Google Sandbox. Your Target Audience

It is worth writing about this one particular search engine phenomenon, as they seem to be the only one to have it. The “Google sandbox” is reputed to be a sort of holding area or status assigned to your website which prevents it from ranking well in the first 6-9 months of its existence for major keywords but the less competitive ones perform ok.

Gossip, rumour and a few self-professed experts all say that this phenomenon prevents webmasters from trying to manipulate the search engines by creating a site with many fake or dubious links to them and ranking well immediately for competitive key phrases. If this was the case then what a good idea! We all have a level playing field, no one can cheat and only serious website owners would be ranked well….in theory. True or not, there seems to be little to no hard evidence available to confirm it.

Your target audience

Identifying and knowing your existing or potentially new target audience will guide the design and content of the site. Our bright yellow chicken man for hire business knows that has 2 target audiences, which are private party and corporate bookings. The private audience are likely to be male or female, 18 to 45, with a large sense of humour, pay close attention to price and looking to add humour or surprise to a private gathering of people. The other audience will be corporate sector who will be time poor 25-45 year old junior to middle management or their secretaries who don’t care about price, as they are not paying for it, the Company is. So long as they turn up, that’s their job done.

Writing one set of content for such a diverse audience can be next to impossible so creating 2 unique sales pitches and styles of writing would be best suited here. Having “corporate entertainment” and “private parties” buttons in the navigation structure will help ensure the right people are looking at the right content.

The time poor executives will want short, concise content, whereas the private sector will want confirmation and guarantees that their hard earned cash will yield the desired result (a good night out) and lots of examples of previous parties to reassure them. By researching and setting objectives for each target audience, you are maximising your chances of them doing what you desire e.g. contact you, make a booking etc.

Existing businesses will already know who their customers are and can change their website accordingly. New businesses can either research or make educated guesses. These soon become less of a guess and more of a confirmation as your business grows and you collect more data about your website and business customers.