Is Your Website Not Ranking In Google?

Here’s How To Get Your Website To Properly Show Up In Google

Appearing in search results is fundamental to your website’s success. Finding out that your webpages are nowhere to be seen can be disheartening, and it also affects your online business potential. So why are your webpages not showing in Google? Let’s first understand how a search engine works.

How Google’s Search Engine Works

1. Crawling. The process of Google finding and navigating your website. Google sends out “crawlers” to find updated content or new webpages to enrich its search results. This process starts by fetching webpages and following links. 
2. Indexing. The process of Google adding your website’s content to its database. When crawling, Google follows rules and directives set out by webmasters and adds content to its database accordingly.
3. Ranking. The process of Google understanding the topical relevance of your webpages. When a user performs a search, Google analyzes its database for the most relevant content. It then best ranks its results, expecting to answer the query searched.

A Deeper Dive Into How Google Search Works.

Once you understand the process of a Google search, you can dive deeper into some of the issues that affect a website’s (or webpage’s) search presence.

Step 1: Is Google Able To Properly Crawl Your Website?

Your sitemap doesn’t include all important URLs. A sitemap contains a list of URLs important to your website. It helps search engines easily understand and locate webpages you want crawled. 

You should make sure:

1. Your website has a sitemap.
2. It contains all URLs you want to rank.
3. You’ve uploaded your sitemap to Google Search Console successfully.

You haven’t optimized your robots.txt file. A robots.txt file tells Google which URLs the crawler can and cannot access or index on your website.

You should make sure:

1. Your website has a robots.txt file and it’s successfully uploaded to Google Search Console.
2. Directives in the robots.txt file are correct and not excluding (or including) URLs, files or content that you want (or don’t want) shown in search results.

You aren’t making use of internal links. Internal linking creates a navigational journey for search engines (and users). It helps point them to important pages and valuable content, while connecting a website’s taxonomy experience.

You should make sure:

1. Your website does not have any orphaned URLs.
2. Anchor text describes the page it is linking to.
3. Internal links point to relevant pages that support or add context to the referring page.

You are improperly using nofollow tags. A nofollow tag tells Google to ignore the link and not navigate to the webpage.
*Note, sometimes Google will still follow a link with a nofollow tag on it.

Your website contains crawl errors. A crawl error occurs when Google tries to crawl a page on your website but fails to. These errors disrupt crawling and negatively impact website performance. 

You should:

1. Make sure Google Search Console doesn’t show any page crawl errors.
2. Identify any crawl errors that would benefit from having a 301 redirect added to point to a similar or relevant page.

Step 2: Is Google Able To Successfully Index Your Website?

Your website is new. It’s not uncommon for a new website to appear unindexed. Google needs time to crawl and assess it.

You are using noindex tags. Noindex tags tell Google not to include a page in its search results. 

You should make sure:

1. Important webpages do not have noindex tags added to them.
2. You’re not using noindex tags to handle duplicate content.

Your content is thin. Google will sometimes ignore URLs with little or next to no content on them.

You should make sure:

1. You have enough contextual content on your page.
2. The content is unique and useful.

Step 3: Is Google Properly Ranking Your Website URLs?

You need to optimize your on-page elements. Ensuring that your website’s core on-page attributes are SEO optimized signals to Google what your page is about. By enhancing a page’s topical relevance, you increase your chances of ranking in Google search results for related queries.

You should make sure:

1. Pages clearly identify and target topics or keywords.
2. You have optimized your core metadata.
3. You properly use heading tags to introduce content.
4. Your content is contextual and useful to users. 

Your website was penalized by Google. Google has a set of specific guidelines for websites. Websites that do not meet the criteria (whether on purpose or not) will most often be penalized. Such violations can temporarily remove a website from search results, impacting Organic traffic greatly. 

You should make sure:

1. You don’t have any manual actions/algorithmic actions in Google Search Console.
2. (If once penalized) you have taken the proper steps to correct the violation, and ensure that you’ve informed Google on the updates made.

Your website loads slowly. A website that takes too long to load creates a poor user experience. Google wants users to find the answer to a search query as fast as possible. A slow website will most often experience ranking drops as a result.

You should make sure:

1. Your website passes both mobile and desktop page speed tests.
2. You’ve optimized your website for Google’s Core Web Vitals.

You haven’t placed proper canonical tags. Canonical tags signal to Google which URL represents the master version of a page (or contents). A canonical tag helps avoid website duplication issues caused by identical (or very similar) content appearing on multiple URLs.

You should make sure:

1. Canonical tags are present.
2. URLs containing identical (or very similar) content use canonical tags pointing to the master version. *The master version being the URL that you want ranking in Google for a desired topic.

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The first step toward achieving a healthy website is to address current website issues. Since SEO is a marathon, not a sprint, ongoing monitoring & maintenance will help future-proof your online search performance. Stay competitive in Google. Get the results you need. Choose MetaCrawl today.