I have been keeping an eye on how google works on new sites or optimized sites.

Following points should be noted:

- Google has always given more importance to the sites which are older ones (thats what is happening for more than 7-8 months)

- Google always gives more importance to the sites which have less keywords in meta tags (sounds crap? it should..but give it a shot and see the results)

- Short titles helps more than having long titles with stuffed keywords

- When the site is in sanbox, it starts appearing from low searched keywords then, the site will jump for those keywords in 50s and then it will hop ahead with say 20+ listings up and then this process continues for quite sometime and then site comes on top (obviosuly if properly optimized)

The only change in post-jagger I found was, change in the way google considers backlinks….

There is something now which is more important than backlinks and thats the only factor I am trying to understand…

My own company site…which had only 1 coming soon page for 1 year with no text at all..only image..is PR4…only 2 backlinks counted i.e. when PR was given…

2nd example would be recent site I have optimized for, site has PR3, quality links coming but still PR3 but inside page which is totally new has PR5 and that page was resources page..nothing else..

3rd example would be, the other site I had optimized..the site was again a single coming soon page for more than a year…I put up the site recently with very less keywords in meta tags and title strictly optimized for 1 or 2 keywords..

result - no sandbox…site is ranking well….

So moral of the story, shorter is better

Regards,
Deep