A lot of people have been asking me – Why is my website not ranking on Google? Well, this is the most common question that has been asked for decades. You really don’t have to panic if you’re going through this. Indeed, there is a solution for every single problem and can be resolved if worked on it smartly.
Being an SEO Analyst for many years, I’ve gone through many websites and analyzed and experienced the most common problems that I will discuss in this article.
Reasons Why Your Website is Not Showing in Google Search
Let’s face the fact. Each and every online startup business goes through this situation. But patience is the true weapon that will help us succeed in online business.
No matter how skilled you are, it takes time to reach your goal. And when it comes to digital world where there are tons of website already running, patience is the virtue.
As you are in a state of confusion to why your website is not ranking on google, there might be some minor or major reasons that can be taken into consideration.
Apart from these, there might be other reasons as well. But these reasons are the most common and can be sorted out quickly.
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1. Your Website is New
If your website is new, then there are high chances of your website not being indexed by Google. It’s really OK if this is the scenario. Even I’ve gone through this and getting indexed is real simple. Follow the below tips if you wish to index your website quickly.
- Publish at least 2 to 3 high quality articles before submitting your website to Google
- Keep your blog updated on regular basis
- Build quality back links from high DA websites
I’ve personally followed these strategies which made my blog get indexed within few days. Content & back links are the two most important SEO factors that needs to be taken seriously (even if your website is indexed).
Oh wait, have you submitted your website to the search engines yet? If not, then you need to do it right now!
Earlier, there was an amazing tool where we could submit the URLs manually, but Google discontinued it on July 2018. As of now, the only way is by adding an XML sitemap in your Search Console.
If you already did, then you may check manually if your website is indexed or not by following the below step:
Visit Google.com and enter your domain (website) name in the search box following site: prefix.
For example, you can see in the above image how I mentioned site:priyanaz.com in the search box and few results were shown. This means my blog has been indexed by Google and is ranking on Google.
If your website is brand new and not ranking on Google, then you might see a result like this:
If you see the result shown in the above image, then your website is not yet indexed and you will need to work on it. Just follow the steps that I’ve mentioned and you will definitely see good results soon.
2. No Links Pointing to Your Website
Backlinks are the backbone of your website. Stronger your links are, higher your website will rank on Google.
Just because your website needs links to get indexed fast, it doesn’t mean you have to get more and more links from other websites. I honestly suggest you to avoid this at any cost.
What I suggest you to do is, try searching for websites that are relevant to your niche with high DA (domain authority) and get 5-10 high quality links to your website. Google then judges how trustworthy and reliable the backlink is and ranks your web page accordingly.
Always remember – One quality backlink is equal to 100 bad links. Keep this in mind while searching for a backlink.
Why Your Website Not Ranking in Google Search
A website is more likely to get penalized that gets a lot of low-quality and spammy backlinks. A link from a low-quality website is a big NO-NO for me and will never recommend anyone to do that!
How to Build Quality Backlinks?
Well, searching for a quality backlink is one of the toughest things to do. However, there are some online tools that you can follow to grab your competitor’s backlinks such as ahref, Moz and Semrush. These tools can tell you which:
Spying on your competitor is not bad, but make sure you do not copy their design or content. Do that in your own way!
In order to get your website indexed quickly, you may prefer these strategies.
- Social Bookmarking (Avoid spammy websites)
- Profile Building (do not spam)
- Directory Submission (high quality)
- Blog Commenting (relevant website)
Before you do any Off-Page SEO work, make sure the website has HIGH domain authority.
For example, when you’re commenting on other blogs or websites, you need to check if the domain authority is more than 35, has a proper design and mostly importantly, the topic is relevant to your website. The same goes for social bookmarking as well.
Sharing your website posts on Social Media websites such as Facebook, Pinterest & Twitter is highly recommended. Improvements in your ranking can be seen when there are good engagements of your posts on social media.
The best way is to place social sharing buttons on individual posts so that the users can share on their timeline. Whether it’s a physical product or a service, just let that be on social, as every single engagement is considered as ranking factor.
3. Poorly Optimized Website
Poorly optimized websites are one of the most common reasons why they don’t rank well on Google (even after being indexed). How is your website designed? Is it responsive? Do the pages have enough content to get crawled? Are the headings attractive?
Well, all of these factors comes into the consideration if your website is not showing in google search.
The very basic and first step that I always prefer is to optimize the website. Design in a way that will be loved by the internet users and you will eventually be loved by the search engine bots as well. This will automatically improve your ranking in no-time.
Some of the factors that needs to be considered if you want to show your website in google search are:
Unique Title & Meta Tags
It’s a fact that title & meta description increases the CTR & ranking of web page on Google search. People often ignore this step by creating dull looking titles & not implementing the keywords properly.
