Why your website is not listed on search engines.This article lists "19 common mistakes that prevents your Web site from being listed on search engines".

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19 common mistakes that prevent your Web site from showing up on search engines.

Many webmasters have the problem that their Web site is not listed in search engines at all. There can be a variety of reasons that your Web site doesn't show up on search engines.

Reason #1: You are using frames.

Many search engines have problems with frames. They often only index the frameset page and not the individual frames that contain the actual content. Unfortunately, the frameset page usually doesn't have META tags, title and enough content (text) to obtain a listing on a search engine.

The best solution to this problem would be to avoid frames. If you really must use frames, consider the following points:

1. Add a description of your Web site in the <noframes> area so that search engines can index that text. There you should also add a link to the homepage.

2. When a search engine indexes a frame page outside of the frameset, the visitor can be left stranded and unable to link into your site. So your individual frame pages should always contain a link back into your site.

3. Add some JavaScript to force frame pages into the frameset. This prevents visitors from inadvertently accessing an orphaned Web page. You can use the following JavaScript snippet:

---
if (top.location.href == self.location)
{ top.location.href = "URL of your frame file"; }
----

Reason #2: You are using a lot of pictures on your Web site but very little text.

Search engines need text to index your Web site. They cannot know what's written on your GIF or JPEG images. If you use a lot of images on your Web site, you should also create some Web pages that have a lot of text.

Some Web site promotion consultants will tell you to create so-called doorway pages. A doorway page is a Web page that contains plain text and a link to your main Web page. On that doorway page, you should describe the content of your Web site in many sentences that contain many keywords that are important for your Web site.

However, some search engines only lists Web pages if at least one remote Web page is linking to it. In that case, a doorway page will not work. Don't use doorway pages for search engine spamming! Only use doorways that have something to do with the content of your Web pages.

Note that many search engines already ignore doorway pages. For that reason, try to give your real Web site as much content (text) as possible. Fresh, continuously updated content is one of the best ways to ensure that your visitors will return again and again.

Here are 3 tips for building and distributing your content:

1. Build one page of quality content per day. Write timely, topical articles with about 250-500 words. If you aren't sure what you can write about, look in your log files which search phrases have been used to come to your site. Or use Overture's keyword suggestion tool at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

and find the core set of keywords for your topic area. Those are your subject starters.

2. Stay abreast of developments in your sector. If the big site "ABC" is coming out with product "XYZ" in autumn, then write about the product or the product sector in general and have it ready in June so that search engines can index it early. For example, all the Nintendo GameCube sites you can find in Google today - those have been submitted 3-4 months ago.

3. Syndicate your content (along with your name and Web site URL)! Other webmasters will gladly incorporate your articles into their Web sites. Just search for "syndicate your articles", "syndicate your content" and "submit your article" on Google.

Reason #3: The submitted Web page is only a redirection.

If the Web page you submit contains a redirection to another Web site, most search engines will skip your Web site completely. Do not submit a redirection Web page.

Many webmasters tried to cheat search engines with redirection pages in the past. The search engines companies discovered that and they decided to totally skip Web pages with redirections.

Submit a real Web page that contains the product description visible to the reader.

Sometimes, you have old Web pages listed on search engines and you want them to redirect to the new Web site. There are several ways to do it:

1. You can implement a server side redirect on the old Web page, using the 301 Moved Permanently error message. This will redirect users to the new Web site, but also tells the search engines that this page has moved permanently. Some search engines will drop the page from their index, and some will eventually replace the old page with the new one without hurting your rankings.

2. You can use the META Refresh tag on the old Web page, for example tells the browser to load www.axandra.com 5 seconds after the current document has finished loading. However, some old Web browsers don't support that tag, and some search engines penalize pages that use a refresh of a few seconds or less (more about this in our search engine ranking report, see http://www.axandra.com/search-engine-studies/index.htm ).

3. Instead of the META Refresh tag, you can also use JavaScript to load a new document:

Most search engine robots ignore JavaScript so this method of redirection is unlikely to be penalized.

4. You can also delete the old Web page and create a custom 404 error page. This ensures that visitors will be redirected to the new site if they click on a broken link or enter an incorrect URL. The 404 error page should contain a link to your home page and to the primary sections of your Web site.

To move to a new Web site and to keep your old search engine rankings, I recommend using one of the methods 1 or 3.