On Blogs for Sale we have been writing a series of articles about ideas for starting new blogs.  We have been discussing a site we started called “Hurricane Tracking Sites“.  This site was started, indexed by Google, and getting hundreds of hits in a matter of hours.

Now, after spending six weeks as a page i Google result for the keywords “hurricane tracking sites” it has vanished from the Search Engine results.  It is not in the the top 1000 results.  The site has been effectively sandboxed.

What is a sandbox.  Here is the Wikipedia definition:

The Sandbox (a.k.a. Sandboxing or the sandbox effect) is a phenomenon that people have claimed to observe in the ranking of web pages that is performed by Google. It is the subject of much debate. Its existence has not been confirmed, and several observers state that they have observed the contrary to what is claimed for this perceived phenomenon.

The phenomenon that people have claimed to observe is that Google temporarily reduces the page rank of new domains, placing them into what is referred to as its “sandbox”, in an effort to counter the ways that search engine optimizers attempt to manipulate Google’s page ranking to bring sites to the top, by creating lots of inbound links to a new web site from other web sites that they own before creating that web site. A “reverse sandbox” effect is also claimed to exist, whereby new pages with good content but without inbound links are temporarily increased in rank, much like the “New Releases” in a book store are displayed more prominently, to encourage organic building of the World Wide Web.

David George disputes the claim, made by some, that Google applies sandboxing to all new web sites, saying that the claim “doesn’t seem to be born out by experience”. He states that he created a new web site in October 2004 and had it ranked in the top 20 Google results for a target keyword within 1 month. He avers that “[n]o one knows for sure if the Google sandbox exists”, and comments that it “seems to fit the observations and experients of many search engine optimizers”. He theorizes that the sandbox “has introduced some hysteresis into the system in order to restore a bit of sanity to Google’s results”.

Matt Cutts has stated in an interview that “there are some things in the algorithm that may be perceived as a sandbox that doesn’t apply to all industries”.

The site will eventually come back.  It could be back in three months, or it could take a year.  This is perhaps one fo the best reasons to buy a blog that has been around for a while.  If I was depending on the Hurricane Tracking Sites blog has an integral part of my blogging business and I had to wait out the sandbox effect it could be very frustrating.  My hope is that the site comes back before the next hurricane season starts.

On Blogs for Sale we are developing new sites to help people get an advantage as they start their blogs or blogging business.  Along the way we like to share information to help people be successful with their blogs.  We just started a new blog called “Hurricane Tracking Sites“.  This site went from an idea to being online in less than three hours.

The idea came as we sat watching Hurricane Ike approach the area we live in.  During this time we were visiting a number of storm tracking sites and searching for new ones.  We realized it would be convenient to have one site where all of the best tracking sites could be accessed.  We also though that it would be good to have a blog that could develop some community between people who are in dealing with hurricanes.

The idea prompted a domain search, and we found that hurricanetrackingsites.com was available.  We also purchased hurricanetrackingonline.com which we are pointing at the hurricane tracking sites blog, but which we may develop on its own in the future.

Our keyword research tells us that it is a competitive keyword, but should be able to become a page 2 Google result without to much trouble.  Our practical experience tells us that people who are searching for hurricane tracking sites will go as deep as page 3 looking for the right sites.

We used Good News Domains for the domain names and also purchased the economy hosting plan for $50 a year.  We installed WordPress on the new site.  We installed a nice looking theme, loaded in some plugins, added a few pages, and wrote three posts.  The entire process from thought to the site being up and running was three hours.  Here is what the site looks like now:

This theme is one that we will eventually add to all of our blogs for sale.  It is a theme from Solostream that I use as a foundation for the themes I use for Blogs for Sale.  The theme is very attractive and extremely flexible and easy to work with.  We will update you in the future on how this site is doing!

Here at Blogs For Sale we are continuing to develop blogs that will be available for purchase in the months ahead.  We have discussed the advantages of having a blog that already has time and links.  Purchasing an established blog will give you a tremendous advantage as you begin your blogging business.  The reality is that for most new blogs it takes at least a year to begin to develop traffic.  Every now and again someone will have some sort of instant success with a new blog, but for the vast majority it takes time.

We have been experimenting with different themes to help our blogs with search engine results.  We have had consistent success by using a theme called Dateless Sniper by Courtney Tuttle.  After we begin to see significant results with search engine results, we change the look of our site with a theme that has a more polished appearance.

We are going to be developing a site called “Money Saving Tips” to use as an example for how we prepare our blogs for sale.  The blog is a WordPress blog and began with the standard Kubrik theme.

We have changed the theme now to the Dateless Sniper.

