You’ve put in the hard work to build your website, ensuring everything looks perfect on paper. But when it comes to search results, you find yourself endlessly scrolling past competitors, wondering, Why isn’t my website ranking?
Organically ranking within a Google Search is no mean feat. It requires high-quality content, search engine optimisation and time. But the reasons don’t stop there. There are countless factors that affect your ranking performance. It’s impossible to cover every single element, so we’ve compiled a list of 6 reasons why your website is not ranking to cover in this article.
SEO
SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is a fundamental factor in getting your page to the top of Google. The term SEO is often used as an umbrella term to cover everything related to your web page, so the technicalities can often get lost in translation.
Whether you are an expert or a novice in the online world, it’s sometimes valuable to strip things back to the basics:
- Think about your web page’s purpose
- Find your keywords
- Create engaging content targeting these keywords
Once you have mastered the very basics, you can delve deeper into the world of SEO. Think about this from a search engine’s perspective, the first thing they will look for is the basics. If you don’t build the foundations, then the rest of your structure may come tumbling down!
Content
The online boom in the importance of content has begun and shows no signs of slowing down. With the ever-growing emergence of AI, writing engaging and informative content is key to seeing your page rankings improve.
Search engines are always on the lookout for clear, concise and accurate information from reliable and trustworthy sources. If you can provide that to Google and Bing, you can expect to see your traffic, leads and revenue begin to increase.
Indexability
Visibility is arguably the most important factor. If search engines can’t find your page, then all the optimisation in the world won’t save you. Potential issues within indexability include:
- No internal or external links to your page
- Crawling blocked by Robots.txt
- Your page has a No Index tag
- Duplicate or thin content
- Technical errors and slow loading speeds
Having any of these issues may result in your web page being ignored by search engines, negatively affecting your performance. Get in touch with our in-house SEO specialists for more information.
Keywords
Having target keywords can help your organic search performance hugely. Think about what you are trying to achieve on your web page. Are you looking to sell products or drive leads? From there, look at your service and put yourself in the shoes of someone looking for this. What are you searching for? And why?
The next step is tailoring your web page to these queries. Specificity is important and helps to target those customers with high intent. Remember: 10 customers stepping into your shop is better than 100 looking through the window.
Competition
Unfortunately, the space within search results is limited, and everyone is fighting for those top spots. Reports suggest that 40% of clicks go to the first search result, 20% to the second, 10% to the third, with the remaining 30% being divided between the lower results.
Keep a keen eye on the competition, those top 3 results are not there by accident. Assess your competitor’s sites: review the keywords, the content and the CTAs. The answers are out there, you just need to look in the right place.
Time
Organic SEO can take time and is an ongoing process. Even if you achieve that number 1 search result, stopping or reducing the optimisations will lead to your web page falling down the pecking order.
The key to getting your page to the top of Google is consistency. SEO is an investment that pays its dividends over time.
If you are looking to improve your online visibility and get your website to the top of Google, our team of marketing specialists are here to help. Get in touch and book in a free introductory chat to discuss the goals for your business.
