5 Reasons Your WebSite Is Not Ranking

As a business owner, it’s not only important for you to have a website, but to have it ranking high on Google as well (preferably on the first page). If you’re wondering why, then consider this.

Studies show that 90% of people never go beyond the first page of Google’s search results, and the first 10 positions account for 94% of all clicks. Suffice to say that a first page ranking on Google can bring in lots of visitors and potential sales.

But there are a number of obstacles that can get in the way of your website earning that valuable high ranking. As a digital marketing consultant, I’ve seen my fair share of SEO, website design, and digital marketing issues that can greatly affect ranking – and the opportunities it brings.

If you’re wondering why your site is not ranking well on Google, then the following information is precisely what you need to know.

Why Your Site Might Not Be Ranking

1. 1. It’s a new website.

If you aren’t too familiar with the digital world, it can be easy to expect that your brand new website will be at the top of every search engine as soon as you launch. But, unfortunately, that’s not the way things work.

There is plenty of work that needs to get done including back-end SEO, link building, content building, and more. All of this takes time to implement and then Google might recognize your site and start moving you up the ranking.

Again, this all takes time and it can be anywhere from a few months to a year before you see some noticeable results.

1. 1. Digital competition can be fierce.

As mentioned before, there’s plenty of back-end work that goes into developing your website and building up your reputation. One of those important factors is going to be your targeted keywords. These are the words you want your business’s website to be known for (e.g. dentist, doctor, restaurant, jewelry, etc.); essentially the product or services that you offer.

Depending on the level of competition on your keyword, getting your ranking up is going to require some SEO expertise, plenty of hard work, and time. Don’t expect to catch up to your competitors in only a few short months. If they are well recognized, it’s going to be a challenge to overcome them.

That’s why when you are developing your SEO strategy, you need to do plenty of research on your targeted keywords to get a solid understanding of where you stand and what you will need to do. Tools like Moz can help you get a better view of the road ahead.

1. 1. Your content just isn’t up to par.

The content on your website plays a major role in Google’s indexing process and ranking standards. Content also affects your SEO strategy, the value of your site to visitors, and backlinking validation (when another site shares your content).

It’s important to recognize that content issues is a multi-faceted problem.

For starters, you need to have high-quality content on your website. Content comes in many different shapes and forms including images, video, and text. If you don’t have much on your site, then Google isn’t going to be able to rank you at all, but having a bunch of nonsensical, keyword stuffed pages isn’t going to help either. Quality is key here, and content should:

1. 1. • Be helpful to your audience
      • Be written in a way that includes targeted keywords while meeting customer needs
      • Be shareable
      • Feature images
      • Be shared on your social profiles

The next thing to consider when it comes to your content is optimization. Page headings, image file names, alt-text, internal and external links, markups, URL structures, and overall design all need to be factored in. Perfecting these aspects of your content will definitely help with ranking.

1. 1. You are under negative SEO attack!

While this might be a little more rare, it’s important to accept that the world wide web can be a dangerous place with plenty of competitors and outright malicious hackers willing to sabotage all your hard work by using negative SEO tactics against you.

There might not be any rhyme or reason to the attack on your website. It’s just something that occasionally occurs (but Google will try to help you out…or at least notify you).

1. 1. You p!$$&d Google off.

Ok…so Google doesn’t actually get mad per se, but there are some behaviors that can lower your ranking and get you penalized. A few of the more noticeable website mistakes and issues that can hurt your ranking include:

1. • A bad domain history, constantly being penalized, or using black hat SEO tactics can quickly put you in the doghouse with Google. Don’t risk it. Google has gotten pretty smart about these behaviors.
   • Page speed is going to become a major ranking factor in July 2018. Make sure that your site is up to par.
   • Keyword stuffed pages, valueless content, spammy links, and tricky redirects will ultimately work against you in the long run.
   • You’re focused only on one aspect of digital marketing; Google is getting better at taking into account your business’s entire online profile. And really it just makes sense. When your social media profiles and YouTube videos are driving visitors back to your site who engage with your content, then you’ll build a bigger community, and Google will take note of that.
   • You accidently blocked Google from crawling your website.Yes, this can really happen and can be fixed in your robots.txt file.

Moving Up Google Rankings: Never Give Up

Does it seem like there’s a lot to do to get your website where you want it to be? If it does, then you are finally starting to see the big picture.

Digital marketing is a lot more than just a pretty website. There’s plenty that goes into making your business’s site shine and get all the attention that it deserves.

But don’t worry. The sooner you get started, the sooner you can start reaping the benefits of a meaningful digital marketing strategy.

And if you need a little bit of help getting to that top ranking spot on Google search, then contact me today at 956-566-4998. I have the experience and technical know-how to get your website ranked and visitors converted into sales.