Have you ever Googled your own website and been frustrated by not being able to find it in the Google search results? This irritating discovery can sometimes cause a little bit of panic because if you can’t find it, how are new or existing customers or clients going to be able to find it?
Thankfully, there are some very simple reasons why your site isn’t appearing. Chief among them is that your website isn’t ranking in Google. This is something that is relatively easy to fix. Here are five reasons and ways you can fix them.
1. Your site isn’t indexed
Sites that haven’t been crawled and indexed by Google won’t show up in the Google search results. There are a few reasons why that is happening. Either your site is new or it has a no index tag.
If your site is new, you just have to be patient and make sure that you are keeping your website updated and adding high quality inbound and outbound links so Google can find you faster. If your site has a no index tag, Google is being told to not add it to their search results. You’ll want to consult with an SEO agency to help with this as it can get pretty technical.
Want a quick fix? Create an account on Google Search Console so you can direct Google to crawl your site and help get it indexed faster.
2. Your site has a penalty
If your website doesn’t meet Google’s quality guidelines, it might penalize your site by temporarily removing it from the search results. There are a few different types of penalties that Google has.
- Deindexed: Your site is removed from Google completely
- Penalized: Your site still exists but can’t be found with a direct search
- Sandboxed: Your site wasn’t deindexed or penalized but your Google traffic drops suddenly.
You can check your Google Search Console for penalties, fix them and then resubmit the site to Google for indexing.
3. Your site isn’t optimized for search
This is one of the most common reasons why your website isn’t showing up in Google. SEO covers a lot of different areas so it’s best to have a complete SEO audit done on your website so you can see where you can improve your Google ranking.
There are a few things that you can do to optimize the SEO on your website.
- Clean up your site’s code
- Ensure your site loads as quickly as possible
- Streamline your website design for a better user experience
- Put target keywords in headers, menus, copy and more
- Create quality content that is useful to your website users
4. Your website content isn’t up to par with other sites
Google’s rankings aren’t based purely on technical details. They’re also based on the quality of the content on your website. If you don’t have good quality content on your website, then Google doesn’t think that the website is useful to customers.
One of the best things you can do to help your Google ranking is make sure that your blog content website copy and other details on your website are useful, compelling and of good quality.
Make sure that the content is comprehensive enough so that people don’t have to continue to look for answers in other places or continuously hit the back button to find more information.
If you need help with your content, SimplyBuilt can do a full website audit to make sure that you know which content your website is lacking and what can help you boost your Google search results ranking.
5. Your keywords are too competitive
This is a very technical reason why your website might not be ranking on Google. If you were using a lot of high-value keywords, this can cause your website to be pushed down lower in the search results because other websites are paying more for those search words or their website has a higher overall ranking on Google.
Websites that have a higher ranking on Google and are using those keywords will show above your website. It’s best to consider if you can use some other keywords that aren’t so competitive so your website can appear in those search rankings alongside the other websites.
A good tip is to keep your keywords very specific; try to focus on your niche. For example if you are a website that sells kayaks, try adding in keywords like “lake kayaks,” “kayaks for campers” or “easy kayaks to camp with”. The more specific your keywords, the better.
If you find the process of fixing your Google search ranking daunting, don’t worry. SimplyBuilt can help audit your website and get it ranking higher in the Google Search terms. By fixing keywords, your website’s content, checking if your website has any penalties, and more, SimplyBuilt’s team of experts will ensure that your website is showing up when and where you need it on Google. Contact us for a consultation today!
