You already know Google is important.
Google searching is the number one way that people find businesses on the internet.
Even more, if you want to be found, your website needs to show up on the first page of Google. An incredible 90% of Google users don’t bother to click on any links past page one!
Back when you set up your site, you believed you did everything you were supposed to do for Google to notice you.
And now here you are with this beautiful site that you know is there, your family and some of your customers know it’s there, but much to your dismay, Google hasn’t even discovered it yet.
So you keep on asking yourself: “Why isn’t my website on Google?”
Here are the top 5 reasons why Google’s algorithms haven’t noticed your site yet.
You don’t have enough high-quality backlinks
Google rankings are nothing more than a popularity contest—a lot like high school.
The number of backlinks from unique websites to your site makes your site appear popular and authoritative. The quality of these backlinks is extremely important. The stronger the reputation of your backlinks, the stronger your authority becomes.
Here is a great place to check your backlinks: ahrefs Backlink Checker
Your website is too new
Google is quick, but not that quick.
If you just recently launched your site, give it a hot minute. Google takes time to discover new sites.
You can do a couple of things. First, check to see if Google knows your website exists by visiting Google and entering: “site:yourwebsite.com” (actually enter “site:” followed by your website name) and see if your site shows up. If it doesn’t, you can submit your site to Google here: https://search.google.com/search-console/about.
Your web page doesn’t align with “search intent”
Google’s goal is to rank the most useful and relevant results for each keyword search. That means it is essential for you to align your content with what searchers expect. If your website shows up in the wrong search terms—perhaps because of incorrect SEO keywords, bad or missing header tags, URLs, and meta-descriptions—Google stops showing it in searches. So, no one finds you.
You’re blocking search engines from indexing your pages.
If you tell Google not to show pages in their search results, then they won’t.
Why would you want that? While working on their website, a lot of people work directly in their live domain. During the project, it can get pretty messy it isn’t a good time for search engines to be doing their indexing.
You do that with a “noindex” meta tag, which is a piece of HTML code that looks like this:
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”/>
Pages with that code won’t be indexed, even if you created a sitemap and submitted it in Google Search Console.
You have a Google penalty
Although, not nearly as likely as the other reasons, Google may be punishing you due to a penalty.
There are 2 types of Google penalties:
- Manual: (A penalty assigned by a human reviewer) If a Google employee manually reviews your website and finds that it doesn’t comply with their Webmaster Guidelines, Google may take action. Normally this is in the form of either removing or demoting your site in the search results.When you are tagged with a manual penalty, Google will create a notification in your Search Console account and can be found by clicking the “Security & Manual Actions” tab. Once you have figured out what triggered the manual penalty, it is simply a matter of fixing it. After it’s fixed, let Google know so they can reevaluate your website by clicking the “Request a Review” link in the notification.
- Algorithmic: (An automatic penalty that is assigned by the algorithm) This happens when one of Google’s algorithms identifies your content as something that violates the guidelines. The results of these penalties are harder to diagnose as you don’t receive any notification from Google that you have received one. Solving these types of penalties requires more work. Going back to the basics of SEO is the best first step to rescue your website from an algorithmic penalty.
Some food for thought: 380 websites are created every minute of every single day. Quick math and that is close to 550,000 new sites launched daily. All of them fighting for the favored spot with Google on page one.
There is a lot to know in order to be able to get discovered, get ranked, and then make it to page one.
We know—we’re award-winning SEO experts.
Book a complimentary SEO strategy call with us today. But don’t wait! It’s a $300.00 value and full of so much great information, our available time slots are filling up fast!
If you are more of a DIY person, we are offering our SEO Guide. It’s simple, FREE, and was created so you can improve your online presence.
Waterfront Graphic Design is your SEO partner. We can not only help your business get found on Google, but we can help you become the leader in your industry that you were meant to be.
