Things I'm doing to beat the sandbox

[Postmaster]

• • Moving domain registrars from 123reg.co.uk to a registrar that allows max 10 years instead of 5 years registration.
  • Backlinking my sites internal pages
  • Constantly updating my site and providing fresh content
  • Constantly acquiring backlinks
    
    

[Brian Turner]

I'm not sure that long-term future registration is going to be particularly important - perhaps it is, I just find it hard to be convinced that Google is using that as a parameter for ranking purposes at the moment.

Use of internal links I should say is very important - when I first set up Platinax, the text links I set up to promote the site provided no rankings for the keywords described (even general descriptions).

However, I published dynamic RSS files for the forum and blog across the entire site, and found that I was able to rank for these internal links. So this is definitly a strategy I should recommend if you have dynamic content generation on your site, such as blogs, forums, etc, that you can use to direct to different parts of the site.

You can also Ping a heck of a lot of sites from a blog, which gets your content far more exposure and potentially more backlinks - more here on that: sites to ping.

I've also noticed that Google does apparently actually care about pages updating - this has been a general suggestion for years, but I'd never seen any ranking benefits from updated content. However, recently I've definitely seen suggestions that Google enjoys updated content - though possibly the advantage is more that Google is likely to return more quickly to index newer content, rather than wait for longer. Thus updated content on a regular basis may mean more of your site indexed more quickly.

As for acquiring backlinks - always a good policy. At the moment I very much recommend a "softly softly" approach to link building, no matter the age of the domain - build links at a relatively steady rate, and measure the response. No response is ok, but increased targeted rankings are better - but at the first sign of a downturn in rankings, you either stop or reverse what you have built.

It may be impossible to escape sandboxing in some instances - but where this occurs, at least it still remains a temporary issue. Every site I've personally known to be sandboxed I've seen come out again with strong rankings.

[Postmaster]

Nice advice Brian, loving it. During my current "forum promotion" I've moved up a place in allinanchor for my target competitive keyprhase. So I think Google is taking my links in at present. Will also rss my site from my forum as soon as I upgrade it to Vbullitin (my freelancer working on that), then maybe my blog later on. Think I might not move registrar after all, from your advice, so thanks for that too.

[Brian Turner]

Changing registrar may help - I just personally think it unlikely when all other things are considered.

A blog and a forum I see as key ways to develop and promote a site, so I think you are definitely on the right track there.