most of the time affiliates use copied content and obviously this type of content is not conducive into getting rankings.

Other than linking directly to your affiliate TicketCity - NFL Playoffs Tickets, Derby Tickets & College Basketball Tickets in a organized manor, where the value to the end user that makes you feel you should rank higher than the TicketCity - NFL Playoffs Tickets, Derby Tickets & College Basketball Tickets website itself?

[garyglow]

Thanks for the reply. While I am an affiliate I do have some orignal content (working on this more slowly than I'd like) and have seen other affiliate marketers with good PRs and show up in search engines well. Essentially the entire ticket broker field is made up of affiliates (outside of the few main sources). I do not expect The Ticket Lodge - Discount MLB Baseball Tickets to outrank Ticket City but I think given my traffic and amount of links I should be getting some Google respect.

Are you saying that if I am an affiliate, I have no chance at SEO? I will be burried by google forever? Are you saying that this isn't a case of being Sandboxed but rather google punishing me for being irrelevant?

[ctabuk]

You have Google Links
Link Popularity67101,7401,95000671


I don't see the affilate thing as any big problem - if I were you I'd do a quick "Theirsite" on your rivals and check their SEO out using SiteReportCard: Web Site Optimization and Promotion Tools - then copy where they link to.

[garyglow]

All the metrics I look at appear pretty good (such as link popularity) but google is still giving me a pagerank of 0 on my Ticket Lodge landing page, no page rank on any other pages, and they have no backlinks listed for my site. It's been 5 months of adding content, building links, and trying to get traffic and no changes in my google PR or search listings. I don't think I'm banned from google so do you think I am in the "Sandbox"? Or is google taking a long time to update thier backlinks?

Thanks,
Gary

[wige]

Affiliate sites can rank well (almost all ticket resale sites are affiliates of someone else) if they add substantial benefit to the end user over the original site. Other than your home page, I could not find any unique content on your site anywhere. The right half of your pages all have the exact same content, and since that makes up 75-90S% of the total content of most of your internal pages, they will be put into a duplicate content filter. And for those pages that do have some content of their own, that content is the listings from the affiliate service.

Also, bear in mind that pagerank is a fairly irrelevant metric that is updated a few times a year (read: when Google feels like it) and it can take a while for your site to show up. Also, if your site is penalized or filtered, you may not be included in the export.

[garyglow]

I am certainly lacking more original content but my landing page is always original and some of my individual ticket pages have original content ( see Ticket Lodge - Discount Chicago Cubs Tickets). Do you think this is the main problem?

As you will see from the above link, I am working on partnering with bloggers to sponsor a page, write an original article, and include their RSS feed. Hopefully this will help get me more original content. Even with limited original content, shouldn't I be getting some page rank though?

Thanks again for all the help!

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by garyglow

I think given my traffic and amount of links I should be getting some Google respect.

The number of IBLs you have has nothing to do with ranking well. it is deeper than a quantitative number. it is the anchor text used, the relevancy of the links, the pages they are on, etc..

Originally Posted by wige

Affiliate sites can rank well (almost all ticket resale sites are affiliates of someone else) if they add substantial benefit to the end user over the original site. Other than your home page, I could not find any unique content on your site anywhere.

This is exactly the concern with affiliates websites and usually why they fail in ranking well.

[garyglow]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

The number of IBLs you have has nothing to do with ranking well. it is deeper than a quantitative number. it is the anchor text used, the relevancy of the links, the pages they are on, etc..


This is exactly the concern with affiliates websites and usually why they fail in ranking well.

I understand the basic principals of SEO. I have been lurking around here for some time and think I have done an ok job getting my site search engine friendly- I have a fair amount of quality links, with good anchor text. I by no means think my site is perfect and I am still tinkering with things (like adding more original content, etc.).

The root of my question was regarding google filtering my site or 'sandboxing' it. It seems as if even if my SEO work is bad, junk, whatever, I should still get a pagerank (albeit a low one) and show up in google searches, and have google recognize my backlinks. I understand I have plenty of room to improve but the improvements I have made have done nothing for me as of yet.

So my main question is am I being penalized by google? If so, while further making my site google friendly change this?

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by garyglow

So my main question is am I being penalized by google? If so, while further making my site google friendly change this?

Well are you signed up fro Google Webmaster Tools? They let people know of being banned in there. You can also ask fro reinclusion. have you done anything in the past to get banned? Paid links and such?

[garyglow]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Well are you signed up fro Google Webmaster Tools? They let people know of being banned in there. You can also ask fro reinclusion. have you done anything in the past to get banned? Paid links and such?

I have done nothing to violate google's webmaster guidelines that I am aware of ( no paid links, and webmaster tools has not written me any messages, etc.). Heck I don't even know how to do anything shady. None of my other sites have been banned or have had any trouble getting listed. As I mentioned i do not think I am banned as I have ~450 pages indexed in google. To me it seems as if I'm stuck in the sandbox i keep reading about.

What is frustrating is reading some of the posts around here that say the are able to get listed in google sometimes in just a few days and are able to turn up in search quickly as well. For example, I am burried when I even do a search for, "the ticket lodge", or "theticketlodge.com". I think at this point (over 5 months), I should be at least on the first page for the above search terms. Heck, I'd even settle being on the first few pages of those searches.

Is there really a Sandbox? Am I in it? or does my site just suck that much?

[incrediblehelp]

I hope you dont think all these site wide links count as multiples:

https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.co...F&bwm=i&bwms=p

Removing duplicates I really only see less than 10 IBL's

I think you need some more high quality links in this tough competitive market. I dont think your really in a sand box, just not in the same playground as those that are ranking.

[crankydave]

Well, having 3 different versions of your URL in the index for your homepage isn't helping you any...

site:theticketlodge.com - Google Search

Dave

[garyglow]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

I hope you dont think all these site wide links count as multiples:

https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.co...F&bwm=i&bwms=p

Removing duplicates I really only see less than 10 IBL's

I think you need some more high quality links in this tough competitive market. I dont think your really in a sand box, just not in the same playground as those that are ranking.

That's the other thing that is confusing to me. All the search engines have VERY different list of IBLs. Yahoo seems to pick up all that garbage but when I am in Webmaster Tools and go to, "Pages with External Links", google shows far more unique links. After weeding through the duplicates here is what I have for 3 pages:

College Football Bowl Game Tickets: has 343 unique (1100 some total)
Hannah Montana Tickets: has 45 unique (73 total)
The Ticket Lodge: has 314 unique (684 total)

that's just a few of my pages.. I know I have quality links from other sites to specific pages as I see them pop in the search results: boston college and "ticket lodge" - Google Search

Not saying my links are great of anything but I do have more than 10 unique IBLs.

[wige]

Every search engine shows only a partial listing of known inbound links. This is done intentionally. In Google's case, it is a random sample. From Yahoo, you get a bigger random sample. And MSN won't show you anything at all.

Probably the most comprehensive listing is Google Webmaster Tools, although I have seen that list internal links as external, and some other buggy listings.

[garyglow]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

I think you need some more high quality links in this tough competitive market. I dont think your really in a sand box, just not in the same playground as those that are ranking.

I can understand not showing up in competitive ticket search but I don't understand how I can be burried so deep when I search "The ticket lodge" or "theticketlodge.com".

But what do i know...

[incrediblehelp]

Gary take some advice from Dave and fix all your duplication issues and your canonicalization issues to get started.