If the homepage is sandboxed for a keyword is the whole site sandboxed for that keyword?
-
If the homepage of a website has been sandboxed for certain keywords does this mean that the whole site is sandboxed for them keywords or just the homepage?
If a new sub-page was created with quality unique content, would it be possible to get that sub-page ranked for the same keywords that have been sandboxed on the homepage?
I have asked many other SEO professionals this same question and nobody really knows for sure. Do you?
-
The difficulty here in giving a reasonable opinion is we do not have the domain or pages to look at. If we did, we could give educated opinions.
RY.com.au makes a good point if you have pages that are ranking, it is easier to change a page than a domain. It becomes a question of risk/reward. You have to decide. -
You should try the new Page route instead of a new Domain.
The fact that your other webpages are ranking well indicates that the Domain still has decent Domain Authority; it's just the Homepage that got penalized. Trying to ranking for a new webpage is a lot less work than building up a new website.
What is the exact file extension of the Homepage? Is it index.php, index.html or index.htm? You can just change the file extension of the Homepage to a different one and adjust your server settings to reflect that; Google will treat it as a new page.
For example, if the Homepage is "index.html" running on an Apache server. Just change it to "index.htm" and in the .htaccess file add this command:
DirectoryIndex index.htm -
Hi Robert,
This issue relates to a new client we have just taken on. Their site was ranked at the top for major phrases related to their inductry but due to bad link building techniques by their previous SEO company their homepage got sandboxed.
There are still a lot of their inner pages ranking very well, just not the homepage anymore.
I have tried going through their link profile and submitting removal requests but not many are actually being removed.
I have also tried submitting a reconsideration request but just keep getting a message saying the site still does not conform to Google guidelines.
My thinking is, if a lot of their inner pages are still ranking then maybe I can get a new page ranked for the same phrases that has been sandboxed or do you think it is better to start again with a new clean domain.
-
Mark,
The first question would be... does the sandbox exist (still) and if so who is affected and how? There is a ton of info and non info on the subject, but the best I could find from any source I trust was this from Rand a few years ago: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-sandbox-still-exists-exemplified-by-gradercom
Based on Rand's conclusions, the entire domain would be affected and by changing the domain, the problem abates.
Given that today with Panda, Penguin, etc. having their own effect for penalties, I am not sure as to the relevance of the term. My guess is that if you created a new page with unique content that page could rank on its own. The sandbox was more apparent around links than content. If you are having a duplicate (borrowed) content problem that would seem more of a penguin issue.Hope this helps,
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
My site is showing indexed in search console but not appearing in Serps
hi, i have recently made sites.google site and submitted to search console but when I copy paste in google , its not appearing
Algorithm Updates | | alan-shultis0 -
If I optimize for a long tailed keyword, will I also catch the short keywords within it?
Say my long tailed keyword has three words in it that I also consider keywords. Will I catch the searches for those short keywords, or just the long tailed keyword phrase?
Algorithm Updates | | Scratch_MM0 -
Ecommerce sites 30% drop in organic since the spring
I help manage SEO for a number of large retail websites and we've seen a significant drop in organic traffic (upwards of 30%) since around May 2015. It's likely we were hit my Google's Phantom Quality update, but I don't understand why it had such a big impact. Can anyone explain that Google update in more depth and advise on steps to take to recover from it? Thank you.
Algorithm Updates | | JimLynch0 -
How seasonal would you expect organic on a b2b site to be?
I have a client who has a b2b site catering to a white collar information market. Looking back in G/A, it appears that they've never had a good organic search Summer, but have made plenty of YOY gains.This Summer is a little better than past Summers. Personally, I have read about people who take Summer vacations. Mostly in France. This is a U.S. site and U.S. traffic catering to business executives. I can see it in the parking lot of the downtown office building I work in... fewer cars after Memorial Day and more cars after Labor Day. How seasonal would you expect that kind of organic search traffic to be, say from April vs July? Would prefer answers from direct B2B experience, rather than guesses. But, if a guess is all you have, I will gladly accept that! Thanks... Darcy
Algorithm Updates | | 945010 -
Hi guys, I have a question about linking to a product page for linkbuilding. Does that count adversely vs. linking to a homepage?
Hi - so until now we have been building links via blog posts and articles and linking them to the homepage. It seems the ranking of some of my top keywords has fallen so had a few questions/concerns: Does it affect the rankings adversely if I link to the product page vs the homepage? What is rule of thumb for increasing rankings of inside pages/keywords and building links to them? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | DGM0 -
Site has disappeared since Panda 4 despite quality content, help!
Our site www.physicalwellbeing.co.uk has lost over 20 first page rankings since the end of May. I assume this is because of Panda 4.0. All content on the site is high quality and 100% unique, so we did not expect to get penalised. Although I read somewhere that if Google can't read particular js anymore they don't rank you as high. The site has not been blacklisted as all pages are showing in Google's index and there are no messages on webmaster tools. We have not taken part in any link schemes and have disavowed all low quality links that were pointing there just in case (after the penalty). Can anybody see anything on www.physicalwellbeing.co.uk that may have cause Panda update to affect it so negatively? Would really appreciate any help.
Algorithm Updates | | search_shop0 -
Staging site - Treated as duplicate?
Last week (exactly 8 days ago to be precise) my developer created a staging/test site to test some new features. The staging site duplicated the entire existing site on the same server. To explain this better -My site address is - www.mysite.com The path of the new staging site was www.mysite/staging I realized this only today and have immediately restricted robot text and put a no index no follow on the entire duplicate server folder but I am sure that Google would have indexed the duplicate content by now? So far I do not see any significant drop in traffic but should I be worried? and what if anything can I do at this stage?
Algorithm Updates | | rajatsharma0 -
Is it better to build a large site that covers many verticals or many sites dedicated to each vertical
Just wondering from an seo perspective is it better to build a large site that covers many verticals or build out many sites one for each vertical?
Algorithm Updates | | tlhseo0