Why Is My Website Not Showing Up on Google?

It's great to have a beautiful website — one you know will convert. But that website does absolutely nothing for you if you don’t get traffic. If your site isn’t showing in Google search results, traffic is likely a major issue you’re highly interested in solving.

After all, Google isn’t just a search engine, it’s a verb. When you want an answer you don’t know, chances are that you Google the question. Your customers do the same exact thing.

So, if you’re not showing up in Google and other search engines, you’re leaving a countless amount of money on the table. Unfortunately, there are several challenges to troubleshooting poor search engine rankings. Learn about why your website isn’t on the first page of Google and some actions you can take to solve the problem.

Why Your Website Isn’t Showing Up on Google

Some of the most common reasons why websites don't rank well with Google include:

• Google doesn’t know your website exists.
• Google knows your website exists but doesn’t consider it important enough to display in search results.
• Your website has been hit with an automatic Google penalty.
• Your website has been hit with a manual Google penalty.  

These are just four of the many reasons your website doesn’t rank on the first page of Google and other search engines. However, no matter the reason, they all boil down to one thing. That is poor search engine optimization (SEO).

What Is SEO?

SEO is the process of optimizing your website and its content for search engines. However, the methods of implementing SEO have changed over time. In what would be considered the archaic days of Google, you could fool Google’s algorithm by using keywords unnaturally, hiding keywords in backgrounds, and other actions that are now considered black hat SEO.

Today, Google and other search engines are far more intelligent. They use machine learning algorithms with user data they compile from billions of searches per day to determine the factors that make the best user experience.

Search engines also track user data to determine how important a specific webpage might be. A webpage with a lower bounce rate is likely to rank higher than a webpage with a high bounce rate.

Today’s SEO includes various onsite and offsite efforts designed largely to result in a better experience for the end user. Although it’s important to consider search engines in today’s SEO landscape, user experience, and quality content are far superior to high keyword density.

Nonetheless, SEO takes part in two places. Both on your website and off.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is the process of making changes to pages in an effort to appease search engines. These include but are not limited to:

• Meta Tags: Meta tags include title and description tags. The title tag typically becomes the link in search results, and the description is displayed below it. It’s important to ensure that all of your meta tags are unique, keyword dense, and highly relevant to your content.
• Link Structures: Your website should be easy to navigate. That means you can get to the last page of the site from the current page and there’s a clear funnel that keeps you surfing. SEO experts have a detailed understanding of link structures and how internal links impact search results.
• Code: Your website’s code dictates how quickly (or slowly) it will load. The faster your website is, the better the user experience is, resulting in better search results.

External SEO

External SEO is the process of taking action outside of your website in an effort to increase your search rankings. These efforts typically include but are not limited to:

• Guest Posts & Appearances: Building your name as a thought leader in your industry by writing guest posts for high-quality websites (and linking back to your website) could greatly improve your search rankings.
• Local Listings: Having accurate data about your business online is key. You don’t want to go crazy with local listings, but it is important to ensure that all listing data is the same across all channels. Any misspellings or even extra spaces in business names, addresses, and phone numbers could lead Google to rank your website lower in local listings.
• Social Activities: There’s strong evidence that Google takes social posts and engagement into account when determining which websites rank best.

Actions You Can Take to Improve Your Search Presence

There are several things you can do to improve your search engine rankings. Learn the details of some of the most effective opportunities below.

Submit Your Website to Search Engines

Search engines often find websites as a result of links on other websites, but that process takes some time. If you want to speed things up, you can submit your website to Google, Bing, and other search engines directly. It’s kind of like waving a digital flier in the air for search engine spiders just over your website URL. Here’s where you submit your site to Google and Bing:

• Google: You can submit your website to Google through Google Search Console.
• Bing: Use the URL submission tool at Bing Webmaster Tools to submit your website.

You can also create an XML sitemap that updates Google and Bing any time you publish new pages on your website. This is incredibly easy with platforms like Webflow and Squarespace.

Make Sure You’re Not Blocking Search Engine Sites

Websites use a file called the robots.txt file as a defense mechanism. This file is often used to block malicious bots that may have ulterior motives for being on your website. However, if used improperly, this file can also block search engine bots like Google spiders from being able to access your page.

Update your robots.txt file to ensure you’re not blocking the good bots. If you’re not sure how to do this, get in touch with the team at Belt Creative for help.

Avoid Duplicate Content at All Costs

Duplicate content wasn’t an issue in the early days of Google. However, Google soon realized that consumers weren’t interested in reading the same thing over and over again. Today, the search engine, like most others, values quality content over the quantity of content you produce.

Importantly, the fact that consumers like unique content means duplicative content is the enemy. In fact, Google sees duplicate content as such an enemy that too much of it on your website could lead to a Google penalty, driving your search engine rankings into the dumps.

Always make sure the content you publish is unique content that you or members of your team have produced with a purpose.

Consider Search Intent as You Create Content

Staying on the topics of content and purpose, it’s important to consider the user’s search intent as you create content. Google’s algorithms are smart enough to understand why consumers ask the questions they ask. That means they’re also smart enough to give consumers the types of answers they’re looking for.

For example, if you create a piece of content about selling cars that don’t run, that content should provide actionable tips to tell consumers how to sell the hunks of junk cluttering their driveways rather than something like parting a car out, which is somewhat relevant but doesn’t truly answer the question.

Use Unique Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Unique content is important in every aspect of your website. That doesn’t just mean your blog articles and product or service description pages; it literally means everything. Many newcomers to the online marketing world use the same title tag or description tag on multiple pages.

That’s a huge mistake.

Doing this means there’s duplicate content on each page you have these tags on, which could lead to a penalty. Instead, always use meaningful title and description tags that accurately depict the content they represent.

Clean Up Your Code

A slow website is frustrating for the end user. In fact, slow site speeds often lead to high bounce rates. This is often a code-related problem. If your code is messy, your website will take longer to load. Consider cleaning up your code to speed up your website and improve your site’s user experience and search rankings.

Find Out Exactly Why Your Website Isn’t in Google Search

It can be frustrating when your business website doesn’t rank well in search engines. Much of that frustration comes from trying to answer the question, “Why?” It’s incredible to think about the amount of time business owners waste trying to troubleshoot search engine ranking issues.

Stop wasting your time trying to troubleshoot something you can get the answers to quickly. Consider taking advantage of Belt Creative’s SEO Discovery Package.

Belt Creative is a leading website design and search engine optimization company. The company’s experts know exactly what it takes to design a website that ranks well in search engines and converts. Moreover, if you want to know why you’re not ranking well and want to fix the problem, our SEO Discovery Package was designed for you.

You’ll get:

• A full website technical audit with recommendations for making improvements.
• Homepage search engine optimization.
• Keyword research.
• Title tag and meta description setup.
• SEO roadmap.
• A 30-minute call with an SEO expert.

If you’re looking to get your website ranking higher in search engines, then our SEO Discovery Package is the perfect solution for you.

Whether you decide to sign up for our SEO discovery package or implement the tips we’ve discussed in this article on your own, now is the time to start optimizing your website for search engines.