I’ve avoided listing methods aimed at only minimizing your time in the sandbox—as opposed to methods of actually escaping it—as those are basically paramount to good SEO practises, which is obviously way beyond the scope of this article.

- Buy out old domains—Even if a domain is low on inbound links, the age factor will almost certainly be enough for it to have expired the sandbox; typically a year is good age to ensure a domain is sandbox free; if possible negotiate with original owner keeping the WHOIS record as similar as possible to prevent triggering a fresh sandbox cycle. Domains never indexed in Google, no matter what how early registration date aren’t likely to avoid being sandboxed.

- Buy recently expired domains—Some theory as above, but applied to domains that have actually expired. There is some evidence to suggest very recently expired domains can avoid a fresh sandbox cycle. A good measure might be domains expired but still indexed in Google.

- Collect the low hanging fruit—While sandboxed you aren’t going to rank well for competitive terms, but you may be able rank for low traffic ones. Large quantities of low traffic terms can be just as rewarding, and if you target the right ones you’ll be strengthening the theme of your site for when your more competitive terms are freed from the sandbox.

- Drag your competitors down to your level—We really don’t condone or recommend this; it’s listed here for completeness sake, and to make you aware of tactics that can be used against you: If you can’t aspire move upwards, the second option is to drag your competitors downwards, into and below the level of the sandbox. StuntDubl summarizes the main blackhat tactics at the disposal of those who willing to cross the line. Even if we did recommend this, logistically it’s a non-option since you’ll no doubt have hundreds or thousands of competitors’ pages ahead of you, not to mention that each one of those competitors can use the same tactics against you.

- Buy your way in—Irregardless of sandbox status, you should almost always consider doing at least one PPC campaign for each of your targeted terms, in order to estimate the ROI before spending resources targeting terms organically.

- Explore non-Google traffic sources—Getting sandboxed clearly illustrates the danger of putting your eggs in one basket. Consider using your time in the sandbox to explore and make full use of other sources of targeted traffic, learn to survive without being at the whim of Google.

- Hijack your competitors rankings—Again, we don’t condone or recommend blackhat tactics: Performing a 302 redirect to one of your high ranking competitors from a non-sandboxed domain (preferably of higher PageRank/trust than theirs) can sometimes succeed in hijacking their SERP listings. So that the traffic can be gleaned, the redirect can be cloaked for the benefit of the Google-bot, with regular visitors being redirected to your sandboxed site. Again, we do not recommend this, and only on small number of occasions have such tactics been publicized to work.

- Use subdomain from developed site—According a quite a few experts; since sandboxing appears to be based on 2nd level domain, hosting your site on a subdomain of an already established domain will avoid the sandbox. If you redirect all pages to the new domain once the site appears thoroughly indexed; it should reportedly maintain a non-sandboxed status.

- Acquire “trusted” links—A fair amount of SEOs have claimed to have escaped the sandbox by acquiring enough “trusted,” high quality authoritative links. The most often cited source for links capable of freeing a site are high profile news sites; .gov, and .edu sites; and dmoz.org. That this method can immediately free you from the sandbox is somewhat contested, but most seem to agree that it can either a) avoid being initially sandboxed, or b) shorten your stay. At least one Google engineer is reported to have supported the theory that high quality backlinks can negate the sandbox.

- Perhaps you aren’t sandboxed after all—Consider and research into the possibility that you aren’t sandboxed and instead simply suffering the effect of a very ineffective SEO campaign. For this purpose SEOMoz.org offers the Sandbox Detection Tool.

10 steps by webmasterbrian

What is the Google sandbox?

Google Sandbox Effect is defined as the situation where the results of Google’s main ranking algorithms (PageRank) when your recently launched site deserves a decent rank based on typical factors like keyword density correct pages in place and a few inbound links. But instead it’s nowhere to be seen, or is way down on page 40 or 50.

Does the sandbox really exist?

