Sandboxing Your Competition

Seems like a very solid strategy for keeping out competition

[bears5122]

As many of us have started to notice, sites are typically thrown in the sandbox when they are new, and have shown a sharp increase in links from the on-set.

Now wouldn't it be in your best interest to sandbox your competition? You see a new site throwing up some PPC ads in your space, you immediately give them a few run-of-site links from some other sites you run and watch them get sandboxed.

Maybe unethical, but seemingly a solid approach for anyone in a competitive industry.

[energylevel]

everybody needs to be trying to game them! If your not thinking about SEO which is in essence gaming the search engines ... then all the sites successfully gaming the system if we want to use that phrase will likely be above you in the SERPS

[garytexas]

Wurzel, your are exactly right.
The reason I ask about PR and backlinks is....
Sites with PR 5 and above do not seem to pop the link filters, like the lower ranked ones.
You both seem to be authority sites, so the one with the most, or higher PR back links, containing your keyword/anchortext will get the top spot.
But one can optimize for multiple phrases at the same time, and not get anchor text dilution.
I believe the anchor text (example) broker , bank broker , stock broker, local broker, online broker, and best broker in UK.
In my opinion, these would all be consider in the count and PR value of the anchor text coming to your site for the keyword "broker".
And one would also gain the other 2 and 3 word phrases anchor text.
So, if you decide to knock them out of top spot, get'em for all the other related phrases too.
This is where I would think, only a human would know, these phrases are different, but also the same.

[graywolf]

Mess them up in Google and not help them in yahoo ... now where did I put my cloak ;-)

[bears5122]

Mess them up in Google and not help them in yahoo ... now where did I put my cloak ;-)

You read my mind (although I'd toss MSN in too) :-)

[wurzel]

>>>>So, if you decide to knock them out of top spot, get'em for all the other related phrases too<<<<

Oddly enough Google has had a mini shuffle sometime today as I have just checked and I'm now in pole position for my keyword with the big bank subsidiary down in second spot.

Although a single keyword covers 90% of all searches there are some other minor phrases that are sometimes used and I do have other pages optimised for those keyword phrases. My site ranks quite well for some of them and poorly for others so I need to keep working at it.

[MHes]

>Although a single keyword covers 90% of all searches there are some other minor phrases that are sometimes used....

I am always amazed at what people put into search boxes. In all the sectors we cover, probably 10% of traffic comes from the obvious search phrases which we have researched, while the rest (which is still relevant) comes from unpredicted search phrases.

When you say "some other minor phrases" what you may be seeing is a tip of a huge iceberg of minor phrases that you happen to catch. Increase your content around the topic and you could start catching 10 times more traffic making your major keywords far less important.