18 Common Reasons For Poor Search Engine Ranking

Reasons 1 - 3

Many webmasters have the problem that their web site is not listed in search engines at all. There can be a variety of reasons that your web site doesn't show up on search engines.

Reason 1: You are using frames

Many search engines have problems with frames. They often only index the frameset page and not the individual frames that contain the actual content. Unfortunately, the frameset page usually doesn't have META tags, title and enough content to obtain a listing on a search engine.

The best solution to this problem would be to avoid frames. If you really must use frames, consider the following points:

1. Add a title and description of your web site in the <noframes> area so that search engines can index that text. There you should also add a link to the homepage.

2. When a search engine indexes a frame page outside of the frameset, the visitor can be left stranded and unable to link into your site. So your individual frame pages should always contain a link back into your site.

3. Add some JavaScript to force frame pages into the frameset. This prevents visitors from inadvertently accessing an orphaned web page. You can use the following JavaScript snippet:

---
if (top.location.href == self.location) {
top.location.href = "URL of your frame file";
}
----

Reason 2: Too many images and too little text

Search engines need text to index your web site. They cannot know what's written on your graphical images. If you use a lot of images on your web site, you should also create some pages that have a lot of text.

One possible solution to this is to create a few doorway pages (be very careful with this method) that contains keywords relating to your site. However, many search engines already ignore doorway pages. For that reason, try to give your real web site as much content (text) as possible. Fresh, continuously updated content is one of the best ways to ensure that your visitors will return again and again.

Reason 3: You are using page redirection

If the web page you submit contains a redirection to another web site, most search engines will skip it completely. Do not submit a redirection page.

Many webmasters tried to cheat search engines with redirection pages in the past. The search engines have already discovered this long time ago and they are skipping web pages with redirections completely. You should always submit a real web page that contains the actual content you want to display to your visitors.

Sometimes, you have old web pages listed on search engines and you want them to redirect to the new page. There are several ways to do it:

1. You can implement a server side redirect on the old web page, using the 301 Moved Permanently error message. This will redirect users to the new page, but also tells the search engines that this page has moved permanently. Some search engines will drop the page from their index, and some will eventually replace the old page with the new one without hurting your rankings.

2. You can use the META Refresh tag on the old web page, for example <META HTTP-EQUIV=Refresh CONTENT="1; URL=http://www.new-site.com"> tells the browser to load www.new-site.com 1 second after the current document has finished loading. However, some old Web browsers don't support that tag, and many search engines penalize pages that use a refresh tag.

3. Instead of the META Refresh tag, you can also use JavaScript to load a new document:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">

</SCRIPT>

Most search engine robots ignore JavaScript so this method of redirection is unlikely to be penalized.