10 reasons why search engines hate your website
You’ve got a great website, so it’s only a matter of time before the visitors start pouring in, right? Wrong. Without search engines ‘liking’ the look of your site, it won’t be listed and nobody will be able to find it.
Your website needs to doll up, wear its best dress and bat its eyelashes if it’s going to attract the search engines. Here are 10 reasons why your site doesn’t come up, and 10 ways to make it search-engine-sexy.
1) You still believe in the tooth fairy
Small children believe all you have to do is place a tooth under a pillow and a reward will appear. Some people believe that a good website attracts search engine spiders. Wait long enough and the spider will eventually find the site.
Wrong: you have to submit to get noticed! There are thousands of new web sites every day seeking attention, so don’t be passive. Website promotion is too important to leave to chance, so get submitting!
2) Batteries not included
Did your site respond when the search engine spiders visited? They don’t make appointments, so make sure you use a reliable web host who keeps your site up and running.
While many hosting companies promise 99.9% uptime, 41% of web servers experienced substantial downtime last year. Make sure you do your homework.
3) Vanishing cream
Most eCommerce sites rely on databases to serve up specific information to their visitors. That’s great for visitors because they get relevant information customised to their particular request.
Webmasters love it too because they have less pages to maintain.
But there’s a problem: most search engines robots can only index static pages. Make sure that your eCommerce website can also generate static versions of your dynamic pages so that the search engines can reference these as well.
4) Canned spam
Mum was right: you are known by the company you keep. Your site may be blocked because you share the hosting with a lot of spam sites. Search engines may block sites hosted by free website providers due to spam problems. You may have problems with a paid provider too, if they host those pesky adult sites.
Search engines report that adult sites are often the worst spam offenders, so check with your hosting company whether you’ll be affected.
5) You’re making a splash
Search engine spiders are quiet, solitary creatures who hate bright lights. So if you use a splash page (intro page) as your home page, you may be frightening them away.
Splash pages are often heavy on graphics but light on content. Search engine spiders simply can’t index pages that have no content to evaluate or links to follow. Think of it as putting the cheese in the mousetrap, and leave some bait (content) for the search engine.
6) Spiders hate corners
Sites that have been created using old fashioned “frame based” technology, limit their friendliness to search engine spiders. Many spiders can only see the top-level frame page and cannot navigate into the rest of your web site. With nothing to see, the spider leaves your site without indexing it.
7) No room at the inn
Some search engine databases have an upper limit on the number of pages they can index. When the database is full, sites are turned away.
You may have to submit several times to the same engine before getting one of the coveted database spots.
8) You got spring cleaned
Sometimes, web sites get dropped due to technical problems at the search engine, but engines often drop sites on purpose too.
Search engines want to keep their databases up to date and packed with the most recent and useful information. Some will periodically review the age of web sites they have in their index and delete old sites to make room for new ones.
Avoid this problem by resubmitting your site regularly.
9) Patience is a virtue
While most search engines promise to visit your site within 1-2 weeks after your submit it, the reality is that you may wait months for a spider. There’s a tremendous backlog of sites and more are submitted and resubmitted every day.
You best bet is to submit once, then resubmit every week or so until you get listed. Once you’re listed, cut back on submissions because submitting too often can hurt you by getting you banned as a spam site. Once a week is fine.
Since the process is so slow, make sure your site is ready to submit before you send it in.
10) Choose your tools
Use a search engine submission service that works. Search engines are tricky: they frequently change their submission addresses and requirements. A submission engine that isn’t updated regularly is useless. And you’ll never know it if they don’t provide feedback about each submission.
Be careful about the “free” submission services that promise to send your site to the “Top 1000 Search Engines!” Firstly, there aren’t that many worthy search engines. Secondly, this is often a scam designed to get your email address and sell it to spammers. Within days, your email box could be inundated spam emails.
About the Author
This article was written by Sean Clarke, Clarke Design. The company helps small businesses to get the best out of their websites and the internet through its tailored design and hosting services. For more information, click here.
Posted June 12, 2009
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