Building a new website for your business is one of the first steps you can do to attract customers. However, simply having a website isn’t enough to grow your business. You also need to make sure that it gets found by your target market.
The best way to go about this is to create high-quality content that focuses on search terms relevant to your audience, but this isn’t a guarantee either. Sometimes, your site might not be ranking due to other factors. If you find yourself wondering why this is happening to you, then you might want to look into the possible causes and what you can do to fix them.
4 Common Reasons Your Site Isn’t Ranking on Google
Writing great content and building a website might seem simple, but getting it to rank on Google is also determined by other variables, including search algorithms, your competitors, and the overall user experience of your website.
Below are some of the common reasons why your website isn’t ranking and a few tips on how to avoid and correct them.
1. A technical issue is preventing your pages from getting indexed
Some technical issues that prevent search engines from properly indexing a website’s pages or content include poor website architecture, duplicate content, insufficient or inaccurate metadata, broken links, or website security issues. With these issues, search engines may be unable to crawl and index your site’s pages effectively, leading to reduced visibility in search results.
To avoid this, make sure to conduct regular technical SEO audits of your website–ideally with the help of an expert web developer. This will help you identify and address a variety of technical issues that might be interfering with your rankings.
A few things to keep in mind is to make sure your website is properly structured. It should help users easily find information and help search engine crawlers understand the relationships between different pages. You might also need to implement proper website security measures to ensure a safe browsing experience for your visitors, so keep your HTTPS protocols up-to-date and address any issues promptly.
2. You have received a penalty from Google
A Google Penalty can be a manual or algorithmic action imposed by Google that lowers a website’s rankings. A manually imposed penalty is decided when a human reviewer finds that a website doesn’t comply with Google Search Essentials.
Meanwhile, algorithmic penalties are mostly based on two Google algorithm updates: Panda and Penguin. These penalties can result from having suspicious links on your website, using keyword stuffing, or publishing content that’s identified by Google as spam.
To avoid these penalties, refrain from paying for backlinks and disavow any bad links through Google Search Console. You should also avoid the “content mill” mentality and only publish content that’s genuinely helpful to your audience.
If you find yourself penalised by Google, there are a few things you can do to recover. You can use Google Analytics to investigate any drops in traffic to see if they’re related to recent Google algorithm updates or policy changes. You can also conduct a content audit and start improving your content from there.
After you’ve corrected the problem, the penalty should go away on its own. You may also submit a Reconsideration Request via Google Webmaster Tools to potentially speed up the process.
3. Your website has poor Core Web Vitals scores
Core Web Vitals (CWV) refer to a set of three website performance metrics that measure how users experience your website. These scores are used as a ranking factor by Google. If your website gets low scores, it will get less organic visibility. The three Core Web Vitals include:
- Largest Contentful Paint measures how quickly content appears on the page.
- First Input Delay measures whether content moves around on the page after rendering.
- Cumulative Layout Shift measures how quickly the page responds to user interactions.
CWV evaluations can fail for several reasons, such as slow server response times, large file sizes, unoptimised graphics, too much JavaScript, and improper coding techniques. All of these can lead to lower search engine rankings and a poor user experience.
Ideally, your website should provide a “Good” experience on your website across all three CWV metrics. You can use free CWV testing tools, such as Google PageSpeed Insights and Google Search Console, to measure how your website is performing and improve these metrics.
A few tips for improving your Core Web Vital scores include reducing your reliance on JavaScript and optimising any essential code. You should also optimise your videos, animations, and images as they are typically large files that affect how your content loads. Make sure to specify proper dimensions and embed these correctly, which will help users’ browsers render these elements correctly, improving their browsing experience.
4. Installed themes and plugins are interfering with your rankings
It’s common for website owners to install plugins and themes to extend the features and functionality of their websites. However, as valuable as they are, they can also break your website, making it hard for customers to navigate your site and for Google to rank it.
Installing too many plugins on a website can slow its response time and hinder overall performance. Poorly coded themes and plugins can also cause compatibility issues that make your website load slowly or incorrectly, making it more prone to errors and crashes that will prevent it from earning rankings. Keep in mind that these problems can occur after an update or a new installation, so make sure to test changes on a staging site before going live.
When choosing your themes and plugins, you can assess their reliability by checking whether they’re regularly updated and reading reviews from other users. This means it’s important to be highly selective about what you install. If you find any plugins that interfere with your rankings, replace them with working alternatives or hire a web developer to create new ones that work for your needs.
Have Your Site Ranking and Seen by Your Customers
Based on our experience, these four issues are the most common causes of a website not ranking on search engines. It’s a good idea to start looking at these factors first but keep in mind that there are other possible reasons.
If you’re still having problems seeing your site rank in search engines, let us help. With our SEO services, we provide a customised solution that gets your website to the top of Google search results and puts you ahead of the competition. Contact us today and let’s talk about optimising your website for success.