Reasons why your website is not showing on Google search

If you invest a tremendous effort into building a quality website, it's disappointing if there is no sign of it on Google. At least, not on the first couple of result pages. Despite how unpleasant this might be, this is quite a common situation today. Generally speaking, all these websites are missing potentially valuable traffic. But it can be particularly devastating if it's a business website because it directly affects the profit. There are numerous reasons why your website is not showing on Google search, and you'll have to understand them before finding the right solution.

Why your website is not showing on Google search

Google remains one of the major places people use when searching for content. It is not only textual content but also for a variety of products and services, everything from simple tutorials and guides to product shops and reviews. If you are a website owner, it's in your interest your website appears on search engine result pages. But, sometimes, it just doesn't happen. Whether for technical reasons or bad implementation of SEO, the situation is not uncommon. However, you will have to identify the issues and fix them quickly.
To help you with it, here are some common reasons why websites might not appear on Google:

• You need to improve your overall SEO

• Your website has low authority

• Lacking high-quality backlinks

• You are using the wrong keywords

• Your website is new

• Blocking search engines

• Your website has been penalized

• Offers bad user experience

Improve your overall SEO

First and foremost, your website needs to be optimized for search engines. If you are not investing enough effort in your SEO, it's a good moment to consider some improvements. Even if you have an excellent website, it will never rank well on search results without good SEO. It might be present in results, but not on the first couple of pages. And if it's a business website, it can seriously affect your success. One of the reasons is that people will have a hard time finding you if they find you at all. Without a good SEO strategy, you miss valuable traffic, not to mention your revenues will be below any expectations.

To optimize your website for Google, consider:

• Improving overall website performance, especially for mobile devices

• Create quality content that will stand out

• Carefully optimize your metadata

• Compete for relevant terms and use focus on keywords with low competition

• Regularly audit your website

• And more.

If you are having a hard time covering all these aspects on your own, consider finding the proper help. There are many professional SEO experts whose job is to optimize websites and improve their visibility.

Your website has low authority

Google uses links to measure the PageRank of your website. The way links work is that they pass a specific value from other authoritative websites to your website. Once, the PageRank information was available, but not anymore. Fortunately, you can use the third-party system from Moz to measure your website domain authority. Even if it's not the same as PageRank, it will intuitively help you measure your approximate authority. For example, if a website has high domain authority, chances are its PageRank is also high. That's why domain authority is something you have to work on if you want to improve your chance of appearing in top results. For this reason, you should focus on building more quality backlinks. And also to work on your internal linking structure.

Lacking high-quality backlinks

Speaking of links, if you don't have enough quality backlinks, it may hinder your visibility. In essence, Google uses the number of backlinks as a sort of proof of your pages' credibility. Backlinks from other websites show that you have valuable and relevant content to offer. Being one of Google's latest focuses, this relevance is one of the primary conditions to win the top position in search results.
However, try not to confuse quantity with quality here. One quality backlink from authoritative websites, like Wikipedia or an industry-leading website, is worth more than dozens from low-quality websites. That's why you should always check if you have backlinks from suspicious and irrelevant places. Ultimately, Google can even issue a penalty to your website if they suspect you are spamming links.

You are using the wrong keywords

This doesn't mean you are literally using the wrong keywords. It means you are trying to compete for keywords everyone else is using. Considering that digital marketing is a highly-competitive playground, you should carefully take your picks. Basically, you have little to no chance to compete with large brands that occupy broader terms. They are too long in the industry, probably holding a "monopoly" on specific terms. Not that it's not possible, but it requires considerable effort and an incredible amount of time. However, there are other ways to boost your website visibility for specific keywords.

First, you can focus on long-tail keywords which cover broader terms. They are not so competitive, and you can easily combine them. Also, they are more likely to cover the "search intent" because of their specificity.
Second, you can place your efforts on finding less competitive keywords. With a carefully planned content creation built around these keywords, you have more chance to show on results.

Finally, you can shift your focus to the local audience, especially if you have a small business website. It can be incredibly valuable to your business to rank high locally for terms that include geographical location rather than chasing global search results.

Your website is new

If you have a new website, Google might not get an opportunity to index it yet. Sometimes it can take a week to update the results, especially brand new websites. To help with this, you should register on Google Search Console, create a sitemap, and request indexing.

Blocking search engines

If you have a WordPress website, you have to disable this option in Search Engine Visibility settings manually. Also, you have to check your robots.txt file and see if you are blocking Google from crawling some pages you want to rank for.

Your website has been penalized

For numerous reasons, Google may penalize your website in three ways:

• Deindexing your website - your website is banned

• Penalizing - automatically or manually remove your pages from searches

• Sandboxing - drastically lower the traffic to your website.

This usually happens when your website is breaking the rules. For example, when spamming links or even when the website is hacked. But the good thing is that you will get notified if something like this happens. Fortunately, once you fix the issues, you can request reconsideration.

Offers bad user experience

Finally, one of the most common reasons why your website is not showing on google search is a bad user experience (UX). If your visitors do not have a good experience on your website, it can signal Google that your website is not worth ranking. For this, you need to make sure the website is loading fast, performing well, and have intuitive navigation and structure.

Seo