Contest in way to build link and sandbox

[akira07]

One reason people make contest in their blog/site is to build a link. With requirement like this :

- post about this blog worth 1 ticket
- link back to this blog worth 1 ticket
- etc....

That will make a link for you. We can say to make contest is easiest way to get link. But do you think it's effective? Since google have system called sandbox.

A blog or site which suddenly get a lot of link will suspected, while it's suspected google will check it but your site will not shown at SERP.
So? What do you think of it? Is there any solution to make a contest, build link, but safe from sandbox?

[wahmsuzanne]

From what I've read you'd have to get thousands of links at once for it to get Google's attention. I'd be curious to hear what others have to say about this too. *SmiLes* Suzanne

[akira07]

hmm kevin is currenly holding a contest as we're all as participant hehe, maybe we must asking kevin about this. So kevin, do you worried about sandbox?

[sarahG]

Holding a competition where the main point of the competition is to get people to link to a site with specific anchor text is just asking for trouble. I read about someone doing that and Google instantly dropped them out the index for it.

Kevin's competition wasn't to get backlinks to the forum, his competition was to get buzz about the forum and to spread the news of the competition which is a bit different.

Also, the Google sandbox is a term used when a new site enters into the index and after a few weeks of maybe ranking on the first few pages it disappears from most search results besides searching for the specific domain. Then after around 9 months it regains its ranking again. It has nothing to do with the amount of backlinks the site has received, however I have seen how country specific domains seem to be less affected whereas TLDs such as .com and .net are.

[athlon24]

Putting up a contest to get away from sandbox won't work at all. As sarahG said, it is a temporary place where Google index new website until they proved itself worthy to be on search results. Holding contest and asking for links will just make it worst because of the unnatural spikes of traffic that site will receive, if Google found out what you are doing, you are busted. And by the way, no one can really say how Google measures the quality of a site before they take it out from the sandbox. Sometimes it takes for months and sometimes, its just 10 days, at least according to fayans.

[adzeds]

Running a contest will not get you into the sandbox!

For a start you would have to get so so many links for Google to even notice.

And the fact that links will usually be genuine links in post would mean that it would not be flagged by Google.

[Donace]

indeed you won't get sandboxed, I mean a few months ago I sponsored 3 different competitions that happened at the same time and ofc I got loads of links from this...it made minimum effect on serp and had a temp influx of traffic.

[akira07]

Anyway how google know that contest which created by kevin or someone is not purpose to build backlink? Even it's not purposed for get link, google never know about it.

[sarahG]

Anyway how google know that contest which created by kevin or someone is not purpose to build backlink? Even it's not purposed for get link, google never know about it.

Google don't tend to make dramatic changes to their index on the say so of a bot. Their spam team will visit a site flagged and look into it. Besides the fact that the Blogging Tips forum competition has possibly received about 20-30 backlinks, not hundreds, all it takes is a Google employee to come along, read up of what's going on and realise it's there to create buzz for a competition.

Writing a post and saying 'if you link to this post with this anchor text I'll give you X points into a competition' is a bit different. Sure you can write about someone's competition, but most of these competitions tend to try and dictate how they should be linked to. And it's also down to how many backlinks achieved in a short period of time.

But none of this is connected to the sandbox. I think you're confusing that with simply Google cracking down on these methods to get 1001 backlinks with specific anchor text, and they just put a penalty on the site or the page in question.

[akira07]

Hmm, but after i think, contest still usefull even it's become suspected by google and the rank become decreased. Why? What we looking for is a traffic, not a rank at SE. So, even my site is not listed in google, because a contest, i'm already make a lot of site is linking to my site :D (from contest participant).

[ap4a]

Can you please rewrite that post? It doesn't make much sense to me right now now and I'd like to understand the point you're trying to make.

[athlon24]

Hmm, but after i think, contest still usefull even it's become suspected by google and the rank become decreased. Why? What we looking for is a traffic, not a rank at SE. So, even my site is not listed in google, because a contest, i'm already make a lot of site is linking to my site :D (from contest participant).

if you are really looking for better and stable traffic, you should not only rely on the traffic brought by your contest, because time will come especially after the contest duration, your traffic will go back to normal, but if you have a good rank in SE in some keywords, it will be handy for a long time.

[akira07]

but if i do "routine contest", i think it's no longer a problem
But yes, make traffic from contest is not makes me proud.
But my plan is, when there is a contest running on my site, there is a time when people coming, and that is appropraite time to make people know about my blog. Hopefully if their already see my blog, they are interesting not just because contest but good content.