Why Your Site isn't Showing in Search Results
Are you tired of your website not showing up on Google?
Have you poured your heart and soul into building your business, only to find that when people search for you online, your site is nowhere to be found?
Maybe you’ve scoured the web looking for answers only to be overwhelmed by complicated solutions that refer to robot files, index tags, and penalties. The truth is, it is highly unlikely that those any of those things are actually your problem.
The most likely scenario is that you simply don’t understand why sites rank where they do on search engines so you haven’t been able to apply a sound strategy to be discovered.
In this blog post, we will address the most common reasons why businesses are not able to get their websites to show up in search results.
What Search Results Are Based On
First of all, when it comes to search results, relevance is key. There are numerous factors that search engine algorithms take into consideration, with over 200 in total.
When business owners are trying to appear online to attract local customers, there are between 5-10 factors where they are probably falling short.
Let’s explore the main reasons why your site isn’t showing up in search results so you can take to improve your online visibility. We will list them in order of likelihood based on our experience working helping businesses with this sort of thing.
1. Not Enough Information On Your Website
The most common reason why many businesses struggle to get their websites to show up in search engine results is because they simply don’t have enough content. It’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack when the haystack is empty. Search engines need information about your business in order to understand what you do and where to place you in search rankings.
Imagine you’re a search engine trying to decide which websites to show for a specific search query. You’re more likely to choose websites that have a substantial amount of content because they are more likely to provide valuable information to users. Websites with only a few pages and minimal text give search engines little to work with, making it difficult for them to accurately assess the relevance and value of the site.
You Have To Put Your Entire Business Online
It’s not enough for your website to only have 500 words on it. As an expert in your field, your knowledge and expertise should extend beyond a single page or a few hundred words. If you have a quality product or service to offer, it’s important to provide sufficient content that communicates your value to potential customers.
If you run a roofing company, you need to have dedicated pages for each service you offer, such as installation, repair, and gutter cleaning. By providing detailed information on each page, search engines and potential customers will have a better understanding of why they should choose you or rank you over competitors.
2. You Are Being Ignored Because You Are Keyword Stuffing
Search engines don’t like when you excessively and unnaturally use keywords in your website content in an attempt to manipulate them. As stated previously, search engines place you based on relevance. If you are spamming keywords, search engines don’t trust you as a valuable source of information. In other words, because you were trying to cheat, they don’t see you as relevant.
Search engines like Google and Bing have sophisticated algorithms that detect keyword stuffing and other manipulative tactics to provide users with the most relevant and high-quality search results based on their algorithm. Trying to outsmart them is not a good way to get your business placed at the top.
3. Your Website Is Too New
Search engines take time to crawl and index new websites, so if your site is recently launched, it may not have been picked up by search engines yet.
When you create a new website, it’s important to be patient and give search engines time to discover and rank your site. This process can take up to six months depending upon how much content you have or if you have submitted your website manually to the search engines.
Speed Up The Process
If you want to speed up the process, you can submit your site through tools like Google Search Console. This will alert them to the existence of your site and prompt them to crawl it. You can also create a sitemap and submit it to search engines. A sitemap is a file that lists all the pages on your site and helps search engines understand its structure.
Additionally, promoting your website through social media and other online channels can help search engines discover your site faster.
4. Your Website Has Duplicated Content
Duplicate pages refer to two or more pages on your website that have identical or very similar content. It could be unintentional, but the most likely scenario is it was done intentionally to save time when building out your website to help target different keywords.
Duplicating pages is a great technique that saves time, but only if you remember to change the content on the page you’re copying. Ensure that the text, images, and overall feel of the page is unique. Otherwise, you are putting yourself at risk of confusing search engines.
5. You Were Penalized For Buying Links
While it may be tempting to buy cheap backlinks on websites like Fiverr to boost your site’s rankings quickly, search engines have algorithms that detect this practice. Buying low-quality backlinks from irrelevant or spammy websites is viewed as an attempt to manipulate search rankings, which results in your site being penalized or even completely removed from search results.
If you want to build backlinks, the better way to do it is by creating valuable content that others will naturally want to link to. If you think that is too much work, reaching out to influencers or industry experts for collaborations, or guest posting on authoritative websites is an option.
SEO Tip - Buying Links Is Against Search Engine Policies
6. Your Website Is Really Slow
The speed of your site could be the reason why it’s not showing up in search results. Search engines prioritize websites that provide a fast and seamless user experience, so if your site takes forever to load, it may be penalized and pushed down in search rankings.
There are several reasons why your site might be slow. It could be due to heavy image or video files, a poorly optimized website theme or plugin, or a slow hosting server. Whatever it is, it’s crucial to address the issue promptly so you can start ranking online.
7. You Are Manually Blocking Search Engines From Crawling Your Site
Sometimes website owners unintentionally or unknowingly block search engines from accessing their website. This could be due to a misconfiguration in your website’s robots.txt file, which tells search engine bots which pages they can and cannot crawl. If you have mistakenly blocked search engines, they won’t be able to index your site and include it in their search results.
The chances of this being the problem is slim, which is why it’s last on the list. However, it is possible that you accidentally clicked a tab that blocked crawlers from accessing your site.