One of the big advantages (besides the SEO positives of this theme) is that there are no dates listed on the articles.  When I visit a site where the articles are really old, I usually leave very quickly.  The Dateless Sniper is a great site to develop with the idea that it takes time to get a site noticed.  We post a few articles to the site and begin the process of pointing links at the site.  Then, we wait and see how the search engines react to the site.  Since we are developing this site for a future time, we can take time to set a good foundation.  It is this process that makes these Blogs for Sale a worthwhile investment for any potential business blogger.

I will be writing articles about how I set up the blogs for sale so when you purchase a blog it will be like you were in on it from the beginning. The way a blog is developed is very important in how it will ultimately perform. Once I have done some keyword research and purchased a domain name, I set the site up with WordPress. You can read all about this process by reading “Create a Blog You Can be Proud Of” on My Newbie Blog which details how to create a blog.

Theme Selection

There are lot of options when it comes to choosing a theme for your site. WordPress offers a wide variety of free themes for you to choose from. There are also a lot of really nice themes that you can purchase for between $50 and $100 dollars. If you really want to go the extra mile you can have a theme custom made for you but this can easily cost $1000 or more. Start with a free theme. The themes that you buy are usually a lot harder to work with. A free theme will help you to learn about site maintenance and then if you decide to go with a paid option you will be better able to maintain it. Today I am going to put new themes on two of the sites.

Hot Technology Online (www.hottechnologyonline.com)

For Hot Technology Online I went with a theme called Tech-Land. It is a nice looking, simple, two column theme that is widgetized. Once I pick a theme I like to run through it to check and make sure it fits well for SEO. Here is what the site looks like with it’s new theme:

Today’s Technology (www.todaystechnology.info)

For Todays Technology I went with a theme called Hight-Tech. This is another nice looking, simple, two column, widgetized theme. I have made a couple of changes to help with SEO. The sites new theme looks like this:

If the blog you are interested in isn’t written about in this article, it will be written about somewhere along the way. Writing about the development of the blog’s is an SEO tool for getting the sites linked and noticed. Each one of the blogs will go through the exact same ppocess. In our next article we will add some pages to the blog and get ready to post the first article.

If you are considering starting a blog for business, there are some real positives to buying a blog that has been set up and established. Google seems to take notice of sites a lot faster that have been around for a while. One of the big reasons people aren’t successful with a blogging business is that they give up to quickly. It takes time for your blog to develop. For example, when I put this Blogs For Sale site up, I pointed one link to it from my main site My Newbie Blog which is about how to create a blog. One day after I changed the privacy setting on the blog to get noticed by the search engine, Google indexed the site. One day. When I first started blogging my sites would take weeks (3 - 6) to get indexed. Until Google indexes your site it will not show up on searches.

The Sandbox

Another reason to buy a blog that has been around for a while is that you might escape the Google Sandbox. The sandbox effect takes your new blog and doesn’t allow it to play with the more established sites. Google denies the sandbox, but it happens too often to not be valid. I have sites that disappear from the results for months and then suddenly reappear. When they come back they are usually positioned well and then move up quickly, but you could be in the sandbox for months. For a new blogging business this can be very frustrating. While there is no guarantee that buying a site with some age on it will keep you out of the sandbox, it is less likely and if it does happen it shouldn’t last for long.

In an interview on Hubspot.com with Courtney Tuttle (Court has a very successful blog called Court’s Marketing School) this question was asked:

According to the Website Grader free SEO tool, your site has a score of 99/100. Your website has been around about 2 years, you have 2,500 pages indexed by Google, almost 100,000 inbound links and a PageRank of 5. How did you accomplish this in such a short amount of time?

This was Court’s answer:

During the first year, I simply put the site online and let it age. To Google, there is a huge difference between a site that is over a year old and a site that is brand new. For this reason, I focused on other projects until my site hit the 1-year mark.

After the entire first year, I had less than 5 inbound links, a Page Rank of 0, and exactly 1 page in Google’s index. It was at that point that I started blogging. Since SEO is my background, that’s the primary method that was used to build the site, which now gets over 1,000 visitors each day from search engines. Add social media, direct traffic, and referral traffic to the mix and it makes for some pretty big days. You then have to take those people and provide them with information that they can trust, which will turn them into a regular reader.

Regular readers that are industry-related bloggers will produce a huge amount of links for you, in any niche. If you can provide that traffic with something that excites them, they will link to your site to tell their readers. I was able to generate 100,000 links in one year because I was able to do that again and again.

At Blogs For Sale we are setting up these blogs with you in mind. We are aging them and pointing links at them. We will write articles targeting a set of keywords for you to begin your business with. Having a seasoned blog will allow your blogging business to get off to a good start.