There are many reasons as to why your site is not achieving first page listings in any of the top search engines. Here are some of the most potentially devastating reasons that we encourage clients to stay clear of, and what have proven in the past to restrict listings. We have also given you the explanation to get around such problems.

Incorrect Meta Information

Google will take the majority of its search results placement from the details in the meta tags, this is where you can tell a search engine exactly what your site is about and if you don’t you are guaranteed not to achieve any quality listings. The solution is simple, ensure you create a descriptive and accurate meta title, keywords and description, not too broad and not too focused will stand you with the best chance.

Immature Domain Age

It is common knowledge that a young domain (under 12 months) is more risky and vulnerable in the eyes of the search engines, if your site has been around for a considerable amount of time it is viewed as being more trustworthy. If you want results quickly then the solution to this is to attain some quality high pagerank links from old sites (2001 and older), or alternatively to purchase an old domain and put a permanent re direct to your website, both of which will make your site more trustworthy.

Lack of Textual Content

The search engines, and Google in particular build reputation by returning relevant results for a given search query. It does this by indexing websites code, and acknowledging what information is available, the more information available that is relative to the search query the higher you will rank, therefore the sites that have the most in depth and varied text are likely to perform much better than those that haven’t.

Spamming

Search Engines are far more intelligent than many people give them credit for. Any attempt to deceive or mislead will likely be found and punished. We have seen sites that have used a high number of the same keywords on one page punished with a one month penalty, completely dropping out of the listings from page 1. Also through attaining poor quality links you will also run the risk of punishment, especially for young domain websites. The way around this is more a preventative than a solution. When adding content air on the side of caution, add to it progressively instead of in one go. In terms of inbound links, be aware of bad neighbourhoods and try to use relevant websites that don’t have too many external links (25 or less).

No Sitemaps

Sitemaps are another feature of web development that are sometimes underestimated. Both the XML and HTML sitemap has its purpose and help with indexing. There are many tools out there which can create these for you, and the basic purposes are, to let Google know how many pages are required for indexing and their order of preference (XML) and to allow users to navigate a site easily whilst filtering PageRank and authority to every page on the site (HTML). Finally ensure you reference your XML sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools which will make Google aware of its existence.

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