Am I sandboxed? No search traffic on my main keywords

[sr123]

Hi there,

I have a website that I have painstakingly developed since 2003. I have always gone out of my way to remain "white hat" in my SEO.

In fact, I followed the guidelines from a popular thread on this forum on how to rank well.

The site is in a highly competitive space, and I did after a year or more of hard work, start to see the site rising in the rankings.

But then, right around the time when everyone started talking about the sandbox effect, I noticed my traffic drop significantly from Google, to the point where I get more referrals from Yahoo and MSN than from Google.

I started an investigation into the referrals that I was getting from Google, and they were all for very specific keyword combinations, but not at all from the main two keyword combinations that I WANT to rank well for and that apply to my site.

In fact, the SERPS are full of tons of spammy, crappy sites. All of the major competitor sites respect my site, and link to it. I am in the right directories, and I have a very solid site.

In fact, in the category of my site, it is known by many of the top experts on the subject matter of my site, and is well-respected.

I am convinced that my site is sandboxed. I have seen very strange behaviour from Google. I have been at the very TOP of the SERPS at one time, and I've done nothing different now.

I'm not linking to any bad sites. In fact, my links page is very legit!

What gives? What can I do? I really need to rank well for the subject matter of the site or it defeats the purpose. My site is very comprehensive, and should for all intents and purposes rank very highly for the keyword phrases in question (at least it should RANK for these).

I would appreciate any advice on how to remedy this situation. Also, if I can answer any questions that may clarify my situation to help anyone on this site give me some feedback, I would really appreciate it.

I really don't want to give up on my site.

Thanks,
Sam

[edited by: tedster at 1:46 am (utc) on July 20, 2008]

[tedster]

Sandbox is a term that webmasters use to describe Google's treatment of a new site. The description you gave is for a five year old established site. Sorry to say, this sounds exactly like a penalty, and a pretty heavy one.

This kind of treatment is traditionally reserved for sites that Google feels are manipulating links in some way: buying or selling links that pass PageRank, using link-farm type schemes, building automated feeder networks, using sponsored themes to gain links, offering widgets with embedded but off-topic links -- that kind of thing. That's my first impression of our symptoms - Google sees your site in this kind of light.

Have you checked your site with automated software to look for hidden links that you may not be aware of? If you get hacked, you may not even know it because many times these days hackers inject hidden links rather than visibly defacing your site.

Whatever the case, I do not think this is a reflection on your actual content. It's a penalty.

[edited by: tedster at 3:10 am (utc) on July 20, 2008]

[buckworks]

Tell us what you have already done to try to diagnose what's wrong.

[sr123]

Hi Tedster, thanks for the clarification on the sandbox vs. penalty thing.

Ok, so I am definitely being penalized for some reason then. The funny thing is I have done none of the things that you have outlined that would potentially cause this. I don't use feeder networks, I don't scrape, I don't offer any widgets, or use link farms or anything like that. That's why I'm totally stumped as to what may be causing this.

Buckworks, I haven't really done much to diagnose it because I don't know where to even begin.

Do you have any suggestions?

The only thing I can think of is that way back in the beginning when I started the site, I had an additional domain name pointing to the site.

This is before I knew about 301 redirects. This second domain name still brings up my site, only for years now it's been via the 301 redirect.

BTW, tedster, I haven't been hacked as far as I am aware, but even so, how do you suggest I check for this?

Other points about the site:
- I have a phpbb forum (used to be phpbb2, now using the latest phpbb3)
- I use wordpress on the site to let key forum members have their own blogs
- The rest of the site is developed by myself, and is php based.

If anyone wants to look at the URL I'd be happy to PM you with it.

Sam

[buckworks]

Start by running a link checker tool on your site, one that is capable of spidering your entire site. Better yet, check with more than one tool. Look closely at the reports. What you're looking for are any outgoing links that you don't recognize. Pay special attention to the blog and forum areas which contain content not created by you. If you find unknown links, check them out carefully.

While you're at it, check a sampling of your pages to look for code validation problems. Pay special attention to your main templates. Countless sites rank just fine despite validation errors, but once in a while the wrong error can cause problems so it's worth checking your validation if only to rule it out as a suspect.

[TerrCan123]

sr123 the links you talk about are all old links I presume. I have old links too to some heavy sites [an old Yahoo directory link for example] but I wonder if Google doesn't care about these much anymore or give them much weight it seems. I think they look for new links and that is what drives traffic, or so it seems.

That must be how the newer tiny sites get to the top so fast, new links.