Entering a new market for any business is never easy, and starting a new SEO campaign on a brand new website is no exception.  Any good SEO campaign will be geared towards Google to ensure the site receives the best possible exposure in the search engines. However, it can be a tricky procedure, as Google (though they’ve never publicly said this, only hinted at it) has what is known as a ‘sandbox’.

The name ‘sandbox’ stems from people using juvenile SEO techniques such as buying links from link farms, creating duplicate content and other ‘childish’ black hat techniques. Basically these sites are literally ‘put back in the sandbox’ with the other children!

What do I do if I think my site has been Sandboxed?

Don’t panic! – If you think your site has been sandboxed, the natural reaction may well be to fret over it and send yourself mad with worry. This needn’t be the worst thing in the world, I always say, if you can turn adversity into fortune then you’re in for a stress free, successful life!

Sit back, and look at things objectively, there are things that can be done to help you get some business, even if it’s not going to be as effective as the possibility of catching those high value keywords you originally wanted to target.

Look at your keywords, and try and think ‘outside the box’ – see if you can find some keywords that, although are less popular, will still bring you traffic and sales. Start link building slowly for those phrases, it will, over time strengthen your campaign so isn’t a waste of time at all.

Look at the Longtail. Longtail keywords can be extremely powerful for conversion, and should be incorporated into all SEO campaigns anyway. Build up your content with relevant articles and pages written expressly for this purpose. Your site will be healthier and stronger when finally released from the sandbox, so this is most definitely the way forward.

Search out ‘authority’ links, such as DMOZ, industry standard sites, Fortune 500 sites etc. Also .gov .edu domains can provide relief from the sandbox filter as these are highly trusted sites and are usually exempt from the sandbox.

Think away from Google – often I find my sites perform extremely well on Yahoo and Bing, but start out slow in Google. Although traffic from less widely used search engines will always be much reduced than what you would expect from Google, these search engines shouldn’t ever be overlooked.

Look at generating traffic through social media marketing. Facebook and Twitter are quickly becoming more widely used, and could overtake Google in popularity. You can generate traffic and sales opportunities by using this different approach. There may even be a social media platform related to your industry.

Think about email marketing. If you have a list of existing customers, send them a newsletter telling them about your new site. Always give them the option to unsubscribe – otherwise you could run the risk of losing your existing customers, which would be entirely counterproductive.

If your site has been sandboxed, it can take up to 8 months to be released. However, if you do all the things mentioned above it should perform almost straight away when it is finally released.

You will have a lot of content published on your site targeting the longtail. These pages will still be there, working away for you as long as they remain on your site. Your time will not have been wasted! You may even find that the conversion rate from these pages is higher over time than that from the highly competitive keywords originally picked.

Have you ever heard of D-Moz?

I’m sorry I don’t listen to hip-hop…

Dmoz isn’t some bling covered rapper from across the Atlantic, I’m sure most people actually assume this when they hear the word…No? Just me then.

If you’re just starting out in the world of SEO (as I was a couple of weeks ago) then you may be unsure as to what Dmoz is.

Dmoz is actually an abbreviation of the original domain for the Open Directory Project (ODP), the largest human-edited directory on the internet.

In brief, Dmoz is a global directory with a vast number of categories, including websites regarding:

• Technology museums.
• Welding and soldering.
• Sporting eyewear protection.
• Bowling for gays, lesbians and bisexuals.
• And, much, much more.

I don’t think I’m dabbling in hyperbole when I say Dmoz contains directories of every imaginable thing, and every unimaginable thing!*

If you speak a couple of languages why not help Dmoz out by translating a directory or two into one of the many languages used.

To keep the behemoth from collapsing under it’s own volume a dedicated team of editors (somewhere in the region of 8,000) trim the fat and keep the system operating as smoothly as possible.

Although the site is free it’s owned by Netscape who are committed to a social contract which aspires to keep the site free and give back to the (internet) community.

With regards to SEO, a listing on Dmoz is essential, it’s a given, a standard for websites.  If your site isn’t on Dmoz then you’ve never heard of it until now or…I can’t think of another reason without insulting people, so let’s just leave it at one reason.

Google acknowledged Dmoz’s importance allowing it to command a high PageRank, therefore giving weight via backlinks to listed websites and making it vital for websites to be listed.

This is from the about page on Dmoz, and sums up the project more concisely than I could: “ODP editors are Web searchers creating a directory for other Web searches”.

Dmoz is for the people, and by the people.

Written By Robert Greenhill, Creare’s newest SEO recruit

*Yeah, fine, I dabbled

Will This Feature Reinvent Search Engine Optimisation?