Google engineer Matt Cutts has essentially acknowledged that a ” sandbox effect “exists and that it’s a product of their algorithm. They say it is to test the initial value of a site before it can be trusted as a true source for content or product. Another anonymous Google engineer is reported to referred to this a the “probation” period for new sites. Despite some differences in terminology, the sandbox as an abstraction for a specific sum of parts in Google’s larger algorithm is almost certainly existent.

Does the sandbox affect you?

If your site fits into these key criteria:

1. Newly established (less than a few months old)
2. Target a highly competitive and/or commercial industry
3. Have attempted optimization, especially link building (This includes paying for links)

By our definition, at least number one has to be true, otherwise you can label virtually any aspect of Google’s algorithm that dampens rankings the sandbox, and the discussion would become too general. We can’t be sure the above are actual trigger factors (i.e. a cause and not simply an effect), we only know that sites fitting this criteria are plentiful in the “sandbox.”

Next Post will be how to get out Stay tuned!

For awhile now google has been offering amazing free tools to everyone. One of them has been Gmail.

It offers one of the best spam filters and over 6 GB of space. This means you will never have to delete a email again.

Today Google is offering the ability to use the gmail system on your own domain name. For example with imarkethosting.com I am using this system. It allows me to use the gmail email system for my own email address. My email support@imarkethosting.com goes into a gmail account. Not into my own web hosting space.

Here is a link to how to set it up for your self. Google apps support

This is a pretty amazing tool that is ofcourse FREE.

Want to become an unbelievable headline writer?

Well, taken literally, that’s not a good thing.

If your headline is completely unbelievable, it’s not credible by definition. In which case, your response rate goes down, not up, no matter how fantastic a promise your headline makes.

See, making outlandish claims with your headline in order to attract attention is a sucker’s game. Even if you manage to score the click, you’re history when the reader discovers you can’t deliver on your promise, or you’ve pulled some lame bait and switch.

What you want to do is write a headline that’s almost unbelievable.

For example, take a look at this headline:

How to Get 100,000 Blog Subscribers OvernightWow, what a promise! Problem is, it’s completely unbelievable. Sure, you might get the most desperately optimistic souls reading until they figure out you’re full of it, but most people will shake their heads and move on without bothering. The headline is so incredible, it literally lacks credibility.

On the other hand, being too believable isn’t all that great either:

How to Get 10 New Blog Subscribers
With Only 10 Hours of WorkNow, that’s perfectly believable, but not very compelling. In fact, this headline makes me want to give up blogging and become a shepherd.

What you need is something absolutely compelling that you can absolutely deliver on. It should border on the unbelievable, yet still be within the realm of possibility. You want people to keep reading, almost daring you to back up the claim in your headline.

Something like this:

How to Increase your Blog Subscription Rate by 254%That’s a pretty compelling headline if you’re a blogger. It’s also the headline from yesterday’s guest post from Willy Franzen. The specificity of the claim and the magnitude of the number sucks people right in, whether hopeful that the solution will work for them or simply seeking to verify the supporting information for the headline.

Willy’s article backed up the promise made by the headline with data, and provided the “how to” guidance for people to achieve similar results. In fact, the solution requires only changing one or two words in the blog sidebar.

So, an even more compelling headline might have been:

How to Increase your Blog Subscription Rate by 254%
With This Single Tiny TweakNow you’ve just upped the specificity and made the headline that much more compelling. The promise is to not only show how to dramatically increase subscription rates, but to also demonstrate that the solution is quick and easy. It’s just a tad more unbelievable than before, which makes the curiosity factor hard to resist. But it doesn’t cross the line into completely unbelievable, and the headline is still completely supported by the content of the article.

Obviously this unbelievable technique can work for blog post titles, but it’s even more well-suited for landing page headlines. Take the time to find that fascinating element of your product or offer that borders on the unbelievable, and you may just find the perfect headline angle.

Just never forget that your headline is a promise you have to keep. If you can’t, you and your headline revert to completely unbelievable as soon as you let the reader or prospect down.

Brian Clark is the founding editor of Copyblogger, and co-founder of Teaching Sells and Lateral Action

You’ve refined your keywords, optimized your bids, and written AdWords text ads that pull in tons of targeted clicks, but after looking at your Google Analytics reports, you realize that your landing page has a bounce rate of 91%.

