The Number One Reason Your Website Isn’t Ranking in Google Revealed
If you’re wondering ‘why doesn’t my website rank in Google?’, then you’re not alone. As a Brisbane digital marketing agency, this is a question that we get asked on a regular basis. Many small business owners are surprised by the amount of work that goes into getting a website to the top pages of Google.
It is not enough to just build a really attractive and user-friendly website. You need to market the website. And the form of marketing that helps a website get to the top of Google is called ‘SEO’, or ‘search engine optimisation’. SEO services are basically the act of optimising – or ‘tweaking’ – your website on an on-going basis so that it performs better in Google.
If you have a website that is a few years old and have not been engaging an SEO agency or been performing SEO on your website yourself, then that is likely why your website is not ranking in Google. Check out our beginners guide to understanding SEO to get your head around how Google’s algorithm works, and what types of activities we’re referring to when we say ‘optimising’.
The Top Reason Your Website Isn’t Ranking In Google
Content.
Content is the number one culprit for a website not ranking well in Google.
- Not enough content relevant to your search terms
- Low-quality content that doesn’t answer the user’s questions
- Fluffy content or content that uses too much jargon or technical language
- Outdated content that hasn’t been updated in a few years
It all comes down to the quality, quantity, relevancy, and recency of your website’s content.
- How much content do you have that is relevant to your target keywords?
- How much content do your competitors have? Because if they have created a comprehensive body of content and you only have 5 pages on your website, then you will not outrank them.
- How often are you updating your content?
- How often are you adding new content?
All of these questions contribute towards how well your website performs in Google.
If you don’t have any content on your website that is relevant to the search term, then you will not rank for that search term. If your website does not use the search phrase you are trying to rank for at least once in your entire website, you will not rank for that search phrase.
So that is step one if your website doesn’t rank in Google. Add more content.
The second step? Add even more content.
Why does content help your Google ranking?
There are three reasons for adding more content to your website. The first one is that more content (that is relevant to your products, services and industry) means more opportunities to include key search terms and phrases on your website.
The second reason is that Google looks at both quality and quantity. If you are targeting the search term ‘Auckland Earthmovers’ and you have one paragraph on your ‘About Us’ page that talks about being Auckland Earthmovers, but your competition has a whole page of content dedicated to this topic – how do you expect to outrank them?
Competitive search terms – terms that a lot of businesses are vying to rank #1 for – require more than a single paragraph of text. A lot more.
The third reason is that Google loves new, fresh content. If Google looks at your website and sees that the last time you made any significant updates was over two years ago, and then it looks at your competition and sees that they’re adding new, fresh content to their website on a weekly basis – who do you think they will prioritise in the rankings?
*Hint* It’s not your stale 2-year old content.
Alright, so what have we learnt so far?
- If you want to rank for a search term, you need to talk about that search term at least once on your website.
- If you really really want to rank for a search term, you should probably consider writing a full page of content on that topic, and maybe a couple of spin-off blog articles.
- If you want to outrank your competition in Google, the best place to start is by looking at their content on a particular topic and writing something bigger and better for your own website.
- Google prefers websites that are updated on a regular basis. It doesn’t mean that old content doesn’t rank, it just means that updating your website and adding fresh content regularly can help your entire site perform better as a whole. Keeping your old content updated by freshening it up every few months can also benefit your rankings.
What else can I do to make my site rank better in Google?
While a lack of strong content is probably the main reason your website isn’t ranking in Google, there are a few other quick and easy things you can do to your site to help improve its performance in Google.
Firstly, two of the best things you can do from a technical SEO point of view are to make sure that your site is mobile responsive and that it has a current SSL certificate installed.
Secondly, a great easy and reasonably fast way to start ranking for location-based search terms is to create a Google Business Profile. Update it regularly, and make sure you clearly list all of your individual services. Also add some images.
Google Business Profils can be used for both bricks-and-mortar business locations as well as service-based businesses. You can opt to omit your physical address and instead insert a ‘service area’ listing all of the suburbs / areas that your business services.
Having an up to date Google Business Profile will start driving traffic to your website faster than most other SEO activities will and will be a significant contributor to your local SEO efforts.
The third thing that you can do for your website to help improve its ranking in Google is to check your metadata. Each page should have a clear, unique page title and page description that include some keywords. The title should include the core keyword that they page is targeting. The page description should be a short one-sentence summary of what the content page is about, ideally also including the keyword.
Website Still Not Ranking in Google?
If you have done all of the above and you’re still not ranking in Google, my first question would be to ask ‘how long ago did you complete this work?’
If your answer is ‘ten minutes ago’ then I would tell you to go make yourself a cup of tea and come back in a few weeks. Google takes *a while* to change your rankings in Google. The changes will be slow and incremental. I’d recommend using some tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Semrush to track your keywords, organic traffic levels and other relevant metrics.
The changes will be slow, but they should kick in after 2-6 weeks if you are posting consistently and have done everything else listed above.
If you have built out the content pages of your website and have been adding fresh content in the form of blogs or news articles to your website for 6+ weeks and are still not seeing any improvement, then there might be something wrong.
Your site might be blacklisted or attacked by malware – I’d recommend running your site through Securi to see what results come back.
If the results come back clear then it might be time to contact a Brisbane SEO company for some advice. There are a number of different reasons you might not be ranking, but if you’ve ticked ‘lack of relevant content’ off the list, then chances are it is going to be something more technical and require the assistance of a pro to look at.
Can You Help My Website Rank in Google?
Yes we can!
BeKonstructive Marketing provide both Brisbane SEO services and copywriting services. This means that we can help build out the pages of your website with SEO copywriting to target specific keywords. We can also help fix any of the bugs and errors that might be preventing your site from performing well.
We can install Google Analytics and other tracking tools to monitor your performance. We can deep dive into your metadata and write catchy-yet-optimised page titles and descriptions to encourage higher click-through rates. And we can provide monthly services to ensure that new, fresh content is being loaded to your site that is bigger and better than anything any of your competitors are doing.
Want a quote? Get in touch with us or book a free SEO discovery session to get started.
