A website is at the core of any marketing and advertising efforts. Businesses invest a lot of time and resources in building their website. It can be disappointing when your website does not show up on Google’s search results page. If your website is not showing on Google, then it can cost you potential leads. You may not be visible to your audience.
There may be multiple reasons that keep your website from being visible on Google. In this article, we will examine some important factors that may result in your website not showing on Google.
Here are a few reasons why your website is not showing up on Google
Your website is new
Search engines take time sometime to look for new websites or web pages. If your website is just launched, then it may not have been crawled by bots and is not indexed by Google. Search engines send out its bots or spiders to look for new content. This content is discovered through links. The bots start out with webpages and then following links on these web pages to discover new URLs. All this content is then added to their index. Index is where search engines store all this information. Then when someone searches for any information search engines scan their index to provide relevant information to the user. This is how web pages are able to rank on search results pages.
When you publish any new content or page it takes time for search engines to crawl and index this information. The time to process all this can take a couple of days or weeks based on different factors. This could be one reason why your website or web page is not showing up on Google search results. One way to speed up this process so that Google discovers your website is by creating a sitemap and submitting it through Google Search Console. A sitemap shows Google the important pages on your website and where to find them.
Search engine visibility is blocked
You may be blocking search engines from indexing your web pages. Certain pages containing the “noindex” meta tag will not be seen by Google. Hence, pages containing this code are not indexed. Sometimes you may not realize that you are accidentally blocking search engines from indexing your page. WordPress has a ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’ option that is by default enabled. If you are using WordPress, you need to ensure that this is turned off as it can prevent Google from indexing your site.
To check this option off simply go to Settings > Reading, scroll down to Search Engine Visibility and check off the box. This will ensure that your website is visible to Google and can be indexed.
Blocking a page with robots.txt file
A robot.txt file tells search engine crawlers which pages it can or cannot request from your website. The URLs blocked in a robot.txt file is not seen by crawlers. Hence, these pages will not be seen on the search results page. To check if you have blocked any URLs simply go to https://www.yourdomain.com/robots.txt. If you see ‘Disallow’ in the code it means that those pages are blocking crawlers. You should check if this is blocking any important pages from search engines.
Not implementing redirects
If you have recently moved to a new domain or restructured your website, pages will have a poor ranking if you do not implement redirects. If you have moved your website pages to new URLs, you need to implement redirects to the new pages. If you fail to do this, crawlers will only be aware of your old pages and not the new ones. Missing redirects or redirects chains can have a serious impact on the ranking of your web pages.
Your website lacks quality backlinks
There are a number factors that contribute to your website ranking. Google algorithms are complex, and you may not know why your website has poor ranking. One common reason why a website fails to have a higher ranking on a search results page is poor quality backlinks. Building quality backlinks is an important part of SEO or search engine optimization. Backlinks are hyperlinks which link one website to another. The process of link-building can take time. When building backlinks, you should be aware that you are gaining links from quality websites.
When a website has links from another credible website with a good domain authority, Google considers it as a trustworthy website. This can improve a website’s domain authority and help it rank better on search results pages. Always ensure that you get links from quality websites that can improve your domain authority. Poor quality links are bad for your website reputation and can negatively impact your ranking.
Not focusing on search intent
Search intent determines the reason behind an online search. Audiences doing online searches are looking for something specific they have in mind. They will use various keywords to find answers to their problems. Maybe the purpose of their search intent is to find businesses nearby, a product to purchase or simply look for information. Google will always aim to provide the most relevant information to a user’s search query. A search query can have multiple meanings; hence you need to focus on the search intent of your users.
A landing page should align with the search intent of your audience. For example, if you are publishing blogs with information on a certain topic, you will use specific keywords. You need to optimize your content with the relevant search terms. Users may use search queries that begin with ‘how to’, ‘why’ or ‘what is’ etc. Google will focus on giving the users the best possible results for their search queries. If your landing page is not relevant, then you would not rank for a particular keyword. Ensure that you conduct appropriate research and try to understand the intent behind a user’s search term.
Not optimizing your content
SEO or search engine optimization is crucial for any website. This is what helps increase your ranking and authority on search results pages. If you are ignoring this aspect or not doing enough then this will reflect in your rankings. There are three important factors you need to focus on which are on-site optimization, off-site optimization and keyword research. Selecting the right keywords and applying them correctly is an important factor for your rankings. This will take time and efforts which are worth investing in.
Ensure that your content is optimized for crawlers. Use keywords appropriately in the title, description, headings and content of your landing pages. This will help search engines understand what your content is about and display it to the users based on their search query.
There may be many reasons as to why your website is not ranking well on search results pages. This list can help you evaluate some reasons that are hindering your website’s visibility on SERP. If you find that you are unable to determine the reasons why your website is not showing up on Google, then you can definitely take help from experts in this area.
Implementing an SEO strategy is important. You need to keep managing and adding to your SEO efforts frequently. This will help you steadily improve your website’s authority and make it more visible. Reviewing your SEO progress and consistently improving it can help you gain better positions on the search results page. Always ensure that you are not ignoring your SEO efforts.
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