10. Hosting Issues – Your server is too slow...There are a lot of websites out there for search engine crawler programs to try to index. Some experts estimate that there are as many as 4 billion sites live, so search engines don’t have much time to spend trying to index them. If the host server of your website has a slow Internet connection, the search engine will attempt to index your text, but will often time out which may result in your site not being indexed at all. You can help avoid being passed over by the search engines by limiting the size of your home page to less than 60k, or simply by switching hosting companies to someone more reliable.

9. Hosting Issues - You’re using a free Web space provider If you’ve decided to host your business’ website with a free hosting provider, you might want to reconsider. Some search engines will only list a certain number of pages from a single domain, so if you’re sharing that domain with thousands of other people, you can’t rely on your site being indexed at all. In fact, some search engines leave off free hosted pages altogether, due to the amount of spam sites they receive from these domains.

8. You have special characters in your URL

7. Ineffective Optimizing – You have text hidden in the background colour In the past, some people have tried to trick search engines by hiding keyword rich text on a page by making the font colour the same as the background colour. The text would then be hidden from viewers, but would theoretically still be ‘seen’ by search engine spiders, resulting in a high page ranking thanks to the keyword density. 6. Ineffective Optimizing – You have overused your keywords It’s important to realize that overusing keywords on your website can be just as detrimental to your search engine rankings as not using keywords at all. Many search engines avoid being spammed by carefully filtering out sites that overuse the same keywords or phrases repeatedly, either in their meta tags or in the body of the text. While there is no magic number to determine what is ‘keyword rich’ and what is ‘keyword spam’, a general way to judge is simply to read the text aloud and objectively determine if the text sounds fake or natural. If it sounds like you’re forcing the keywords into the text, it’s a good idea to cut some out.

Unfortunately for those who have used this trick, most search engines have learned to catch it and will penalize your site for trying to "spam the search engine". They can even recognize if you’ve made the text a slightly different colour from the background.

To ensure that your site isn’t blacklisted or penalized with low index rankings, simply don’t try to trick the search engines. Make sure your website is keyword rich, and do it the right way.

5. Ineffective Optimizing - You’re using the wrong keywords

Sometimes the problem with your keywords is not how often you’ve used them or how you’ve formatted them, it’s specifically which keywords you’re using in your meta tags and in the body of your text. When optimizing your site, you must be sure you’re using the words that your customers would likely search for – not necessarily the words you would use to describe your company. When choosing your keywords, try to think like your potential customers and what they would likely type in to find your website.

If your business is called "Heather’s Blooms" and specializes in bouquets and flower arrangements for weddings, you won’t want to only optimize for your company’s name or terms specific to your corporate identity (for example, tag lines or slogans like "creative floral creations"). While some potential customers will search for you by name, the majority will be searching with more general keywords, such as: florist, flower arrangements, wedding flowers, wedding bouquets, bridal bouquets, etc. Also, optimizing with geographic terms is a great idea, since most searchers will look for a business specifically in their area.

However, having unrelated links on your site and to your site won’t help your ranking. Links must be related to your business and the content on your site – for example, if you run a flower shop, a link from a gardening center would be a good one, but a link to a drycleaner would not. There are many reciprocal link programs that you can get your website involved in, which will help your link popularity – just make sure that the websites you’re trading links with are appropriate ones.

4. Your site has poor link popularity Is your site ‘popular’? One of the factors the major search engines look at when determining the quality of a website is its ‘link popularity’ – how many sites link back to yours. If other credible sites link to yours, it boosts your site’s credibility and testifies to the quality of your site, which then boosts your rankings in search engine listings. 3. Problems with Content – You’re using frames, so search engines can’t see the text on your site

Using frames to design your website can result in low search engine rankings, because many search engines have problems reading the text within frames. If your site is designed solely with frames, the only text the search engines can read are the title and meta tags – and that’s just not enough text to ensure your site gets indexed.

The best solution is simply to avoid using frames altogether by designing your site using layers instead. However, if you site is already built using tables, a good idea is to add a detailed description of your site in the

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