Web sites become listed on search engine results if and only if the search engine spiders are indexing them. If they pass right by your pages, and don’t even know they exist, then they’re simply not going to be indexing your web pages.

You probably are aware of the basic steps to get the search engine spiders indexing your web pages. However, you might have missed a few key reasons the spiders are skipping right over your content.

Here are 10 reasons why search engines might not be indexing your web pages.

As it is, some pages are just not meant to be indexed by the spiders. This may not matter to your overall SEO strategy, however, it’s important to understand what spiders do and don’t index.

Search engine spiders are not indexing web pages where:

1. Pages only accessible by using a search form
2. Pages that require a log in
3. Pages that require visitors to submit a form
4. Pages that redirect to a different URL before showing content

While some pages are not meant to be indexed, other pages are and might be missed.

Pages that spiders often ignore include:

5. Pages with too many outgoing links
6. Pages with complex URLs – these often give spiders an error result
7. Pages which are more than three clicks from the home page, often described as “deep pages”

Other factors may prevent your web pages from being indexed by search engines.

These factors include:

8. Broken links from your site
9. A web page that exceeds 105K
10. A slow loading time or a down server.

As you’re optimizing your website and specific web pages, pay attention to these factors. The goal, of course is to be indexed and to achieve first page search engine results.

Keep in mind it takes time for the engines to find your web pages and for them to go up in the search engine rankings. Nothing happens overnight. You might be following all of the above to set up your pages, however, the results might just take some more time.