It’s the most frustrating experience: you spent precious time, energy and resources on making a professional website for your enterprise, you’re excited about the flow of traffic and the increase in business you expect it to draw, but then the returns are disappointing – and when you Google your business to investigate, you find that it’s not showing up on search.
Why is this happening? Are you doing something wrong? Is there some way you can improve your Google visibility? Not to worry, we’ve got you covered. Below are some common reasons for diminished Google appearances for your website, and how to boost yourself in no time.
#1: Google Has Not Indexed Your Website
Google records websites and matches them to searches by pulling from links on websites that it has already logged. If your site is brand new, and few if any other websites have linked to it, it’s possible that Google is unaware that it exists. You can fix this by creating and submitting a sitemap on Google’s Search Console.
#2: Google Doesn’t Think Your Site is “Trustworthy”
Google ranks websites using an algorithm that judges their legitimacy and/or relevancy based on a set of criteria. Helping your website meet those criteria is the basis of the industry known as “search engine optimization” (SEO).
This process, guided by qualified SEO professionals, enhances your website with keywords, images, cross-links, requisite information, and other elements to maximize its appearances in online search.
You can get started on SEO essentials here.
#3: You Blocked A Page on Your Robots.txt File
Your robots.txt file tells search engines what pages it can and cannot “crawl” (systematically search and index using a bot called a “web crawler”). If Google can’t crawl it, it can’t index it, and again, it won’t know your site exists.
Check your robots.txt to make sure you haven’t accidentally blocked a page that you want to appear on Google search. If this isn’t the case, then you can cross it off the list of possible problems.
#4: Your Site is Set to “Noindex”
A “noindex” setting tells your site not to allow search engines to index it, and it’s possible this could happen by accident. The best way to check is to view your site’s source code and run a search of the term “noindex” using CTRL+F. If the term doesn’t appear, you can be sure that this isn’t the issue.
#5: Your Site Has Been Penalized
If your site used to show up on Google but it’s suddenly absent, it’s possible that it’s being penalized. This happens when a site contains spam links, scrape content, or gets hacked. Don’t worry – you’ll get reinstated once you take care of the issue, if any. You can check by verifying your domain in the Google Search Console.
#6: There’s a Technical Issue
When all the other contingencies on this list have failed, the last thing you should check for is some technical problem within your site which is preventing it from being crawled and indexed by Googlebot. Unless you have experience with technical SEO, this is something you’ll have to contact a professional to take care of.
Whatever the reason, you should take solace in the fact that there are a number of different avenues you can try to right the ship and make your site findable to anyone surfing the internet. Once you know the problem, you can start working on the solution, and you can start enjoying all the benefits of your online platform in no time.
