Many people experience search engine ranking problems at one time or another, periods when their websites cannot be easily found in search engines. What are some of the most common problems and how can they be fixed?
1. Lack of links
This is a major issue which prevents sites from attaining a high search engine ranking. Many people have not understood how vital link building. You need to invest much time in building internal as well as external links.
2. Excessive 301 error redirects
New websites need to watch out for this problem. Too many 301 errors can cause a new site to be ‘sandboxed’. 301’s happen mostly when performing initial SEO audits or site re-designs. You need to make sure you do proper keyword and SEO research at the onset to avoid redoing it later.
3. Repetitive title tags
Google gives heavy penalties for using repetitive title tags. However, this is a problem that can be easily dealt with. Ensure that the title tags on each page on your website are unique.
4. Suspect links
If you rankings drop drastically overnight, then you might have questionable links in your site. Google does not approve tactics which try to increase rankings artificially. Therefore, when building links, it is important to continually check your web stats to detect any declines in traffic.
5. Unclean URLs
Search engine spiders are wary of anything which poses a risk to them, such as dynamically generated pages. Therefore, you need to make sure that your URL is cleaned from special characters like equal signs, ampersands or question marks. URLs which are complex and long cannot be indexed as easily as short and simple URLs.
6. Irrelevant text in link text and title tags
Many people use words like ‘Visit us for’ or ‘We sell’ in title tags and words like ‘Next page’ in anchor text. This is not beneficial for search engine ranking. Make sure you only use your targeted keyword phrases.
7. Slow page loading time
Slow page loading time can result in poor search engine ranking. When designing your site, make sure it doesn’t contain too many graphics or elements which would slow it down.
Conclusion
When it comes to SEO, patience is very important. It takes time to implement effective SEO. It is true that there are some tactics that you could use to enhance your rankings fast. However, they will be detrimental in the long term. To succeed with SEO, you will need to spend much time or money (or both). Search engine problems can be corrected with proper planning.
Charles Mburugu often writes about social media, technology and blogging tips. Currently, he is writing for Flash templates.
