How to avoid the google sandbox.

- Dont add too many links to quick

- Don't over optimise your website, (check your keyword density) you can use IBP to check your site against your competitors

- Don't let your site be down for too long, if you have to have the site down, send back the correct "temporarily unavailable" message to the search engines.

I have spent years launching sites and ended up in the sandbox for over optimising my sites, I just started assuming that all websites go into a sandbox. Well after alot of experience, I avoid it every time.

Make sure your website is good quality and don't over optimise your keywords, make sure you have a few keywords.

Make sure they are diluted out. (if your keyword is 3 words, make sure you have 4-5 words, 100% keyword is always bad.  I have seen people using the same 100% keywords in title, h1 tag, alt tags, file names. They need to be watered down, at least you should aim for 3 keywords on your front page.

Make sure your keywords are in the first sentence, and they are not mentioned too many times on the site, you can compare your keyword density against your competitors with IBP, we will do it for you for $20 if you contact us. or do it yourself on IBP

Title  (keyword 1 ) Put it in the start of a sentence

Heading  (keyword 1 and keyword 2)

alt tag   (related keyword)

First sentence  (add keyword 1 and 2)

Assuming you have followed all the steps i have done so far, you will avoid the sandbox.  Start your link building with just the url with no anchor texts, then add many links with various keywords, even non keywords.  You should link to all the different pages. I try and get 20% of the links to index and 80% to the rest. More about link building here.

How do you know if you are in the google sandbox?

Your index page appears to be deindexed, you wont rank anywhere for your index page anymore, but your other pages may still rank, but probably not very well.