Why Can't I Find My Website On Search Engines?

If you have a website, but you can't find it on search engine results, do you know why? There are many reasons why your website may not appear in the search engine results. This list may have the answer to your search engine problem.

Submit url to search engines. - Did someone submit your url (web address) to search engines for inclusion in their search engine results? If yes, then type your url in the search engine and see if it appears. If it doesn't appear and your site was submitted one to six months ago, you can submit it again. The Open Directory Project is handled by humans and takes several months, but Google usually takes up to one month.

Spamming search engines. - If your website doesn't follow the rules, it may be banned from inclusion. Read search engine rules on the search engine website before submitting to them. Some search engine spamming techniques include unrelated, repeated or hidden keywords, mirror pages, and using all capital letters in the title. Using automated submission programs or sending too many requests for inclusion can also get you banned from search engines.

Web server not accessible. - If your web host server is down when the search engine robots visit your website, they cannot index your web pages. They will try again at a later date. Using a reliable paid server increases your ranking and accessibility.

Website not complete. - Your website should be completed before your url is submitted to search engines for listings. Make sure you have proper titles, keywords, descriptions, and other meta tags and related text. You should have a consistent navigation menu for page links on every web page and no broken links.

Optimize static web pages. - Search engines index static web pages (regular html pages), so these should be optimized for search engines to index and rank. Dynamic web pages are pages created when the visitor makes a request on your website and the result dynamically generates a webpage for viewing. An example would be the results of a search engine query or a survey result. Since the webpage does not exist until the request is made, search engines cannot index or rank these pages.

These pages are usually created by PHP, CGI, and ASP scripts, so if you see http://www.website.com/webpage.asp, then the page was dynamically created. If your website has a database, many pages may be dynamically generated. To increase your search engine ranking, you should include more static pages in your website.

Exchange links with related websites. - Many search engines factor link popularity into your ranking. Google, the most popular search engine, will rank your website higher if you have incoming links from websites that have the same topic or related topics. If the websites have higher ranking, it will improve yours. So Uncle Tom's homepage on a free server won't help your website as much as a commercial website link. Outgoing links are also useful to your visitors as well as your ranking.

Competitor websites are better. - Perhaps your competitor websites are better and your website just doesn't deserve to be ranked higher. You may need a website makeover. Whether your website has less contents, less pages, less links, less updates, less extras or less advertising, your website needs a change. If you can't get found for selected keyword phrases, you must find out why and do something about it. First diagnose the problem, then solve it.

Yvette Kuhns, Power Pages Web Design, July 30, 2003

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