Continuing our discussion from Post #11 about how your new website is not showing up on Google, we will go through a few more reasons why this could be happening.
Too Much Animation
I don’t see it as much as I used to, but website designers used to FILL a page with flash animation. The major problem with this is that the search engines cannot read text in a flash animation. You need to have content on your website that the search engines can read. And they can’t read pictures or images.
You need to have content to let people know what your website is about. Images are great, but you also need to have the written word.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen some amazing websites done with a lot of flash animation with the written word in the animation… but if the search engines can’t see it, I’m not doing it.
Duplicate Content Penalty
Ok… Google has this thing about wanting original content in their search engine. I know… I know… you thought you could just copy your original website to 4 other domain names and conquer the whole front page of Google right?
Wrong!
You see, when the search engines scan your site, they take a snapshot of it. Then when they scan other sites if they see a bunch of the exact same content that they have already indexed before that, they’re not going to index that page.
Now your website will still be found if someone types in your domain name like “www.YourSite.com”. However, if you’re a plumbing website with a ton of duplicate content on it, you’re not going to be found when someone types in “plumber”
I see this happening all the time. Specifically with industries like Chiropractors and Auto Shops.
These businesses were approached by a website company that “Specializes” in chiropractors and auto shops. The website company then sells the business a website template with the EXACT same content on it as 1000 other websites that they have sold to other people in that same industry. The only thing that is different is the contact information and company name. The content on the site is the exact same as every other site.
Google just laughs at these sites. Then they ignore them completely.
I recently had a new client that just spent $1500 on one of these sites only to find out (once I showed them) that they were the exact same as more than 1100 other websites. They had never been able to find their website on the search engines for their keywords (at all).
Black Hat Penalties
Black Hat Penalties
Some people are so eager to get their website ranked well that they will pay for any and all services to help them rank better. The problem is that there are a lot of services out there that will use what we call “Black Hat” techniques to get a site ranked.
These techniques are not illegal, but they are considered “cheating” by the search engines. And once they are found out by those same search engines, there can be MAJOR penalties put onto the site that can make it almost impossible to get it fixed. Once these penalties have been handed down, your website will not be found.
There are clients that we have helped with problems like this where we said… It would be easier, faster, and cheaper for you to abandon that website and domain name and just start over. We did not want to tell them that, we just needed them to understand the gravity of the situation.
So those are some other reasons why your website may not be showing up in Google. If you (or anyone you know) has any problems like this, feel free to give us a call and we will try to help you figure out the problem (and a solution).
Just because you aren’t showing up now, doesn’t mean that you won’t… or can’t.