18 Common Reasons For Poor Search Engine Ranking

Reasons 7 - 9

Reason 7: Your web pages are created dynamically

Databases and dynamically generated web pages are great tools to manage the contents of big web sites. Imagine trying to manage the web site contents of CNN without databases!

Unfortunately, dynamically generated web pages can be a nightmare for search engine spiders because the pages don't actually exist until they are requested. Many search engine spiders have trouble recognizing the URL of such pages.

The exceptions are the spiders from Google and Inktomi. They are able to index web pages that are dynamically generated, even those that use question marks and query strings.

Reason 8: You have moved your site to a new server

Every time you move a web site to a new web hosting company, or when you change the domain name, very often the IP address of your domain name changes too. This means that the search engine spider will have difficulty reaching your new site if their DNS servers are still caching the old IP address of your previous site. For practical reason, some search engines do store the IP address of your web server longer than usual.

To avoid this problem, it's best that you keep your old site running for some time while moving to another web host. You should be able to safely shut down the old site about 2-3 weeks after the migration. The search engine spiders should be able to find your web site by the new IP address.

Reason 9: Your web site is hosted with a free web hosting provider

Some search engines limit the number of pages they will index from a single domain. For example, if your web page is hosted at Geocities.com or Tripod.com, it might happen that your web site is not listed just because the maximum page limit for that special domain name is reached.

Some search engines no longer even index pages residing on common free web hosting services. The reason is that they get too many spam or low-quality submissions from free web site domains. Google is the exception. Google does index web pages on Geocities.com and Tripod.com. Those pages also seem to have decent Google PageRank if they are linked from a popular domain.

In summary, if you are serious about doing business on the web, it helps tremendously to have your own domain name and web hosting account. Put yourself in the customer's shoes: Would you buy from a web site that is called "yourname.free-web-space-provider.com/~yourusername/home.htm"?

A domain name is easier to remember for your customers and it helps to build trust and confidence in your service.