The infamous Google sandbox. Is it real or just a figment of the marketer’s imagination? If you are unfamiliar with the term, it refers to a period in which it seems that your articles are not going to rank. Then one day things take off and you seem to have been let loose out of the sandbox and can finally see some traffic to your site.
Even with the best digital marketing tips, you may find yourself stuck in the sandbox but there is a way to shorten the amount of time you end up in it. In this article, I will go over some of the things you can do in addition to everything else on that list to make sure that your time in the sandbox is minimal.
Focus on original content
Of course you think that your content is original because you wrote it, but you can definitely take another look at your current content and see if it really ticks the boxes of being original. And then make sure any content going forward is also original.
It takes good keyword research to get started, but it also needs to be something that you feel adds value beyond just pleasing Google. For instance, you should be writing for people and not the bot. Add some graphs, some tables and a very descriptive text about your product or service.
The way to look at it is that if you do these things, it looks original and is hard to copy. If your content can be easily recreated by a competitor then it wasn’t very original.
Don’t keyword stuff
In addition to your content being original, it also needs to look natural. And trying to fit a certain amount of keywords in based on article length is a good way to keep Google from taking your site seriously. Keyword stuffing doesn’t look natural.
Besides, you just need Google to understand what the article is about and using semantically related keywords are going to come naturally. These keywords are what Google will need to understand the topic and not the same keyword jammed in all over the place.
Keep it pithy but also descriptive
The thinking was length is strength when it comes to how long a web article needed to be to rank high on Google and help to get out of the sandbox. This is no longer the case.
A short article can also help you get out sooner if it covers the topic in a succinct way. Google doesn’t care if an article is 3,000 words if it doesn’t help the searcher answer their query. If you can give the searcher the information they need quickly then this is good.
At the same time, if a topic requires a long bit of copy for them to get the idea you are trying to convey then the article should be long. It all depends on the topic and not a formula.
