Author: Keith Barrett

Many website owners are wondering why their brilliantly created sites are ranking so badly in the search engine results. There are a number of common causes that can be easily rectified.

So, your website is suffering from poor search engine positioning. Here are some top tips on what may be causing your poor results:

1. The structure of your website. Can visitors to your site reach every page of content within 2 or 3 clicks of your home page? If not, then it's likely that the search engines are also having problems indexing the various pages of your website.

You need to re-structure your site, for the benefit of your visitors and for the search engines. Consider implementing a site map - this is a great way to include links to every page on your site.

2. What's your linking strategy like? Too many website owners believe that the key to search engine optimization is to get as many inbound links as possible - this is simply not true.

If you've been concentrating on quantity of links, rather than quality, then it's time to re-focus your efforts. You should aim to get links from websites that have content that is closely related to your own.

3. The content of your website. If you want to get great search engine rankings then it's vital that you regularly add new, fresh content. The content should be of interest to your users and should ideally be original.

4. Have you been using black hat techniques? Many website owners assume that black hat techniques can get them better search engine results. Unfortunately, this is usually not the case.

If you've been making use of cloaking, doorway pages, hidden text links or any other such techniques then you may well find yourself penalised by the search engines. It's time to stray away from them and stick to more ethical methods of marketing your site.

The four top tips above should help you to ascertain why it is that your website is not getting the rankings and traffic that it should.

By taking simple action, as detailed above, you can soon have your site on the road to recovery.

About the Author:
If you need to contact a search engine expert then consider Search South, where Keith Barrett is employed as a search engine consultant. This article may be used by any website publisher, though this resource box must always be included in full. "