Why Your Website Isn’t Ranking on Google
November 23, 2022 | Category: How to Rank on the First Page on Google
The influencer of search engines is Google, so you must work hard to ensure it can find your online website for it to rank you. Even when doing everything correctly, you may wonder why your website isn’t on Google. It can take between three and six months for Google to position your website in a top online position depending on the competitiveness of your industry and your keyword use.
Reasons that your website may not be ranking on Google:
1. You might be using the wrong keywords or a lack of keywords.
People use fairly common phrases and words when searching for a product or service. Our online searches have trained us to formulate our questions in ways that will keep all-inclusive (too many) results from popping up; we are learning to think like a computer.
However, it can be challenging for people who aren’t SEO specialists to know the best keywords and key phrases to use.
Good to know:
Use keywords in the metadata for your website pages, headlines, top paragraphs, and photos.
- For example, if you have a garden design business, use the word “Home” on your website navigation button. However, make sure you, if you’re doing it yourself or the website building company, attribute key phrases like garden design London, Ontario, to the page’s metadata to help people find your gardening design business.
- Great photos are a big part of a beautiful website and are also SEO secret weapons. If you use a gorgeous photo showing a recent client’s garden design, attach the phrase beautiful-garden-design-London-Ontario to the photo’s meta-description. (Use the hyphens between each word.)
- For more helpful website tips, read our articles, Which Are The Most Important Pages on My Website? and What Content is Best For SEO For My Website?
2. Google isn’t finding your website / it’s not in its database.
Google ranks websites with pages that are correctly linked. If your website pages aren’t being found through navigation, or if you have a large website with many pages (more than 500), a sitemap can be submitted to Google, which will read and crawl it to make its pages more efficient.
You’ll provide the pages, videos, illustrations, etc., that you believe are valuable for online searches. Updates to sitemaps give essential information to Google throughout the life of your website by letting Google know the page has new information or, for example, has translation services available for people whose first language isn’t English.
Good to Know:
You may need to submit a sitemap as described in our illustration above. What is a sitemap?
- A sitemap provides Google with a tiered list of primary page titles, secondary headings on the page, videos, and images. Included are details that will help those entities be more important for searches online.
- For example, an article’s date or the length and age-appropriate rating of a video.
- If you’re using a Content Management System (CMS) like Shopify or WIX, they usually have a sitemap available for search engines.
3. You may have duplicate content on different pages.
Google needs to index each page. However, it may not be able to determine which page is the most important to you for ranking. It may choose the wrong one (for example, an HTML print version of the page.)
Good to Know:
- Your overall SEO benefits may be divided between pages with exactly the same keywords and keyword phrasing. Check your URLs.
4. Your website may be too slow.
Google rewards websites that respond / load quickly to searches, ranking them before slow websites. When people search, we want our results fast; essentially, Google is the party host, and we want to live up to its expectations as its guests.
Good to Know:
Here are some tips to increase your website speed:
- Simplify your website animations, especially at the bottom of the page.
- Compress jpeg images.
- Read our article, How to Increase Website Speed.
5. Your website is not yet mobile-friendly.
If you want to rank well on Google, you must have a website that also works on mobile.
Good to Know:
According to a Consumer Insight Report, 60% of people search on their phones.
- Google has moved to mobile-first indexing.
- Your marketer must create information that effectively engages mobile users.
6. Surprise! Your website may not be on Google Business Profile, formerly Google My Business.
You can register with Google Business Profile and submit all the information requested (that is of great benefit to people searching for a service or product.) Google prefers businesses that are on the system.
Good to Know:
Your website garners many benefits using the Google Business Profile system.
- If you are using the Google Business Profile through an agency with Marketing Consultation, your business stays up to date, becomes an easy way for your business to collect Google reviews by customers, and lets Google know you’re serious about ranking your business.