While search engines are much faster these days with indexing sites, it can still take a few months to get listed - depending on the search engine. If it's been less than 12 weeks since you submitted your site - don't panic.
No inbound links
As mentioned, search engine spiders find your site not only through direct submissions, but also through links from other listed sites that point to yours. If nobody else is linked to your site, this can contribute to the problem of getting listed. In these cases, it's wise to implement a linking campaign.
How to fix this: An affective way to build instant inbound links is to activate Ashop's link exchange program. This means that you will link out to 5 Ashop Commerce stores from your site and a different 5 stores will link back to you. Click here to view the tutorial on setting up the link exchange program.
Duplicate, non-original content
For search engines, it's not just the amount of content, but the quality. If your site consists mainly of someone else's content, this can prevent you from being listed.
Lack of content, image/Flash based site
Search engines feed best on text - they cannot read images and very limited abilities when it comes to dealing with Flash based sites. If your site is primarily image based, it may be time to rethink it's design to allow for some textual content. If this isn't possible, then the use of "alt" text on all your images is strongly advised.
Invisible text
If you have large amounts of text or keyphrases that are the same color as the background of your page, many search engines will view this as an attempt to spam. Whether intentional or unintentional, you should rectify this immediately.
Bad Inbound Link Popularity methods
I've seen this happen many, many times - a site owner submits their web site to the engines, gets impatient after a couple of weeks and then decides to take out a "1,000,000 visitors for $24" campaign.
Many of these cheap traffic strategies can actually get you banned. Rule of thumb - if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is - and you should steer clear of such schemes. This is especially the case where the method of delivery of traffic is through a page on your site being displayed. Not all such advertising campaigns are shonky, you just need to be careful.
Be patient - there really is no magic bullet solution to rankings and listings; solid and ethical search engine optimization strategiesare still the only way to go.
Linking to bad neighborhoods
It's hard to define this and there are no hard and fast rules; but there has been a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest that a new site linking to many banned sites can prevent the new site from being listed. It's wise to check out any sites you are thinking of linking to before doing so. If you find that you have linked to many banned sites, just remove the links.
Link farms
If your site has little content and consists mainly of links that you've swapped with other sites, this can get you labeled as a link farm and can prevent you from being listed. Remove as many links as you can and focus on building content.
