Search engine optimization and site rankings are not magic. There are very specific things you can do to help improve the chances of your site’s rankings. Here are some of the most egregious offenses.

5. No or Bad Internal Link Structure Design: Most site owners and designers are allergic to links in their content. But that is one of the most important ways of utilizing your own website in order to improve its ranking ability. So don’t be afraid to do some linking and get the link-juice flowing through your site.

4. No Customized Title Tags: Yes, it’s wonderful to have your company name emblazoned at the beginning of every title tag on your site, but by doing that you are wasting precious real estate. The title tag is one of the most important on-site elements when it comes to search engine optimization, so don’t waste it by slapping ‘Joe Bob’s Junk Emporium’ In front of every title.

3. No Original or Interesting Content: Have something interesting to say, or at least an interesting way to say it in. People are not going to flock to your site just because you reworded some content that was copied from another site and reused. Stop ‘spinning’ articles, and come up with something original. If you can’t or simply won’t then you don’t deserve good rankings and traffic.

2. No or Not Enough Good and Relevant Incoming Links: This goes back to #3 in this list. If you have no interesting content (content can be anything from text to video to a web comic) then no one is going to link to you, no matter how much you beg. The only links you’ll get are from other sorry websites who are doing the same horrible job you are doing.

1. The Website Is Simply Bad: This is an issue that often comes up, and the question that is asked by the owner of the ‘bad’ site is that “How come my site is not ranking and the guy who started his business 5 months ago is?” And the answer (almost) inevitably is that “it’s because your site is just a terrible website.”

If your site is just simply not a good site, it will have an impossible time to develop natural links, and that is going to be a very difficult hurdle to overcome when a competitor is raking in links by offering great content presented in a nice format.