PageRank Does Not Equate To Traffic

A lot of people seem to be focused on building their Google PageRank for their sites without understanding that PageRank does not equate to getting traffic. It is fairly easy to get a new site to have a 4 or 5 page ranking within 30 days. But even with a PR5 ranking these sites are not guarranteed to recieve tons of traffic.

So, how come a PR5 ranked site not recieve very much traffic:

1. Pages are not optimized for the right keywords. It doesn't matter how high a pages PR is, if it is targeting keywords that nobody searches for.


2. The "anchor text" of incoming links does not target the right keywords. A lot of webmasters ignore the importance of using "anchor text" correctly.


3. The "anchor text" of internal links is not keyword optimized. A lot of sites out their just use general text like "home" or "articles" as the anchor text for these important internal links.


4. Site has landing in Google's Sandbox for its main keywords. This can happen to new sites that are targeted to popular keywords. There is nothing that can be done to remove a site form the sandbox, except waiting for it to come out naturally.

The good thing is that it is easy to correct the first three problems.

I have to admit that I have been guilty of jumping on the PageRank wagon over that last two months. Currently, I now have two PR5, and 8 PR4 sites that have all been built since January, and none of them are getting the traffic that I expected.

So, I am currently optimizing the sites to target the right keywords (ones that people search for) and have modified the "anchor text" of internal and external links to support these keywords.

Google Frustrations

I have been going through frustrations of getting good SERPs in Google. Google's algorithm does seem to punish newer sites. Almost all of my sites listed high on certain search terms for their first couple of weeks, but then dropped down in the SERPs.

This has had a drastic impact on the amount of traffic that gets to my site and my income. I still get traffic from MSN, but it is only a fraction of the traffic from Google. I am just waiting for the day that my sites start climbing out of the sandbox and begin getting traffic again.

Right now, two of my main sites are generating $10 to $15 a day together with an average of 75 to 100 page views. If these percentages can hold once google starts sending me traffic, I should see my income quadruple from these small niche sites.

Playing in the Google Sandbox

Well, its official, my main site is definitely in google's infamous sandbox. While my site ranks well for auxilary keyword phrases within my niche, it isn't even in the rankings for any of my sites main keywords. Although this is frustrating, I am still getting traffic from the other search engines to hold me over.

Determining Ranking Without Sandbox

I was curious to see how my site would rank if googles sandbox filter was disabled, so I went on an online expedition to see if there was a way to determine a sites try ranking. Well I found a simple method that will let you perform a google search with the filters disabled (originally I found a tool that would perform this search, but it has been taken offline.)

It seems that you can overwhelm googles filters if you add a search phrase that is over 40 words long. So using the following pattern, you can do a search on your keyword phrases with the filters disabled and determine where your site will rank when the sandbox effect is gone:

"'keyword phrase' a at the is to of on"

Just repeat this pattern in the search box until it is over the 40 word limit. For example, if your keyword phrase was "dog training" you would enter the following sequence into the google search box:

"dog training a at the is to of on dog training a at the is to of on dog training a at the is to of on dog training a at the is to of on dog training a at the is to of on"

Using this technique I found that my site's true ranking would place me on the first or second page for my main keywords.

What am I Doing while I am in the Sandbox?

There is no way out of the sandbox excepting time. It can take 3 to 6 months for a site to get out of google's Sandbox, so in the mean time I am going to concentrate on adding fresh content to my site and increasing the number and quality of its backlinks. I will monitor my sites true ranking using the above mentioned technique, so that I can get my site into the top ten rankings for my main keywords.

Also during this time, I am going to work on launching some one or two page niche sites. This way these sites will season in googles sandbox until I have the time to develop them into full fledged sites.