- Whenever you create a new title, make sure you add the keyword in the beginning and the length does not exceed more than 70 characters. As Google shows up to 70 characters on the search engine results page, consider making it short & sweet.
- When writing a meta description, make sure the length does not exceed more than 156 characters. It would be worthy if you add the main keyword once along with the LSI keyword. LSI keywords are similar & related to the main keyword.
- Another most important thing to be considered is a proper URL structure. Add the primary keyword and keep it short.
Poorly written content
Content is king! You’re sure to rank on first page of Google if your content has proper sentence formation, proper grammar, useful sub-headings & proper usage of keywords embedded within the content. Of-course the ranking depends on the competition as well.
- Write a content in a way that can help user understand the topic, with proper H2 & H3 sub-headings. Include the primary or LSI keyword in the heading if possible.
- Make sure the you divide the content in paragraphs with about 300-350 words with sub headings.
- Keep the content at-least 800 words long and repeat the primary keyword along with the LSI keyword.
- Make sure you do not repeat the keyword multiple times. Google is very strict against Keyword Stuffing which can lead to drop in the rank or may even get penalized in the worst cases.
- I personally consider adding the main keyword within the first paragraph, an LSI keyword in the middle of the content and main keyword in the conclusion part. This however depends on how long the article is. You may consider checking the perfect keyword density.
Slow page load speed
Slow websites are annoying! Not just internet users, but search engines hates it as well. Would you like to wait for 5 to 10 secs long for the page to load? No, right? Well, I hate it too!
A good website speed is under 3 seconds. Websites that take more time to load are hard to rank on Google or sometimes may get penalized as well.
You can check the speed score of your website with free online tools such as GoogleSpeed Insights & GTMetrics.
Just visit GTMetrics and enter the URL. You will see something like this.
A Score of more than 70-80 is considered as good. You too can achieve this score if you optimize it properly.
- The first step you need to follow is to optimize your images by compressing them. You can do it with the help of TinyPNG for free.
- Once they’re optimized, the next step is to minify your JS/CSS files
- Make sure you’re enabled gzip compression and leveraged browsing cache
- Number of 301 redirects can also affect your website performance
Not sure how to do this? No problem, you can contact me and I’ll be happy to help you out!
The next time when you ask yourself why is my website not ranking on google, make sure you check if your website is optimized with these strategies.
4. Your Niche is Highly Competitive
I’ve seen many people asking why does my website not show up in google search even if the website is old with good number of backlinks? Well, the logical answer to this question is competition.
You’re not alone on the internet. There are millions of websites on the web who desire to come on top of Google without paying. That’s not easy, but not impossible too! Honestly, you will be learning about the new strategies & tactics only when you’ve a competitor, and indeed that’s more fun!
The only thing that can beat competition is quality content with good on-page optimization and high domain authority backlinks.
Why Your Website Not Ranking in Google Search
If you’ve done this perfectly, you really don’t have to worry about who your competitor is!
How to Check for Competitors?
Well, that’s easy! Just Google the product or service you’re providing on your website and hit search. This will ideally give you the complete results on other websites that are providing the same product or service that you are.
For example, when I searched for “how to make website for business” on Google, I got this result.
As seen in the image above, there are over 8 Billion results that are working on the same topic. So this is extremely competitive niche that would take years to rank on first page (unless you update regularly with high quality content and quality links).
The websites on first page are basically present online since years and have been working on it every single day.
However, you may check your own competitors likewise.
Some tips before you start searching
- If your targeted audience is within your own country then make sure you select Google.com or Google.co.uk to check for competition
- Use “—” to check the exact competition for your keyword. For example, “how to start a blog”
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5. You’re Not Targeting the Long-Tail Keywords
It might be possible that you’re targeting a broad match keyword that has high competition. This way, it will be impossible to rank on Google unless your website is old enough & has a good popularity.
As you can see in the example image above, the words in bold are giving more ideas & predictions of what users are searching for. These are long-tail keywords.
If you target the main keyword “how to make website”, there might be tons of competitors. Instead of that, if you are targeting “how to make a website with Wix”, it will be easy to rank on the first page of Google as the competition will be low.
Moreover, when a user is searching with a long-tail keyword, he is more likely to be a purchase that product or service. It has been proven again and again that long-tail keywords are easy to rank on Google. As the competition gets filtered out, a well optimized website can rank easily.
Conclusion
There are so many things you can do to improve your visibility in search results. Most of which can be done by you without the need of an SEO company. The more you understand about your website, the easier it will be if you do decide to hire someone later on in the process.
If your website is not ranking on Google, then you definitely might not have been following any of these (or multiple) reasons. Just try going through these strategies and I guarantee that you will be seeing the positive results within a few weeks.
Feel free to comment below if you need any further help.
