It’s strange how old ideas gain new popularity. A couple articles I wrote a while back have been gaining some attention lately. The first is SEO is a School of Thought that I wrote at the SEO Refugee blog. The Todd Malicoat, aka stuntdubl, made his own comments recently on the topic.

Every now and then I can see why things are the way they are without having the evidence to back it up. It comes to me clearly and I know I’m right. Call it intuition or a 6th sense or whatever but this was the case with the second article I am mentioning: About the Google Sandbox. When I wrote this article I was still new to the SEO community and got a lot of flack for it - especially the part where I give tips to “avoid” the sandbox. These tips include:

• Build for a tight niche within a broad category
• Only get relevant backlinks
• Avoid being associated with bad neighborhoods - even 2 or 3 clicks away!
• Only put your site in relevant directories that have standards for inclusion
• Keep your site on-topic until it is firmly established
• Go slow when expanding into new content areas

Last month the Andy Hagans wrote his Secrets to Beating the Sandbox 2.0 REVEALED: The Ultimate Guide. I’ve never conversed with Andy, but he made some of the same points I did, namely that the sandbox is based on trust and that getting the right links get you out of the sandbox.
While my article explains a lot more about how I think the sandbox works, Andy goes into some detail to explain how to get through it including link bait, which was a new concept when I wrote the original article. Andy doesn’t seem to think niche as important as I do but his explanation of sites coming out of the sandbox is dead on with my experience. And I still think that staying within a tight topic helps.

14th Colony is an example of this where the first two articles I wrote, How to get Free Backlinks and Get Indexed Fast generate 40% of my traffic from Google. Considering the wide array of topics covered - all within the same theme - this seems pretty telling, though admittedly not concrete.

At any rate, if I am coming up with ideas that are on par with Todd and Andy I think I’m on the right track. If you are considering SEO Services for your project you may want to look me up. I’m sure my rates are much more “reasonable”… at least for now!

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