Website content is all the information to show what your website is about, including such elements as design, navigation, text, graphics, and style.
Most people tend to use the word 'content' as relating only to the text or information within the pages, and whilst content is 'king', there is more to consider if you want to avoid website content search engine stumbling blocks. For instance:
Poor quality, irrelevant or unoriginal content
Poor content, or not what the user expected (off-topic), means no-one will recommend or link to the website and no-one will click through to the site, or if they do, they won't stick around once they get there.
The result is lack of site popularity which is a measure of relevance when ranking search results. This is a combination of link popularity (the number of, and the quality of, other sites linking to yours), and lack of click-through popularity (which can include an indication of how long a user stayed at a site after click-through).
No matter how well optimised for keywords your pages are, if they don't have anything interesting to say it's unlikely they will ever do well in the search engines.
A website must demonstrate that it offers interesting and unique content of potential value to the directory's users, and that the site owner cares enough about it to submit it correctly.
Hate Sites or Illegal Content
Sites that profess hate or illegal activities are sometimes excluded, along with websites or pages using certain words or phrases associated with spam, racism, porn, and other objectionable topics.
Search engines and directories de-list or ban websites that do not conform to their quality standards and are deemed unsuitable.
Other Non-Indexable Content
Most engines cannot index text that is embedded in images, or text that appears in multimedia files (audio and video).
Information that is generated by Java applets or in XML coding cannot be indexed by most search engines.
Password Protected Pages
Search engines cannot read password-protected pages, or fill out a form of any kind, to retrieve information from a database. So if your best content is 'hidden' your website cannot be crawled.
Ensure you have good content on public pages, if you want to be found.
Create static pages that the engines will be able to find and index without performing a special action on your site. Depending on the database system you have, there are utility programs out there that help you do this, as well as companies like us, that can assist you.
Affiliate Sites
Websites without content and containing pages that only link to other pages or domains, tend to be ignored by search engines. Good content websites with links to affiliate sites which bear no relevance to the original website are also penalised or ignored.
Many affiliate sites are duplicated or 'mirror' sites, provided by the owner of the affiliate program to sell their products. Duplication of content, either by excessive submission of the same page, submitting the same pages from many domains, or submitting the same page content from multiple hosts, can mean affiliate sites will never be found.
Most search engines will still accept a limited number of 'mirror' sites, but in the main, will not index them.
These are just a few website content search engine stumbling blocks. You can learn more about what to avoid if you want to be listed with the major search engines on these related pages:
Navigation and Inbound/Outbound Links Stumbling Blocks
Web Hosting and IP Address Stumbling Blocks
Unacceptable Techniques for Search Engines
More Search Engine Submission Stumbling Blocks
Avoid Search Engine Stumbling Blocks
Website Design and Construction Stumbling Blocks
Back
