Am I sandboxed?

[Poker Rakeback Mafia]

My website has been live for around 5 weeks now, and although multiple pages are indexed on google, search consol shows that it doesn't rank for anything.
And I mean that literally.
The homepage is optimised for "online casino download" and it has good links with that and other related anchor text, and good internal links to some pages, but not a single page ranks anywhere for anything. Not even in position 300.

I'm guessing that I've been sandboxed or penalised.
Have I, and how do I fix things?

 

[LeanLow]

Dude, you are not going to rank for that term...

 

[lingy21]

Why not? I work in the gambling niche and i've seen some truly horrendous sites with terrible off page and on page SEO ranking for keywords like "online casinos" in the UK. If you've got the budget its not impossible.

 

[mbreezy]

Is your domain onlinecasinodownload.net?

If so, I just checked to see if you're indexed with a sitenlinecasinodownload.net search and you have 20 something pages indexed.

Seems like you have a very uphill battle. The niche seems saturated and competitive. I also noticed a little bit of duplicate content. The EMD might actually be hurting more than helping.

You're not sandboxed as far as I can tell, but I think you're going to need to do some high quality work to see any success.

 

[mbreezy]

Why not? I work in the gambling niche and i've seen some truly horrendous sites with terrible off page and on page SEO ranking for keywords like "online casinos" in the UK. If you've got the budget its not impossible.

I agree if you've got the budget anything is possible. I'm wondering, how many of those truly horrendous sites were evergreen?

 

[lingy21]

I agree if you've got the budget anything is possible. I'm wondering, how many of those truly horrendous sites were evergreen?

The one thats at the top now, only just started building backlinks and they've got no PBN. Starting to see sites with very little off page and lots of relevant content moving to the top in quite a few gambling sub-niches now.

 

[Deleted member 969102]

Why on earth would you link your site in your profile?

Literally opening the door for Competiton/ Negative SEO.

That aside, 5 weeks is not enough to make judgment. From what I can see, your articles are incredibly short, your Domain is weak, and your site is new.

 

[mbreezy]

The one thats at the top now, only just started building backlinks and they've got no PBN. Starting to see sites with very little off page and lots of relevant content moving to the top in quite a few gambling sub-niches now.

Interesting and makes sense.

I'm not in the niche, but I can imagine that there isn't a lot of quality content going around. My sites with good content have little problem ranking with next to no links (although competition is low).

Add some good off-page and it might as easier than some people (like me) would expect to see success in the gambling niche if you have good/relevant content.

 

[jamie3000]

In that niche it's hard to tell the true power of your competitors, if a PBN is created properly it's extremely difficult to find. Also due to that query/niche being so spammy it wouldn't surprise me if the quality of the links have to be higher than normal or perhaps links don't kick in for a few months. That's one of the most spammy niches there is. Full of black black hat. Eg hacked WordPress sites etc. Good luck though man

Maybe post a thread specifically asking people in the gambling niche

 

[jacker818]

Lol have you seen your anchor cloud?? 64% exact match?? You will never rank for that term since you have already over optimized. Your already penalized for that keyword.

• online casino download 64%
  
• best casino roulette 5%
• online casino bonus 5%
  
• casino online download 3%
  
• online casinos 3%
  
• casino bonus 2%
  
• casino download 2%
  
• casino download online 2%
• casino download online | thomas shaw's sharing | scoop.it 2%

 

[Jason Bradbury]

Lol have you seen your anchor cloud?? 64% exact match?? You will never rank for that term since you have already over optimized. Your already penalized for that keyword.

• online casino download 64%
  
• best casino roulette 5%
• online casino bonus 5%
  
• casino online download 3%
  
• online casinos 3%
  
• casino bonus 2%
  
• casino download 2%
  
• casino download online 2%
• casino download online | thomas shaw's sharing | scoop.it 2%

What's the optimal percentage?

 

[Shaunm]

only just started building backlinks and they've got no PBN.

They might have just blocked the crawlers for the various tools to their PBN to prevent it showing up when their competition try to check for their PBN.

Also, are you using a fresh domain? I recently posted this case study about the Google sandbox and fresh domains, personally I think your domain will still be sandboxed.

That being said you have chosen a pretty hard keyword and after a quick check it appears that all of the domains in the top 10 are at least six years old.

 

[Smileyヅ]

Google: There Is No Google Sandbox

https://twitter.com/seobybrett/status/808355477054783489

 

[jacker818]

What's the optimal percentage?

Here is an anchor cloud of one of my best money sites. All the exact match keywords are currently in positions 1-4 on the first page of google. By the way, these keywords are EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TO RANK FOR!

• NAKED URL 1 -- 26%
• lNAKED URL 2 -- 13%
• NAKED URL 3 -- 11%
• Exact Match Keyword -- 5%
• Naked Url 4 -- 5%
• Exact Match Keyword -- 3%
• Exact Match Keyword -- 2%
• Exact Match Keyword -- 2%
• Exact Match Keyword -- 2%
• Naked URL 5 -- 2%

Use software like ahrefs to figure out what your competition is doing. Also remember to use about 20% LSI and generic keywords such as: this website, click here, visit their homepage, check this out.

There are plenty of posts on this forum which will help you establish great anchor text ratios and I suggest you look into them! This is the core foundation of your SEO and if you lay this out wrong you will never reach the top of the serps

Goodluck,

Jacker818

 

[Aty]

Gambling niche is tough, keep that in mind.

 

[tiiberius]

It is very possible that you still are yes.

Furthermore, from my experience it increases based on search volume (not so much competition).

Your keyword is tough tho. It might take a while to show up somewhere even after you are out of the sand-box

 

[mickyfu]

Can't rank site, blames leprechauns and dragons.

 

[Poker Rakeback Mafia]

Lol have you seen your anchor cloud?? 64% exact match?? You will never rank for that term since you have already over optimized. Your already penalized for that keyword.

• online casino download 64%
  
• best casino roulette 5%
• online casino bonus 5%
  
• casino online download 3%
  
• online casinos 3%
  
• casino bonus 2%
  
• casino download 2%
  
• casino download online 2%
• casino download online | thomas shaw's sharing | scoop.it 2%

My ratios aren't actually that bad. The problem there is that I made those exact match links first, so they're indexed, and all of the others aren't yet. That should improve over the next week or so.

Dude, you are not going to rank for that term...

Can't rank site, blames leprechauns and dragons.

I've got no problem with not ranking for it. My problem is that I'm not even appearing in position 250 for it. That's what leads me to believe that there might be a problem.
I'll be happy ranking for multiple 50-100 search terms on my inner pages, which cannot happen if the site is sandboxed or penalised!

So theoretically, if I am sandboxed or penalised, what can I do about it?

 

[Shaunm]

So theoretically, if I am sandboxed or penalised, what can I do about it?

If it's just the sandbox just wait until around the six month mark.

 

[W9go]

sandbox ..... no you are not in the sandbox because it not exists.