Vraag het aan de SEO Guru

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For about two years now there has been a debate raging in SEO circles that far too often got far too heated. The Guru has always been a little surprised how some people can get so emotionally attached to an online discussion that it causes them to lose their tempers.  He’s pretty sure it has something to do with people sometimes being desperate to be right. Or maybe it's that they are desperate to not be wrong. Whatever.

If you’re not familiar with the term or the concept, the Guru recommends this post http://www.twospots.com/web-articles/21/. It explains what most of the industry THOUGHT it was at the time. You’ll notice that it describes what it is and what it does in a manner that automatically assumes it as a fact. It is not a fact and never was. But the article is concise and it does a pretty good job of describing the position of the yes-there-is-a-sandbox faction.

In spite of the fact that Googleguy himself told everybody there was no sandbox, http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3605961,  the assumptions of the above article seemed to satisfy the conventional wisdom and even the Guru freely admits something had changed in the way sites and pages were being indexed and placed for keywords, but during the entire debate, the Guru was still having new sites get indexed, placed and delivering search traffic faster than ever before. So, something was different but it was not a blanket penalty on all new sites that kept them from being found for keyword searches until they could establish trust.

Bob Massa offered proof of no sandbox  in an interview he did for Seobook http://www.seobook.com/archives/001819.shtml. It may have been seen as a kind of joke, (he does like to tickle the funny bone when given the chance), because it referred to bathroom spamming, but the point was no joke. It doesn’t take 9 months to get search engine traffic!  

That was almost a year ago, and that brings us to today.

Today on Google, a search for:

Ask the SEO Guru #1

Ask an seo #3

SEO Guru #8

How to steal clicks #31

(I mention this one because if you read the post from the 17^th

http://massa.techndu.com/CommentView,guid,59dbb266-0afd-45a1-8e24-6cd42b4ba38b.aspx#commentstart

in the 11^th comment I mentioned that I was #39 but it would move up and today it is at #31)

These placements did not take 9 months. They barely took 9 MINUTES! They were there in less than 24 hours and started moving up. There are several other terms in the top too but this should be sufficient. Those terms don’t generate a lot of traffic. The guru was just making a point. The only one that is bringing any traffic is the ask an seo and that is more of a pain in the backside than it’s worth.

This Techndu domain is less than 30 days old. This blog is less than 1 week old. It was not submitted to any directory, article submission service or press release service. It was not submitted to Google sitemaps. It was not submitted to anything, anywhere. There’s no anchor text targets other than a clever title, (read the post about the title tag from the 17^th of August), in fact, I can not imagine how anyone could do any less to promote a website or blog than the Guru did with this blog.

Naturally, there was a plan and a purpose for the blog and how it would be put up and why but it was not to teach seo or prove the Guru could get any site into the top of search engines. It was to teach how to make money online and prove to the world, (especially my customers and partners), that if the Guru could do it, anybody could do it.

ANYBODY CAN MAKE MONEY ONLINE WITHOUT HAVING TO BE AN SEO

I recently have become involved with a free hosting service focused on the Indian market. That is why I’m here in India and plan to be bi-continental for several years to come. My job is now to see that our hosting partners learn as much about how to make  money online as fast as possible and the Guru is well suited to the task. THAT is why he wanted to kill the sandbox debate. It is just a step in the process.

So, if your site is not generating any traffic and you tell yourself it is because of the sandbox, (or any other reason you choose as an excuse to not make any money online), you are throwing money away. If you don’t have any placements anywhere for any terms that would attract the demographic you are targeting after several months, you did something wrong. The quicker you accept that and start addressing the reality, the quicker you can start telling your friends how you like to make money online in your spare time.

Just think – one day soon you could be just like the GURU.