Which means that 91% of the users coming to your site are quickly glancing around and leaving, deciding immediately that this site isn’t for them. One of the easiest, low-tech ways to make users stick around and look at your products or services is to catch their attention with an engaging headline.Recent research suggests that users decide to stay or leave your site in 8 seconds or less — in that short amount of time, headlines are the one piece of copy that users will actually read.

Here are five tips for writing headlines that will draw in user attention.
Include your paid keyword in the headline.

And as close to the beginning of the headline as you can. When users land on your site after clicking on a text ad or organic listing, they’re a bit nervous.

They have a good idea of what they’re looking for, and hope that your site will deliver it, but they’re a bit skeptical. And they have a good reason to be — there are a lot of junky sites out there that don’t deliver.

Putting the keyword in the headline provides split-second assurance to visitors that they are in the right place. It will make them relax a bit and be more receptive to your message.
Don’t sound like an ad.

Most of us are presented with thousands of advertising messages per day. Our brains have developed sophisticated filters to keep most of those messages out.

Sometimes, the best way to get past that filter is to not sound like an ad. Instead of sounding like an overbearing salesperson, try to sound like a friend delivering valuable information.

For example, instead of:
Fabulous Skin Cream that Makes a Difference!

Try
5 Ways to Reduce Wrinkles in 30 Days.
Highlight benefits rather than features.

Instead of rattling off the cold facts about your product or service, think about what problem your product or service will solve for your user.

Instead of
E-mail with up to 2GB of Storage

Try
Never Throw Another E-mail Away
Make headlines look easy to read.

When our eyes are moving fast looking for something particular, we tend to ignore copy that looks like it will take too much effort to read.

So, make your headline as simple and direct as possible. Try using shorter words.

For example, instead of
Deploy Robust Data Recovery Solutions and Enhance Network Availability

Try
5 Things You Need to Protect Your Data
Don’t forget subheads.

Subheads are another easy way to quickly offer more information about your product. Similar to headlines, they’re usually a piece of text users will be likely to scan.

Let’s say you’re an e-tailer and your landing page is a specific product page, with the product name serving as the page’s headline. A subhead that offers visitors a quick preview of product benefits saves them the trouble of digging benefits out of user reviews and product descriptions that are often visually buried on the page.

Instead of
Computer Satchel

Try
Computer Satchel
Patented protection system cushions your laptop with shock-absorbing, air-filled pouches.

By by Ginger Makela

This came directly from Google Conversion University

Having issues with joomla?

Wish there was a way to test your system to find out why?

I found this great tool to help out with just that. JTS It stands for Joomla! Tools Suite

This hand dandy tool helps with your preinstall of joomla, and with just normal issues found in joomla.

Like security audits etc..

Check it out you will love it.

You know you’ve done it. Like just almost anyone who knows how to use a computer, I’m willing to bet you’ve googled your own name to see what’s out there about you, and to see who else has the same name.

In the case of a sometimes actor from Los Angeles named Jim Killeen, that search instinct not only led to at least 24 namesakes, but also to a documentary about his experiences tracking some of them down and visiting them around the world.

Killeen’s film, Google Me, which he is debuting on Friday on YouTube, is an exploration of identity, modern technology, the human soul and, among other things, chili.

Along the way, Killeen tracked down six fellow Jim Killeens: a priest from Cobh, Ireland; a traffic engineer from Edinburgh, Scotland; a CEO from Melbourne, Australia; a “sexual swinger” from Denver; a retired police detective from New York City; and a father of eight from St. Louis.

The goal? To find out who Jim Killeen is, in all his shapes and sizes, and to try to pin down what, exactly, is in a name.

The rest of the article here. 

There are two different kinds of template-based builder sites: those that let you control website mechanics and those that do not. The second kind, while faster to use, prevent you from changing anything on your website. You can´t change your meta tags, your navigation menu, your title, etc.