Recently Google Social Search was put into the public domain after extensive beta testing at the tail-end of last year. After performing a Google search, this new feature finds relevant public content from your web social circle and highlights it at the bottom of the traditional results page. Many observers are asking the question – what does this mean for SEO?

While there may be a few changes in how search engine optimisation is performed, the reality is that the jury is still out. The first flaw with the feature is that users must be logged into a Google mail account for the social results to be presented. This is because it only picks up social network connections that are linked to users’ public Google profiles, such as Twitter, FriendFeed, Linked In, blogs and even images from Picasa and Flickr.

The second area of concern is the lack of Facebook presence in Google Social Searches. This particular social network is considered to be the biggest in the UK, if not the world. But it is essentially closed off to search engine spiders, meaning potentially optimised material will stay private. This is clearly going to have a detrimental effect on the effectiveness of Google Social Search, and needs to be rectified before it can be considered as a major force for the SEO industry.

What are the advantages?

It has to be pointed out however that Google Social Search could open so many doors for the SEO industry. To have so much social content in one place is obviously a powerful tool. The ability to build a large-scale network of friends, friends of friends and business associates will enable greater linking opportunities, and also provides new rankings to ‘exploit’. Viral content, such as Michael Angrave’s SEO Song, will spread like wildfire, and grow at a greater rate than ever before.

The bottom line remains the same – quality content is still king. As outlined in a recent blog post ‘Social Media Marketing for SEO’, by contributing material that is relevant and interesting you will identify yourself as someone to link with.

Once Google Social Search has had its flaw ironed out and moves into the wider public sphere, it is likely to become a tool for SEO firms to take advantage of. So get networking!

Embracing this bold new world can pay dividends to your SEO campaign

While search engine spiders won’t pick up on optimisation within a video itself, they can identify a range of text-based content that is associated with it. With the continued rise of YouTube – 999,987,865 videos and counting – it is easy to see why the industry is starting to wake up to the SEO possibilities of web video.

While it may be most famous for being home to videos of dancing dogs and skateboarding cats, YouTube also hosts an array of videos that offer expert opinion and analysis on related topics. As seen with my colleagues James and Nick’s SEO video blogs, they can generate significant traffic and stimulate debate among the audience. And with a transcript of the video in text form present as well as backward links to the mother site will also enable excellent search engine optimisation possibilities.

It is important to note however there are alternatives to YouTube in the videosphere. Social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace are still growing at an alarming rate, and also allow users to embed videos, alongside sites such as Twiddeo (Twitter’s sister site) and Vimeo. If the video is considered useful or has a certain X Factor it may even be shared between a web community for even wider exposure, which can spread like wild fire around the globe.

But remember to always add the video to your own site before uploading it elsewhere, to ensure your site gets the authority.

Linking provides another opportunity to maximise your SEO strategy from video content. Uploading to video sharing networks enables backward linking to your own website, which is particularly useful if the video you shoot is informative and entertaining - which will engage the audience and improve the likelihood of traffic being redirected.

Any HTML content surrounding a video, such as a transcript of the content for example, can represent one way of optimising. Even a word-for-word script can utilise extensive key phrasing. Ensure filenames, titles and video descriptions are key word rich, as well as always tagging videos with phrases incorporating these terms as well.

An XML or video sitemap on your own website will also generate activity within the search engines. Submitting the sitemap via Webmaster Tools will help the engines discover material they otherwise wouldn’t.

Don’t delay in harnessing the power of video in your SEO campaign. This bold new world offers a wealth of opportunities.

During the Summer Google made an announcement about a new project they are rolling out, they call it ‘Caffeine’. Caffeine is described as a re-write of the current search architecture, Matt Cutts suggested that many searches would stay the same but be faster.

At the time of this announcement, Matt Cutts discussed this new update with WebProNews. He suggested that it is very similar to the “Big daddy Update” from 2005, and consists of changes to the way Google crawls and then indexes sites.

Before Christmas, Google were kind enough to reassure everyone that Caffeine wouldn’t be rolled out until after the festivities. This was a very considerate thing of Google to do, especially as the Christmas period is often the busiest time of year for many businesses.

In November Google told us all about their intentions at PubCon. A few days ago Matt Cutts posted a video of his presentation at this event on his blog. It is well worth watching – if you want to skip ahead to the Caffeine bit though, it starts at around 22.10.

How will Caffeine affect your SEO

If you use white hat SEO techniques, and make sure your site is excellent for the end user (ie people) then you can’t really go wrong. Don’t forget to make sure your content is regularly updated, your coding is clean and tidy, and you link build using ethical and thoughtful techniques you can’t go wrong. The basic rules of SEO still apply!