Search engines are gateway to Internet; they are first tool that potential customers use to find products and services they need. This is why link popularity is so imperative. If customers do not find your website, you have no possibilities of making any sales.

You're probably wondering what blazes is popular about a link! Well, in a word - plenty! Link popularity refers to ranking assigned to your website by search engines, and it determines ranking your page gets when keywords are entered into a search engine. So, you're probably wondering, how do I make my link popular?

Search engines are discretionary, giving status and ranking to sites that have links to their pages from related, quality sites. It's a simple formula, but a very important one. Google created system, and now virtually all most popular search engines employ it to rank your web pages in their indexes.

The more commonly used your keyword is, harder it will be to achieve link popularity, but without achieving this step, it is almost certain your site will never rank highly on any search engine. But don't be discouraged; there are tried and true ways of achieving link popularity using most competitive keywords.

There are a few things you should be aware of. The first is that just linking up with a large number of other websites will not achieve link popularity. In fact, it may have quite opposite effect. This is particularly true when pertaining to websites that are nothing more than "link farms" - pages containing line after line of indiscriminate links. Search engines may aggressively discriminate against your website if you are associated with a link farm, so steer clear of them!

The next thing to bear in mind is quality of site you are linking to. Never link to a page you have reservations about your visitors seeing. The last thing you want your website to appear as is indiscriminate and cheap. Linking to sites of poor quality will only lessen your link popularity, if not completely destroy it.

So let's get to what you need to do to achieve supreme link popularity and improve your rankings to stellar status on all popular search engines.

The first step, and fastest way to get your foot in door, is to get a listing in a popular directory, such as Open Directory Project and Yahoo. If your site is business-related, you will want to be listed on Yahoo, and despite fact that it will cost you around $300 a year, it will be money well spent. If your site is non-commercial, listing will be free, but it will take time and follow-up to actually get it listed. Open Directory is gives you a free listing whether you are business-related or non-commercial, but be prepared to make a lot of follow-up inquiries before you see your site listed.

You are aiming to get listed in highest level of appropriate category, and this just takes some common sense. For example, if your company ships Alpaca wool from an Alpaca farm located in middle of Nowhere, Tiny State, do NOT submit your listing to "Retailers from Nowhere, Tiny State." BIG MISTAKE! All you have to do is look a little deeper - and submit your listing to "Fine Alpaca Wool" category. You will not only associate yourself with culture and quality, but you will be listed in a national category.

You guessed it... What is Google Sandbox Theory and how do I escape it? When you finish reading this lesson, you'll be an expert on good 'ole Google Sandbox Theory and you'll know how to combat its effects. So, pay close attention. This is some very important stuff.

Before I start explaining what Google Sandbox theory is, let me make a few things clear:

The Google Sandbox theory is just that, a theory, and is without official confirmations from Google or benefit of years of observation.

The Google Sandbox theory has been floating around since summer 2004, and has only really gained steam after February 4, 2005 , after a major Google index update (something known as old Google dance).

Without being able to verify existence of a Sandbox, much less its features, it becomes very hard to devise strategies to combat its effects.

Almost everything that you will read on Internet on Google Sandbox theory is conjecture, pieced together from individual experiences and not from a wide-scale objective controlled experiment with hundreds of websites (something that would obviously help in determining nature of Sandbox, but is inherently impractical given demand on resources).

Thus, as I'll be discussing towards end, it's important that you focus on ‘good' search engine optimization techniques and not place too much emphasis on quick ‘get-out-of-jail' schemes which are, after all, only going to last until next big Google update.

What is Google Sandbox Theory?

There are several theories that attempt explain Google Sandbox effect. Essentially, problem is simple. Webmasters around world began to notice that their new websites, optimized and chock full of inbound links, were not ranking well for their selected keywords.

In fact, most common scenario to be reported was that after being listed in SERPS (search engine results pages) for a couple of weeks, pages were either dropped from index or ranked extremely low for their most important keywords.

This pattern was tracked down to websites that were created (by created I mean that their domain name was purchased and website was registered) around March 2004. All websites created around or after March 2004 were said to be suffering from Sandbox effect.

Some outliers escaped it completely, but webmasters on a broad scale had to deal with their websites ranking poorly even for terms for which they had optimized their websites to death.

Conspiracy theories grew exponentially after February 2005 update, codenamed ‘Allegra' (how these updates are named I have no clue), when webmasters began seeing vastly fluctuating results and fortunes. Well-ranked websites were loosing their high SERPS positions, while previously low-ranking websites had gained ground to rank near top for their keywords.

This was a major update to Google's search engine algorithm, but what was interesting was apparent ‘exodus' of websites from Google Sandbox. This event gave strongest evidence yet of existence of a Google Sandbox, and allowed SEO experts to better understand what Sandbox effect was about.

Possible explanations for Google Sandbox effect

A common explanation offered for Google Sandbox effect is ‘Time Delay' factor. Essentially, this theory suggests that Google releases websites from Sandbox after a set period of time. Since many webmasters started feeling effects of Sandbox around March-April 2004 and a lot of those websites were ‘released' in ‘Allegra' update, this ‘website aging' theory has gained a lot of ground.

However, I don't find much truth in ‘Time Delay' factor because by itself, it's just an artificially imposed penalty on websites and does not improve relevancy (the Holy Grail for search engines). Since Google is de facto leader of search engine industry and is continuously making strides to improve relevancy in search results, tactics such as this do not fit in with what we know about Google.

Contrasting evidence from many websites has shown that some websites created before March 2004 were still not released from Google Sandbox, whereas some websites created as late as July 2004 managed to escape Google Sandbox effect during ‘Allegra' update. Along with shattering ‘Time Delay' theory, this also raises some interesting questions. This evidence has led some webmasters to suggest a ‘link threshold' theory; once a website has accumulated a certain amount of quantity/quality inbound links, it is released from Sandbox.

While this might be closer to truth, this cannot be all there is to it. There has been evidence of websites who have escaped Google Sandbox effect without massive link-building campaigns. In my opinion, link-popularity is definitely a factor in determining when a website is released from Sandbox but there is one more caveat attached to it.

This concept is known as ‘link-aging'. Basically, this theory states that websites are released from Sandbox based on ‘age' of their inbound links. While we only have limited data to analyze, this seems to be most likely explanation for Google Sandbox effect.

The link-ageing concept is something that confuses people, who usually consider that it is website that has to age. While conceptually, a link to a website can only be as old as website itself, yet if you have don't have enough inbound links after one year, common experience has it that you will not be able to escape from Google Sandbox. A quick hop around popular SEO forums (you do visit SEO forums, don't you?) will lead you to hundreds of threads discussing various results – some websites were launched in July 2004 and escaped by December 2004. Others were stuck in Sandbox even after ‘Allegra' update.

How to find out if your website is ‘Sandboxed'