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A member of our technical team was recently asked to document the leading reasons why websites are not found on the search engines. I know many of you will find this piece very helpful...enjoy


Search Engine Placement
Moving out of the invisible 'dark web'
Leading Reasons Why Websites Are Not Found On The Search Engines

The databases the power the results on the major search engines are simply machines and data collection storage bins programmed to respond to millions of user keyword query requests on a daily basis. The tremendous demands and stress placed on the server farms responsible for displaying the organized series of hypertext links and text not only need to visit sites and collect information they then must store and 'bank' URLs being collected. As we begin to review some common search engine placement roadblocks and barriers that the spiders must overcome on their content acquisition journey keep in mind that these hypertext spiders are programmed to review (index) billions of web pages (URLs) in all types of code and program variations.

Site Design Problems:
Besides website design problems that lead to web pages missing from the search engine results, there are many other common website design elements commonly used by Web developers that can prevent the search engine spiders from indexing the web pages of a site and result in poor rankings. Here are some common web site design elements that keep web sites invisible and floating around aimlessly in the Dark Web rather than being found consistently in the search engines on keyword searches that matter.

Technical Barriers That Prevent Search Engine Placement:
Many types of technical barriers continue to prevent the search engine spiders from fully absorbing the page content or information contained within billions of web sites. Marketing managers, IT Directors, Webmasters, and Internet Publishers must consider a few conditions whenever publishing on the Internet to help overcome spider barriers in order to help search engine spiders properly record their pages/URLs and websites in an effort to 'open-up' their domains to the algorithmic robot crawlers and thus the public.

In order to be found early and often on a consistent basis in the major search engines website publishers and Internet marketing professionals must keep a few of these top issues in mind:

Some spiders struggle out of the gate as they land on a website for the first time and fail to record a site due to a poorly composed robots exclusion file. The major search engine spiders will ignore even the most popular sites if the code compositions and contents of the robots.txt file is incorrect.

Our technicians offer proprietary search engine placement solutions that help streamlining spider indexing through the construction and placement of a comprehensive robots exclusion file that helps organize the table of contents so desperately being sought by the major search engine spiders. Feel free to contact our technical team if you have questions, concerns, or are uncertain of the required protocols for robots exclusion files.

W3C HTML Code Compliance and Validation:
Invalid HTML code is one of the leading causes of search engine positioning problems.
Code validation and code compliance allows search engine spiders to move comfortably through URLs and also prevents 'spider traps' and 'denial of service'.

Broken Links:
Broken links and server downtime also prevent sites from being found on the search engines especially if a lead spider is crawling the site or attempting to crawl the site and is interrupted or landing on broken links. Broken links, server downtime, or server maintenance often interferes with search engine spiders as they are attempting to crawl and index websites.

Content Management Systems:
Content Management Systems that refresh or deliver updated content on a regular basis often create tremendous confusion with search engines resulting in URL Trust factors that restrict websites from attaining exposure and reaching qualified, in-market users searching for their services on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL. The page contents are dynamically updated and changing regularly which is a 'red flag' in itself and the code involved is invalid and actually leaving 'spider traps' all over the pages of the site. If your company is using a content management system and your site is not being found on the search engines, contact our skilled technical team and we can design an affordable optimization solution that will deliver your content in a clean and valid HTML format to users worldwide.

Again, search engine spiders are seeking relevant content; let's help the world find your valuable content by shining light on to your web site and removing it from the Dark Web.

Frames Website Design is a leading Search Engine Placement Barrier:
Frames Website Design is often times a major website optimization problem. While the search engine spiders can crawl pages from a frames-based design, they cannot accurately parse page text and index page content correctly. Frames web sites usually lead to little if any consistent keyword rankings in the major search engines.

JavaScript & Cascading Style Sheets (CSS):
Incorrect use of JavaScript & Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to code web pages usually results in volumes of redundant code and issues with nesting and tables that weights down the spiders slowing their crawl and making them perform Olympic feats just to get through all of the invalid, non-compliant W3C HTML code. Often times the JavaScript errors inflate the size of the pages making them much too large. The opportunity for code errors and W3C HTML code compliance issues increases with the size of the site as the fundamental web page code errors are multiplied as the spiders try to crawl the inside pages of the site.

Many search engine trade associations and W3C HTML code optimization that complies to the established world wide web consortium standards allows the search engine spiders to quickly and easily locate Relevant Page Content.

That's why fully optimized and W3C HTML code compliant web sites that allow the spiders to quickly find relevant page content, when submitted properly, consistently enjoy page one, top five keyword rankings, long-term on the major search engines.

Dynamic Pages Present Unique Search Engine Placement Issues:
Dynamically generated web sites that are database driven often face unique search engine placement obstacles with the search engine spiders. Do your URLs contain these types of query strings? (e.g. URLs ending like this: ?a=1&b=2&c=3) Peak Positions is considered one of only a handful of natural search engine optimization companies that is able to provide comprehensive search engine marketing solutions for large dynamic websites that are database driven.

Non Compliant Site Submissions Hurt Search Engine Placement:
If your company has used non compliant and or automated software submission programs at anytime the URLs and websites involved might continue to be ignored by the major search engine spiders.

Spam Impedes Search Engine Placement:
In addition to making pages easy for spiders to record, it is important to avoid techniques employed by overzealous search marketers that are considered spam by the search engines.

Cloaking is one such technique.
It involves serving customized pages based strictly on IP address.

The search engine spider IPs are programmed into the server with instructions to feed highly optimized garbage pages exclusively to the search engine spiders in an obscene effort to enhance the page's rank in the search results. When visitors click the link to view that site, a different page is shown that would not ordinarily rank as well. This is a very deceptive and risky practice, and is labeled as "spam" by the search engines.

Such bait-and-switch techniques are heavily frowned upon by the search engines and may result in being "tagged", "removed" or "blacklisted" from major search engine databases.

Don't risk your corporate website's ability to be found in the search engines.

Promotional search engine software programs also expose corporate websites to punishment by the search engine editors because they create gibberish and interfere with the sophisticated hypertextual database retrieval systems that are programmed to produce the most content relevant search results in milliseconds.

Many new self-proclaimed search engine optimization companies have and continue to mislead clients to the notion that no website can ever be "blacklisted", "pulled", "tagged" or "removed" from the search engine's database.

One of the nations largest insurance companies was "blacklisted" in early 2004 as well as a spyware company because of cloaking. We urge you to speak with several site optimization firm's program being considered actually work to highlight and present the relevant content contained within the company website?'.

If the website optimization program being considered does not focus on relevant content or is focused on anything other than relevant content, BUYER BEWARE.