“Why is my website not showing on Google?” is a very common question from business owners, especially in the beginning of their digital journey. It’s probably what got you here reading these very words, so let’s shed some light on the mystery that is “search engines”.
First, we need to understand how Google and other search engines rank websites. These are some of the more impactful things to consider:
Crawling and indexing. Search engines, like Google, use bots to discover and “read” your website.
Content relevance and quality. How relevant your pages are to what someone is looking for and is the content genuinely useful.
Mobile friendliness. As more and more users are browsing from their mobile devices every day, your website needs to make sense on mobile screens as well.
Backlinks. Other websites linking to your website builds up credibility.
Page speed. Slower websites will be less popular.
Security / HTTPS. Unsecure websites (HTTP) are flagged in browsers, and therefore rank lower.
Now that we know what Google looks for, let's get into the most common reasons your website might be invisible, and how to fix them. I will try my best to not let my inner nerd bore you with technical jargon!
Why isn’t my website showing on Google? Top 8 reasons and how to fix them.
1. You’ve only just launched
If your website is new, it might not have been picked up by Google yet. New websites might take up to weeks to get indexed.
Creating a Google Search Console (GSC) account and linking it with your website will help speed up the process.
Then create a sitemap and submit it, so that Google knows exactly what to look for: Sitemaps -> Your Sitemap URL -> Submit. Learn more about sitemaps.
Tip: To check if your website is indexed, type “site:example.com” into Google, replacing url with your website’s domain.
2. Google is blocked from indexing or crawling your website
This one is probably as technical as this is going to get (sorry!), but bear with me! A “noindex” meta tag is a piece of HTML code that instructs search engines to not index your website. If this is present on your pages, Google and other search engines will ignore it.
The best way to check is once again in your new best friend, Google Search Console. Go on “Pages” and check for “excluded by ‘noindex’ tag”.
3. Google has penalised your website
This is rarely the case, but a quick check doesn’t hurt. In Google Search Console look for any reports in Security & Manual Actions. If you see any notice there, it will give you the reason behind it. Resolving this will help your ranking.
4. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
We’ve touched on this throughout, but let’s bring it together. Search Engine Optimisation is one of the most important things you’d need to familiarize and include in your way of thinking when creating content for your website. Making sure your pages follow SEO best practices, and that you are utilising tools to get the most relevant keywords is extremely powerful!
If you’re satisfying a specific niche in the market, or you focus on a certain area, your website visitors need to know about this. Google needs to know about this. Local search is your ally if that’s the case and you want to make sure you put your message out there.
5. Lack of authority and quality content
Search engines need to be convinced that your pages really are worth sharing. The way to help with that is by making sure you create high quality content, that provides value to your visitors, and stands out from the competition, or even provide value in a different way from them.
Another way to help Google is by adding links, both internal and external, whenever possible and when it makes sense to do so. For example, when you mention another source in your content, make sure you link to that page. Make sure your pages link to other relevant pages as well, for example when you mention another blog page on your website, add a link to that page.
Blogs are one of the easiest ways to boost your authority and credibility scores.
A blog is a good way to naturally include keywords that people are looking for while giving helpful information so that you can organically grow your traffic.
It also adds new content for Google to crawl, more indexed pages to visit which helps a search engine get a better idea of your website.
Make sure you share your blogs on social media and other relevant platforms to maximize the benefits a blog page offers!
Backlinks are quite important too! Getting backlinks organically from other websites that are relevant and trustworthy, signals the same trustworthiness for your website. This does not happen overnight, and it takes a while to build this level of trust, but it is extremely powerful so the effort will be worth it!
6. Duplicate content
If Google thinks that your pages are duplicates, it won’t be happy! Your content needs to be unique. Creating original blog posts with unique content is the way forward!
7. Security
As you wouldn’t recommend a dodgy place to a friend, Google wouldn’t recommend a dodgy website either.
Make sure you have an SSL certificate, and have clear policies pages, and link to your social network accounts!
8. User experience (UX)
It goes without saying that your website needs to make sense. Your potential clients must be able to easily find what they’re looking for. Google and other search engines will be able to pick up if your users are not having fun, so a good UX will help a lot!
Try to avoid big navigation menus, auto playing music on pages or make sure you mute a video when it’s autoplaying.
Getting your website found on Google isn't something that happens overnight, but it's also not as mysterious as it first seems. Work through the list, tackle what you can, and be patient with the rest, it does pay off. And if nothing else, you now know what to Google when something doesn't look right!