7 Reasons You’re Not Ranking on Google

After spending time and resources to build a beautiful website, the worst thing you can experience is that it does not rank on Google. All of the wasted hours for nothing. No traffic, no conversions, no revenue. This is a common problem for many business startups, especially if you have never worked on a website.

Luckily, today we want to discuss the seven reasons you’re not ranking on Google. It is time to fix all of the potential problems and finally get some well-deserved website traffic.

1. Remember – it takes time

Maybe you did everything right when building the website and just have to wait a bit. The change does not happen overnight. It takes some time for people to discover your website and to start reaching out.

To test this, you can ask your friends and family to do a couple of keyword searches about your business. See if your website comes up. This is an excellent way to determine whether the SEO is good. If they find your website, you have nothing to worry about. But, if they cannot find it even after searching for your top keywords, this is where you need to figure out what is happening.

2. Do an SEO audit

Besides regular keywords, there are many SEO elements to think about:

• proper HTML tags;
• image attributes;
• metadata;
• title tags.

It is crucial to make sure everything is in place. It would be a good idea to get to know your SEO tools better and use them to find potential issues.

Furthermore, make sure that your content is optimized. Content is the number 1 element on your website.

3. Your website is not optimized for mobile devices

The first thing that Google looks at when crawling a website is whether it is optimized for mobile devices or not. This is a huge deal because everyone uses mobile today. If your website supports a desktop-only version, you will not rank well.

With that in mind, optimizing your website for mobile is the best way to boost your Google position.

4. Are you using GoogleMyBusiness?

GoogleMyBusiness is not a part of your website, but it is an essential service that all businesses need. It helps local customers to find your business more easily. GMB is one of the most critical elements of local SEO.

It only takes a couple of minutes to set up your profile. GoogleMyBusiness tells people your contact information, address, price range, and location on the map and even displays reviews from other customers.

5. What is your link strategy?

Another important strategy that can significantly boost your rating and get Google to index your website is using internal and external links. The best thing you can do for your website is to make sure it’s visible; that is where the links will help you.

While internal links create a network of your pages so the users can easily navigate the website, external links bring a lot of visibility and traffic. They also build credibility for your website.

Google often looks at the number of mentions of your website on other websites. The more external links from verified sources lead to your website, the better.

6. Check website speed

The attention span of an average user is very short; it lasts approximately 8 seconds before they lose interest. By the 8-second rule, that is how much time you have to impress your visitors. That means your website must load much faster.

Slow loading speed is one of the most common reasons for poor Google rating. Find a way to boost website loading speed, and you can fix that problem.

You can do this in a couple of different ways. First, optimize your images. It is crucial to keep the quality high but reduce the size. Second, host images on a CDN server. That will help with the loading time and free up space on your website. Third, you should allow browser caching. This strategy enables the browser to create a version of your website and keep it stored in the cache memory. Whenever someone searches for your website, the cache will immediately load a copy of your website and show it to the visitor until the actual website is fully loaded. It is an excellent trick to speed up the load time.

Another thing you can do is to reduce the number of ads and plugins on your website. They might add functionality but also require a lot more time to load. Finally, optimize backend code to ensure it is written according to the latest coding standards.

7. Your website is penalized

Another thing that can affect your website’s rating is if you have a manual or algorithm penalty. Your website is either inspected by an actual person or a Googlebot.

These penalties mean there is something wrong with your website. An actual person may lift a manual penalty during the next manual review if you submit a reconsideration request. However, an algorithmic penalty requires changes to your website. It happens automatically as soon as the new algorithm is introduced.

The best way to check if you have a penalty is by using Google Analytics. Penalties can happen for many reasons, so do not panic if you get one. Correct the problem as soon as possible, and the penalty will be lifted.

7 Reasons you’re not ranking on Google made simple

And there you have it. These are the seven most common reasons you’re not ranking on Google. Keep in mind that Google changes its ranking rules often, and it is not uncommon to lose a little bit of juice occasionally. Nevertheless, staying informed about the latest changes and constantly doing website audits is essential. Your traffic will fluctuate, and that is fine. However, as soon as you see a significant drop, there might be something wrong with your website. That is when you need to do a full audit and figure out what is happening.