13 Reasons You’re NOT Ranking In Google & How To Fix It

Launching a new website is the first major step of a long journey. There are several aspects and challenges on the way but one of the most sought-after questions is about the website search engine positioning or in other words rankings against relevant queries.

Several people have got things straight on the paper, they have incredible website layout, all the right keywords, and enough blogging efforts but the results are zilch. It can be pretty frustrating and expensive, especially if you have paid marketing campaigns for highly competitive keywords.

It feels like putting in a lot of effort but with little to no payoff. But the good thing about SEO positioning is that several measurable factors can be improved. Most of the times, tweaking a few of those factors start to work and consistent development and improvement can get you back on track.

So, here is a list that covers 13 important reasons why you are not ranking on Google and how to fix it. It may not be an all-inclusive list and there could be other reasons but generally one or many of these factors are the culprits.

All of your efforts are going to pay off in the long run because SEO builds up over time and you may be reaping the benefits six months or a year down the road. After all website ranking determines whether the organic search will work for you or not. It ends up in revenues for your business.

1. Website Speed Is Slow

Web users and customers are not known to be patient people. They prefer fast loading websites over slow-loading complex website designs. They are more likely to stay on a website that loads within the first few seconds and make a purchase.

On average, sites take about 5-7 seconds to load on mobile but a user decides of staying or leaving in the first 3 seconds. You need to remove this discrepancy from your website to rank well. To check and fix the speed of your website, you can use free tools like SEMRush and Google mobile speed test. For most websites, reducing the image sizes and minimizing the number of videos can do the trick.

2. Customers Are Not Trusting You Enough

At times your website does not rank on Google because you are focusing a little too much on SEO positioning and forget about building trust. Google is the world’s leading search engine and is getting smarter every day. It ranks the websites for its relevance among the users. It may seem a no-brainer to anyone but a lot of people fail to build trust due to some simple mistakes.

We have all been to websites where you are bombarded with a sales pitch and its annoyances. It sets off nearly everyone. Put yourself in the shoes of buyers and think about the questions and concerns they have. You need to take an honest look at your website content and blogs. Drop the sales pitch and be more educating and helpful to your customers.

3. Keyword Selection In Not Right

Targeting the right keywords is crucial to your search engine optimization efforts. You are going to have a hard time if Google is unable to understand what questions you are trying to answer. Content on your website needs to be simple and comprehensible both for your customers as well as the search engines. The pages should not be stuffed with industry jargon.

A simple way to understand the concept is to think about all the questions a buyer can think of. You have to relay what problems your business/company or service is solving. You have to know how people are searching for those services. You can use free tools like ATP to find all the relevant questions asked by the users about a certain keyword.

All keywords are not going to impact your leads and conversions so do some research before selecting keywords for your next SEO positioning campaign.

4.Your Website Is Not Updated Regularly   

It is no secret that SEO is an on-going process. You need to update and retouch almost every aspect of your website by monitoring what works and whatnot. The most important point is to publish optimized content at a regular cadence.

If you need to see the rankings pick, you must publish high-quality content two to three times per week. It keeps in front of your prospects all the time and lets the search engine know that this website is relevant. The more content you publish on your website, the better are your chances to rank for certain targeted keywords. You should keep an editorial calendar to stay on track.

5. Poor Website Layout

Site organization and ease of navigation are important ranking factors for websites. If the users are unable to navigate through different parts of your website, they are more likely to bounce back. They will avoid coming back to your website due to poor layout.

Keep in mind that the bounce rates of your website should not be very high as Google does not like it. This indicates that users didn’t find anything useful and relevant from your site and hence the search engine positioning is affected.

6. You Are Aiming For Super Competitive Keywords

Not all industries are created equal. Some of them are super competitive and if your website happens to be a part of such an industry, achieving high website search engine positioning gets quite challenging. It is important to remember that you are competing with companies with massive budgets.

For instance: If you own a US local directory, you already have a good list of competitors claiming to be a free business listing site in USA. Sites like Yelp, Angi, HomeAdvisor, HighFive Listings and more are already ranking against good keywords.

If you want to target a high volume keyword, don’t aim for national ranking. Work for local rankings first by using Long tail keywords. For smaller businesses, long-tail keywords are critical for search engine positioning.

Moreover, start by listing your business in well-reputed business listing websites such as Google My Business and High Five Listings. The consistent NAP across all listings can greatly help with reputation building and hence local rankings.

7. E.A.T Is Compromised

In 2018, Google released an E.A.T. update which meant that the author listed for any articles and blog on sites will be taken into account for SEO positioning. This greatly impacts specific content concerning legal topics, personal care, and health industries. E.A.T stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness and its goal is to reward the websites crediting their content to experts in the field.

If your website happens to be a part of any of these industries, make sure you are crediting authentic professionals.

8.Your Website Has “No-Index” Tag Code

Google does not rank any website with a “no-index” code embedded in the page code. This may seem a bit absurd. Who does not want to be indexed for search results? This meta tag is pretty common on specific website pages such as thank you pages for any offers and downloads.

In most cases, these tags are added to the entire code when the website is in the process of development. If your website is not ranking in SERPs, make sure the no-index code is removed before you go live.

9. Poor On-Page Optimization

On-page optimization is something you should never ignore. Factors like keyword page titles, XML sitemaps, and keyword density might not be commonly discussed among best SEO positioning practices. Keep in mind that they play an extremely important role in helping Google work out what your website is about.

Make sure the title tags are keyword rich, concise, natural, and enticing. Meta descriptions should be optimized for search engines. Create an XML sitemap for your website so that Google can find and index all of its pages.

10. Not Enough Back-Links

If you are unable to get good rankings after fixing all the above-mentioned issues, the problem may be deep-rooted. Yeah, you got it right, the backlinks. The lack of commercial activity on your website may be because of not enough backlinks. Google algorithms rank your website according to relevance and approval. The relevance is determined by keywords but approval is gained by checking all the quality backlinks.

11. Your Website In Not Mobile Friendly

From September of 2020, 100% of websites in Google SERPs will need to be “mobile-friendly”. If your site is not mobile-friendly, Google may not even index your site and this is not good for your search engine positioning.

It is critical to have a responsive website for both user-experience and search engine positioning. A large percentage of users will visit your page via mobile. It is high time to build a responsive website.

12. Poor Quality Or Irrelevant Content

Many businesses do the mistake of compromising the quality of published content when they have to keep up with their editorial calendars. This is can cost you more in the long run as it affects your trust among the users. Higher bounce rates can be bad for your business.

13. A Formal Penalty

It may be a formal penalty hindering your search engine positioning. Fix the issue and send a reconsideration request as early as possible.