Build A Niche Store

Fun Games To Play While You are In The Google Sandbox

Posted by admin

OK, as many of you know, I got a Google timeout and it earned me time in the Google Sandbox. How long who knows. So if you are reading this, chances are you are in the same boat. You can either play along and dig yourself out of the box or toss in the towel. The point is you have to decide and that decision will require action.

The easiest choice is to toss in the towel and start fresh with a new domain and do things right. Cutt your losses and move on.

The other route is to rebuild and salvage the domain. If this is the route you decide to go, be prepared to make a ton of effort.

The first thing you will need to do is get Google’s trust back. The only way you can do this is by creating a site that people will actually get something out of. Meaning heavy on content, low on ads & revenue. Personally, I’m not putting any ads on my sites that I am rebuilding.

The best way to reclaim your site is to first move your BANS store into a subdirectory called store.

Then, install Wordpress in the root of your site. Then, create a post right after you install it. Make sure the post is keyword optimized and not spammy.

From there, your whole life is about content. Every single day you will need to create a new piece of content.

And that is game number 1 that you can play while in the Google Sandbox. It’s called the content game.

I personally use http://developers.evrsoft.com/seotool/ to help me with my content writing. It’s an SEO tool that help you get your keyword density right. Last tip, your blog posts will need to be 300-450 words long.

Told you this was going to be an investment of time & effort. Good Luck!

Twenty Tips To Keep Your BANS Store Out Of The Google Sandbox

Posted by admin

BANS sites require traffic to function properly and produce an income. One of the most sustaining sources of traffic is search engine traffic. Without constant traffic from the search engines, your BANS site will likely fail. The biggest source of search engine traffic is obviously Google. A few years back, Google came up with an algorithm that essentially quarantined a Web site. Meaning separated it from the rest of the sites in a search result. This became known as the Google Sandbox.

What exactly is the Google Sandbox? The Google sandbox is where sites go for a period of time because Google doesn’t trust them yet. Google wants to make sure these sites are not spam, so they throw it in an area of their search engine that doesn’t respond to search queries. You are in the index, but your site is hidden from the search results so it looks like you are not there.

To see if you are in the sandbox try this in a Google search: site:yourdomainname.com.

If nothing shows up and you were in the index before, congrats you have now been dumped in the sandbox! If this applies to you, check back soon. I’m writing an article on what games to play while you are in the Google Sandbox. It’s going to be funny, but productive. However this article is tips to help stay out of the sandbox.

Here’s the tips.

1. Start out with a blog. Install Wordpress in the root of your site.
2. Create blog entries for one month. One article per day. No reference to BANS.
3. On day 30, create your BANS store on a subdirectory on your site.
4. DeBANSify your site. Remove all reference to BANS and eBay other than the links to the auctions.
5. First thing, post a privacy policy.
6. Carry your wordpress template through to your BANS site.
7. Write 400+ words of unique content on your BANS store homepage.
8. Keep the number of auctions you display to a minimum, no more than 12.
9. Each store/content page needs to have at least 400 words of unique content.
10. Do not activate a store page unless it has at least 400 words of unique content.
11. Keep store pages deactivated until you can add content to them.
12. Change “Time Left” to “Sale Ends In”.
13. Change “Site Navigation” to “Learn More About XYZ Instert Your Topic”.
14. Change “Store Navigation” to “XYZ Store”.
15. Change “Sponsored Links” to “XYZ Links”.
16. DO NOT PUT ADSENSE ON YOUR SITE, ANYPLACE. PERIOD.
17. Do not use Google Analytics.
18. Do not submit your site to every directory and social platform in the same day. Space it out over time.
19. Add a valid robots.txt file.
20. Change your sitemap priorities. Search the BANS forum for the code and copy & past to your site. It’s a 30 second fix.

And there you go. Twenty steps to follow to stay out of the Google Sandbox. Also, these concepts can be applied to those sites that are in the sandbox in an effort to dig your way out.

The Build A Niche Store Cookie Unraveled

Posted by admin

There seems to be a ton of questions on the boards about cookies for some reason.

Here it is.

There are two cookies when it comes to BANS sites. One you don’t need to care about so much, one you do.

The first cookie is YOUR cookie. When a visitor hits YOUR site, BANS sets a PHP session cookie. If you run google analytics, you will see those show up as well.

The only reason most people care about this cookie is that it requires them to have a privacy policy according to the eBay TOS.

The second cookie is the most important cookie and it is the cookie that eBay sets. When someone clicks on an auction link from your site there is a huge url. In that url is your campaign id. EBay reads that campaign id and sets a cookie on the visitors machine. This cookie associates your campaign with that visitor. Again, YOU did not set this cookie. When someone clicks the link and is sent to eBay, eBay sets the cookie on their site populating it with your encrypted campaign id.

So to recap.

You set one cookie, mainly for PHP session info.

Visitor clicks a auction link. eBay sets their own eBay cookie that associates your campaign id with that visitor.

That visitor buys something within 7 days, eBay knows the lead came from your campaign and gives you credit.

If you run firefox and clear all your cookies you can see all this take place. simply visit your site and view the cookie, then click on an auction and view your cookies. You should have 3 trees. One is your site, one is main.ebayrtm.com and the other is ebayrtm.com. I’m pretty sure it’s the ebayrtm.com that contains the info need to attach the visitor to your campaign.

Hope that helps.