Why My Site Isn’t Showing Up On Google? Here Are the Top 5 Reasons
Every business wants to rank higher for its target keywords. It’s disappointing for any organization when they search for their target keywords and they are nowhere to be found. However, there are reasons for that.
This blog will unveil the true causes of why a website fails to appear for its target keywords. If you’re struggling to achieve higher rankings for your target keywords, this blog will provide you with the reasons as to why that’s happening.
Fixing those flaws will aid your website attain the visibility required.
How Can You Rank For Your Target Keywords?
It’s incredibly important to rank for your target search terms. Very few individuals move past the first page of Google which is why a higher ranking is all that matters.
Ranking lower or not ranking at all will dim the visibility of your business online, keeping it low on revenue, contacts, and leads.
Here Are the Top 5 Reasons Why Your Site Isn’t Showing Up On Google Search.
- Your Website Has Been Penalized.
- Website Isn’t Indexed.
- Website Optimization Is Done Poorly.
- The Website Lacks User Experience.
- Keyword Competition Is High.
If your website is not visible, don’t worry and check for these factors within your website:
1. Your Website Has Been Penalized
A website penalty can happen for a ton of reasons. If your website has been penalized it can prevent your website from ranking in the Google Search Results. Your website must meet the Google quality guidelines.
Thus, you must check Google Search Console for any penalty alerts. Accordingly, modify your website to match the Google quality guidelines. If you think you’ve made the required changes, you can submit your website for reconsideration to be back on Google.
Usually, when you are penalized, Google informs you on the Google Search Console in the Manual Actions tab. You can request for review and type a reconsideration request. These are the things you should keep in mind while writing a reconsideration request:
- An apologetic tone is what’s advised. State what you did wrong and give assurance that something like this won’t happen again in the future. Also, explain the steps that you are taking to ensure to follow Google quality guidelines and how you won’t violate them in the future. Explain the specific fixes you’re ensuring
- If in case you were associated with an inexperienced SEO agency that did bad work on your website, explain to Google how you’re no longer associated with them. Give every additional detail possible.
- Explain the fixes that you implemented and what precise steps you took to fix the issue. You don’t have to explain every step but at least show the extent you went to.
- Submit the information in a txt file and for additional information, you can include links to Google docs or sheets. Any other links to non-Google products won’t be read.
- Lastly, stop checking on a response every minute or two. You’ll hear from Google and do not resubmit until you your Manual Actions tab is all clear.
Once, you’ve made a clear reconsideration request, the penalty should get uplifted with time.
2. Website Isn’t Indexed
Websites that aren’t indexed or crawled won’t get ranked in the search engines. Now, there could be multiple reasons for a site not getting indexed or crawled:
a) The Website Is New:
Did you recently create a webpage or request indexing to search engine? It will take time for search engine to index your page; allow at least a week after submitting a sitemap or a submit to index request before assuming a problem.
If your page or site change is recent, check back in a week to see if it is still missing.
Usually, it takes Google several weeks to index a novice website and display the changes in the search results. New websites lack inbound links and Google considers the quality and type of inbound links on a website to rank it.
While building domain authority, a website can take time to show up in the results.
b) Incorrect No-Index Tags:
No-Index tags are crucial as you would want specific pages on your website not to be crawled by Google. However, the no-index tagging should be correctly placed and shouldn’t prevent your website from getting crawled or indexed.
Robots.txt file usually prevents Google crawlers from visiting complete sections on your website, so you’d want to assure that accidentally you’ve not placed any of the pages you wish to rank for. Thus, no-index tagging should be done with precaution.
If a site is non-indexed, you can start by creating your account on Google Search Console. Google is directed to your sitemap.xml file which can request it to crawl and index your URLs.
3. Website Optimization Is Done Poorly
Google has tons of factors in place while ranking a website. SEO or Search Engine Optimization involves optimizing a website as per these factors which aids a website in getting more visibility, traffic, and rankings.
Even a well-crafted website can lack traffic, because of poor SEO optimization. SEO optimization consists of:
- Fast page loading speed or website speed.
- Technical SEO or clean website code which makes it convenient for search bots to crawl or index the website.
- Including target keywords in your page copy, titles, or headlines.
- Quality content focusing on resolving user intent.
Thus, these are some of the SEO factors your website should satisfy for it to rank and attain recognizable visibility. However, one of the most crucial factors for a website to rank is its content.
The content should be extensive enough to resolve user queries as that’s what is considered high-quality content by Google. Moreover, it’s important to keep the content fresh, and unique as that’s what the search engines expect from websites.
So, work on your content if you want your website to rank.
4. The Website Lacks User Experience
Search Engines prefer websites that provide a quality user experience. If users get a poor user experience from a website, they are more than likely to leave. This gives a signal to Google that the site shouldn’t rank.
Thus, improving the UX of a website can lessen bounce rate, engage visitors, and at the same time boost rankings in the SERPs. To improve the site’s UX, consider the following things:
- Make it easy to find information by streamlining website navigation.
- Always include visual elements to divide the content and engage visitors.
- Utilize page elements that fasten up the website speed.
5. Keyword Competition Is High
Sometimes, it’s not the website elements but the keyword themselves that can hinder a website from ranking. It’s essential to revise your keywords as sometimes they may be too competitive to rank.
Competing on competitive keywords and that too with big brands can leave your business in a corner.
This is also why long tail keywords are also suggested as they have low competition. Moreover, they are also closer to the user search intent.
For instance, ‘SEO Packages’ is a keyword and ‘Local SEO Packages India’ is a long tail keyword. Focusing on broader keywords assures less competition and more focused leads and targeted marketing as it’s clearer what the search intent is.
Thus, it’s essential to conduct keyword research precisely. Knowing what your customers search for and choosing the correct keywords is an essential part of any website campaign. Tools such as Google Keyword Planner can help in finding the right long tail keywords.
Conclusion
To conclude, a website not showing up in the results could be because of the reasons mentioned in this blog. It’s all about figuring out what’s going sideways and then taking appropriate measures to fix it.
Eventually, with the right steps taken your website will start showing, and hopefully, if well optimized, it might even reach the top spot at Google for your target keywords.