The number one reason, and a HUGH problem for search engines, is web spam.
Web spam (aka spammy websites) has poor-quality content that offers no value to the reader. They are generally built to manipulate the ranking for a specific set of keywords or phrases.
Search engines are at war with these website creators. Over the years they have refined the process of discovering low-quality sites. Then remove them in favour of the most authoritative articles for a given search term.
With millions of new websites appearing online every day, this for them is a constant battle.
Disclaimer: The following are my observations. They are conclusions I have drawn from years of building websites. I don’t own a search website. This is all speculation. To me, it makes sense and fits with my own observations.
To make this battle easier, the search giants put every new website into some kind of wait-and-see mode. (Before listing the site in the search results)
I guess they believe, making the spammers wait a certain length of time would discourage them. To some extent, this would make what they do less effective.
Having observed this for many years. I have noticed recently, that this waiting period seems to be getting longer and longer.
From 9 months to 2 years. Even more alarming, in some cases, is you may never get into the results. Particularly if you don’t do certain things to show you’re not a spammer.
When is the best time to start a website? 10 years ago. When is the second best time to start a website?
RIGHT NOW!
Ask me how!
Identifying Spam
The critical difference between a real website and web spam is;
- A Real Business – Web spam doesn’t have contact details. An actual real address and real photos were taken by you or your team
- Quality content – Spam has low-value content that is often jibberish. You will need targeted content around your industry, loads of related content
So if you don’t want your websites stuck in ‘wait-and-see mode. Don’t show the signs of “spammy-ness” listed above. It’s that simple.
Work hard on your site content. Show you a real website. Have some patience. And you ‘will’ get your chance alongside your competitors in the top search results at some point.
Ranking results will be modest to start. You’re still in a wait-and-see mode, except for a few random test appearances in the results.
For example, sometimes they may show your listing up higher in the results. Then wait and see the reaction of users for a target term. If the test is positive you will get a lift in rankings, if not, you will have to wait a bit longer for the next test.
Search Intent
Your website needs to show its user ‘intent’. What is the topic relevance of the site? And if the site matches a certain relevancy among the other competing sites. Then the search site will compare, relevant links, and content.
The differentiator can/will be the quality and the relevancy of the content on the page.
For a search engine to be able to provide good-quality results. It MUST be able to analyse a web page and know whether that page is good quality or not.
The point is to create something of quality, that offers genuine value to the user.
This post is a question from a client. We posted here to help everyone.
If you have any further questions, just send them via the contact form. I will clarify the post or add a new section.