The other kind of template-based builder lets you customize every aspect of your website, including the parts that are important to a search engine. This is the sort of builder that we provide: with it, you can configure every aspect of your site important to the search engines available on the Internet. When someone claims that our Builder is not search engine friendly, it´s almost always because they´re not familiar with our specific technology and don´t understand how configurable our templates actually are.

We have had many search engine experts review our Builder and its templates for search engine friendliness. Without exception, it gets high marks for producing websites that are extremely search engine friendly. In addition, we have incorporated and continue to incorporate their suggestions to continually improve and stay up-to-date with the latest trends.

Here are a few examples of features that our builder has to help your site rank well:
Text Link Navigation: Your left navigation bar has text links instead of buttons. Text links attract search engines to these important keywords.
Static Product Catalog Pages: Your product catalog appears as an HTML page with the keywords in the address. This “static” view of your product catalog does much better in search engines than the standard “dynamic” view.
DTD Statement: We include a DTD statement for you. Over 75% of the pages on the Internet do not have this statement. The DTD Statement tells both web browsers and search engine spiders what language the code was written in. When search engines come across the DTD Statement, they know how to index and catalog the information. Plus, since the code is compliant, they can index it much faster.
If the Template Isn´t Causing My Problems, Why Am I Not Ranked Well?

Great question. We´ve been doing search engine marketing for nine years. Back when we started, of the top search engines today, only Yahoo! existed. There was no Google, no MSN. The largest index was Magellan, and it stood at an amazing 220 million pages. Today, Google has over 8 billion pages indexed. You have more competition, algorithms are constantly changing, pages are being weeded out, etc.

From our experience, here are our personal recommendations to help your site climb the ranks of the search engine results:
Keep your title tag short (8 words or less) and ensure it is compelling.
Use the keyword that you are targeting only once in the title.
Use a compelling meta description tag. Keep it 10-20 words in length (this text will appear below the title in a search result).
Use the keyword phrase just once in the meta description.
Use the keyword meta tag, but keep the keywords generic.
List five or fewer keyword phrases in the keyword meta tag.
Avoid unnecessary meta tags.
Build up your viewable content to at least 450 words per page.
Use the keywords in the content naturally, so the text flows. Do not keyword-stuff your content, or you may turn off your visitor.
Launch a campaign to get links to your site and be consistent with it.
Review our resource center for hundreds of tips and an eBook on how to market your website.

Search engines are smart. Google makes an average of 9 cents in revenue for every search done in their network. With 220 million searches, that is nearly $20 million in revenue per day. You can bet that Google is doing all they can to make sure the best sites come up first, because if they don´t, searchers will use other search engines.

Let’s close by quoting Matt Cutts, senior engineer at Google: “If you create a web page that is well designed, and the content is informative and is exactly what the searcher is looking for, we will do our best to make sure that your page comes up in the top ten. However, don´t think that you can just throw up any page or copy content—the text must be original.”

As soon as people find out what people at our company do, they usually start to ask questions about what they (or their sister, or their uncle, or some other close friend or relative) can do to increase their visibility on search engines. Some people ask if virtual hosts are penalized on Google. Others ask if template-based website builders—such as ours—produce websites that are search engine friendly. In fact, sometimes we´ve heard these same concerns expressed by our Builder customers.

There are two myths which tend to feed these sorts of concerns, and we’d like to look at them briefly today.

Myth #1: Virtual hosts do not rank as well on Google as dedicated IP addresses
Virtual Hosts vs. Unique IP Addresses

We use Virtual hosting; multiple websites hosted through the same IP address rather than each site having its own. In the eyes of a search engine however, it makes no difference. Virtual hosts are treated by Google in the same way as unique IP addresses. Craig Silverstein, Google´s Director of Technology, said in a 2003 interview: “If your ISP does virtual hosting correctly, you´ll never see a difference between the two cases. We do see a small percentage of ISPs every month that misconfigure their virtual hosting, which might account for this persistent misperception.” (Click here for full article.) Matt Cutts, senior engineer at Google, verified that statement in 2006: “I’m happy to affirm that this statement, which was true in 2003, is still true now. Links to virtually hosted domains are treated the same as links to domains on dedicated IP addresses.” (Click here for full article.)

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