Searching for your target keywords and wondering why your website is nowhere to be seen in the search results?
There are several reasons that your site may not be appearing. These can include crawling and indexing errors, poor keyword targeting or content that doesn’t match what the user is looking for.
We’ve detailed a few common reasons your website may not be ranking and what you can do to enhance its visibility.
Crawling and indexing issues
To put it simply, Google can’t rank a page that it can’t find.
Before your website can rank in search results, Google needs to be able to crawl and index its pages.
Google’s bots discover and scan the pages on your website and stores them in a database so that they can be shown in search results for relevant search queries.
If Google’s crawl bots are struggling to find the pages on your website, those pages are unlikely to appear in the search results.
Search engines have limited resources to crawl and index a website. The easier your website is to navigate, the more likely it is that your key pages will be crawled and indexed properly.
Common crawling and indexing errors can include:
• “noindex” tags being added to a page incorrectly
• Missing or outdated XML sitemap
• Orphan pages with no internal links leading to them
To identify and fix these issues, head to Google Search Console. This will show you which pages have been indexed, and which have been excluded from Google’s index.
The Pages report in Google Search Console can help you spot which pages have been “excluded by noindex tag” or “blocked by robots.txt”.
Manually review these to ensure that important pages are not being prevented from appearing in the search results by mistake.
Weak authority and backlinks
If your competitors have more high-quality backlinks pointing to their site from reputable websites, they may be more likely to outrank you in the search results.
Google sees backlinks from one site to another as a signal of trust and authority. When another website links to your content, it’s like a recommendation. They find value in your content, so Google should too.
Links carry what is known in the industry as “link juice” or “link equity”. This is essentially authority passed from one web page to another.
The stronger and more relevant the linking website is, the more value that link can pass to your site. A backlink from an established website will usually carry more SEO (search engine optimisation) value than a link from a low-quality or unrelated site.
To fix weak authority, look at gaining backlinks from relevant and reputable websites. These could include suppliers you may have worked with previously, local business directories or partner websites.
Creating useful content can help build backlinks to your site naturally. Detailed guides or expert advice can provide resources that other websites may want to reference and link to in their own content.
The aim of backlinks is to build a diverse backlink profile from trusted and relevant websites. Quality is more important than quantity.
Keyword targeting issues
Your website may not be ranking because you are targeting the wrong keywords.
Some keywords are simply too competitive, especially if your website has a lower domain authority than the websites that are already ranking on page one.
For example, you’d struggle to outrank Apple for the term “iPhone” because Apple has an established brand authority, backlink profile and search relevance.
If you’re a smaller or newer business, trying to rank for broader keywords straight away can be difficult.
Effective keyword targeting means choosing search terms that are relevant, realistic and closely aligned with not only the products or services you offer, but how your audience would search for them.
Instead of only targeting broad, highly competitive keywords, look for more specific search terms with clear intent. These are longer-tail keywords. They often have lower competition and can bring in more qualified traffic.
For example, instead of targeting “SEO”, you could target “local SEO service for small businesses”.
These longer-tail keywords may have fewer searches each month, but they are often much easier to rank for. They can also attract better-quality traffic because the searcher knows more clearly what they are looking for.
To review your keyword targeting, check the keywords you’re currently focused on and consider whether they’re too broad. Could you target a more specific, longer-tail variation instead? Are the websites ranking for them much stronger than yours?
If you’re unsure, you can use a tool such as Alsoasked.com to find the questions that people also ask about a particular keyword/phrase. This may provide some alternative keyword suggestions.
Mismatched searcher intent
Creating content around your focus keywords is important, but if the content you’re publishing doesn’t match the intent of the searcher, it’s going to struggle to rank.
Your content needs to match the intent of the searcher. This is what Google believes a user expects to see when they search a particular keyword.
For example, if you search for “SEO Chester”, you’ll see that the first page of results shows location-specific service pages from SEO agencies in Chester.
If you were to publish a blog targeting “SEO Chester”, you may struggle to rank, as this doesn’t match the type of result the user would expect to find.
To fix this, do a manual search of your target keywords and review the pages that are already ranking on page one.
Look at the type of content Google is showing. Are they showing product pages? Service pages? Blog posts? This helps you understand the searcher intent for that term.
Compare these to the pages on your site that you want to rank for these terms. Does the content type match? Is the content too thin? Does it answer the query properly?
If your page does not align with what is already ranking, you may need to make adjustments.
Need help enhancing the visibility of your site in Google’s search results? Get in touch with the team at Engage Web today.
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