We’ve all done it.  You launch a new website and expect visitors to flock to your website and immediately buy your product or service.  You can’t wait to get it live, and if you hire a designer you might even put some pressure on him (or her) to get your site live as soon as possible.  It gets launched, but there’s a problem; you’re not getting any traffic!    You frantically open up Google and type in your business name or some of the product or services you offer, and your site is no where to be found.  You’re not alone.

In fact, it’s quite common for companies to not see themselves on Google for many different reasons. Some have not put in the proper time and effort to get the site there, some are in a large, competitive market that they need to break into, and some just don’t have the proper foundation in place.

Here, I’m going to explain to you a few different reasons this may be happening to you, and some ways you can help resolve the issue to get more customers to find your website on Google.

Your Domain Name is Simply Too New

That’s right, it is possible that your newly registered domain name is just too new for Google to even know it exists.  Google crawls your website and indexes it based off of what it thinks your site is about and how useful it determines your site is for people around the web.  You can register your domain in Google’s Search Console, and do a few other things to help expedite this process, but if your site is using a brand new domain, you may have a waiting period that you can’t avoid.

Your Website Does Not Have Valuable Content

As mentioned above, Google routinely scans every website on the web.  It’s scanning for a plethora of different things; trying to determine what the sites are about, what they are trying to do, if the site is relevant to just a particular area or is useful nationwide or worldwide, if it’s mobile compatible, and much, much more.  One of the most important things it’s looking for is the site’s purpose.  If the site does not have a clear purpose, or theme, Google isn’t quite sure where to rank it.  It’s good practice to make sure you’re constantly updating your website with relevant content to the field you are in.  If you are in the healthcare niche but posting articles about the latest NASCAR race, your website will take a bit of a hit.  The main thing to keep in mind when you are trying to rank for particular keywords in Google, is provide value to your visitors.  Inform your visitors, form some sort of trust or bond between them and you, which will help Google understand better how to rank your site as well as drive potential sales or business.

Your Website has Bad Pages (404 errors, Mobile Incompatibility, etc…)

One of the worst things that you can do is have a site that displays errors when on the page, or even worse, doesn’t display a page at all.  You must not have pages or links that end in errors or 404 pages.  If you routinely publish content to your site or move things around often, we understand that sometimes mistakes happen.  You can avoid such errors by performing what’s known as a “301 redirect” which can direct that link and others to specific pages (i.e. your homepage or contact page) so that Google doesn’t view your site as an error.

Google also punishes pages for not being mobile friendly since over 60% of web traffic is done on mobile phones.  You can fix this by making a mobile version of the website, or you can re-style your current website and add special wrappers that stop users from having to pinch and zoom their way around your website.

This last one should be pretty obvious, but it’s worth noting.  Your website or web server should not be infected with malware or viruses.  If Google sees anything of the sort, you domain will be blacklisted from Google’s search engine and you will have to either make a new domain or try really, really hard to get your rankings back.  You will know if your site is compromised if you notice things like odd text on your pages, text being changed, pop-ups or ads that you didn’t create or add to the page, if the domain redirects to another website altogether, and other things of this nature.  A lot of cheap hosting websites like GoDaddy, WordPress hosting, and more are more susceptible to being hacked due to the fact that your site is shared on the same server as 80+ other websites that you may have no idea about.  To fix these kind of problems, it’s recommended that you contact your hosting provider and have them take care of the issue, or get your own dedicated server to host your website on.  It’s not much more in cost to have your own server, and it’s worth every penny.

Your Website is Not Optimized for Search Engines

There are full companies that just specialize in one thing: search engine optimization.  That’s because there’s a lot that go into it.  An SEO pro will sit down with you to narrow down your keywords to simple, but useful keywords that help you stand out and get found on search engines.  A lot of research is then put in to see what keywords competitors and other people in your field are using and to see if they missed any sort of opportunities that can be capitalized on.  Then on-page and off-page information are tweaked to maximize results.

If you created your website yourself, or paid for a web designer that was very cheap (under $1000), it’s very likely that your site is not optimized.  Optimization and web design takes a lot of practice to get right, and the field is always changing.  If you believe that you can go to a website builder and make your own website that will perform without any training, you are dead wrong.  I’m sorry, but if you are not a web designer, an SEO specialist, an internet marketer or online consultant, you WILL do it wrong.  That is why these industries still exist.  If you could replace our field with a builder, we would have been gone for a long time now!  🙂

How Do I Figure Out What My Problem Is?

The fact is, there’s so many different factors that it’s nearly impossible to list them all out in one article.  You may be wondering, “How do I start?  How do I get my website ranking in Google?”

Your first step should be checking for all the things mentioned above.  At the current moment, the things mentioned above are some of the most important factors that Google uses.  But since Google constantly updates their search algorithm, they can add, change, or remove criteria at any given time.  If you see that your site has a problem listed above, try doing what we suggested for that particular problem.

If you’ve made the necessary improvements to your site and still don’t see any progress, you may want to get an SEO Audit from a professional to see what you’re site’s problem is.  Our company offers free SEO Audits to any company who contacts us.  All you need to do is go to the top of this page and click on the button that says “Get a Free Website Audit”  Like I said, this is 100% free knowledge that we’re going to give you, and how you choose to take care of it is entirely up to you.  If you need our help making the changes or updates, our experts will be glad to help you!

We’ll make sure to bring you more SEO articles soon!

Posted in Online Strategy, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)