Traffic

The sandbox.

Possible spam signals such as site-wide links from two other sites.

Your site is about ‘personal development’ – search out other blog sites about similar topics and leave helpful and relevant comments on their blog posts (usually your name will link back to your own blog) – if your comments are thought provoking and compelling, readers will try to learn more about you (and your site) and this will be a good way of getting targeted readers who will have an interest in your subject.

Joe

There appears to be nothing you can do about the sandbox. If you’re a big, successful company launching a new site with lots of existing traffic diverted there e.g. you’re a mobile phone manufacturer advertising your new phone on TV and directing customers to a site then it appears you might escape it, on the grounds that a) Google is into brands as a denoter of ‘quality’ b) Google doesn’t want to look stupid and will follow the traffic.

If you’re just one man and his dog (or one woman and her dog) launching a site then G apparently needs to see evidence that you’re bona fida. Thus the sandbox.

Therefore avoid spam signals. That includes sudden, unexpected growth in backlinks; identical anchor text; sitewide links (possibly); known dodgy areas to get backlinks; being a spammy type and having a load of spam sites registered in your name or from the same IP (Google is a domain registrar) blah blah blah. There’s plenty of information out there (some of it credible :-))

One thought: pay money to get included in reputable directories. That used to include Yahoo – you’ll have to research who’s meant to be reputable nowadays.