Have you been optimizing your content tirelessly and it still fails to rank on search engines? Do not worry, you are not in this alone. In this article we will answer your question on why my website is not ranking in Google. This is a rather common phenomenon that happens to most businesses at some point in time. Companies hire expensive content writers that generate content day in and out and publish tens of immaculately articulated documents on the website. However, in the end, the content still does not create enough website traffic and traction. At times, even website optimization does not help improve the performance of the website on search engine rankings.
Why My Website Is Not Ranking in Google? Top 6 Reasons
In order to find a solution to this problem, it is also necessary to first know the basic reasoning of ‘why’. There are a lot of factors that affect the ranking of content. Here are the factors that affect your rankings and the solution to each-
1. Immense competition in the domain
While, for some businesses, it might be rather easy to rank their websites, some have to seriously struggle to even get noticed, nevermind appearing on the top. This is so because while some industries and sectors do not have a lot of competition to deal with, some industries and sectors face serious competition. For example, there are tons of digital marketing agencies starting up every day. The competition in this domain is so high and it only increases to grow by the day. Contrastingly, for a business that deals in the manufacturing of tiles, the competition would definitely not be that fierce.
As a solution to this, you have to first identify the competition and then accept for a fact that the competition will only increase. However, this should not mean that you step down. Focus more on your content and optimization game, try to include innovative forms of content like infographics, pictures, videos- while not forgetting the need to be relevant. You also need to make sure that when the competition gets tough, even minor errors can bring you down. Do not keep a lot of room for errors.
2.Technical glitches with the website
At times, technical glitches may create a foul surfing experience for your users. There might actually be people visiting your website but they might be bouncing back to SERP pages for a more enhanced experience that cannot be found on your website. An increased bounce rate on your website essentially means that your users and visitors cannot find what they are looking for, even if your website in actuality is the best platform to provide them with such information. This could happen for various reasons like your website looks disorganized, takes too long to load, or offers a poor UI and navigation experience.
As a solution to this, you need to ensure that you optimize your website to make it look neat, clean, easy to navigate, and less cluttered as a whole. The aim should be at designing a website that is not only organized but also at having relevant content and information that is capable of engaging the users. Besides, you need to understand that more and more people are now opening websites on their phones as against computers. Hence, your website should also be mobile-friendly and should ideally open under 5 seconds to reduce bounce rates.
3. Inconsistent Content
When it comes to content, you need to understand that while creating content is one thing, updating that content consistently and persistently is another. The point here is to not just generate quality content but also update and upload the content on your website regularly. If you fail to consistently update your text, your website is exposed to the risk of being outdated and hence, leading to increased bounce rates.
As a solution to this, you need to pay extra attention to consistently updating your website. In order to effectively achieve this, a viable step to take would be to create a content plan and stick to your plan against all odds. Find ways to also engage with your audience and lay your primary focus on the quality of content that goes on your website.
4. Ignorance towards Social Media posting
For your website to gain traction, you also need to understand the signals of Social Media. Once you consistently start posting and regularly updating your Social Media accounts, you are essentially venturing into social media marketing. However, if you fail to consistently feed the interests on your Social Media accounts, you would fail to drive that attention to your website.
As a solution to this, you need to first understand the dynamics of social media. Researchers have identified that one link on Social Media realizes activity around it only for a period of 3 hours. This means that you only have three hours with your content on social media to drive the followers from the social media accounts to your website. You need to ensure that you prepare and stick to a content calendar for your social media accounts just like you would for your website as mentioned in the previous point. Also, a good idea would be to optimize your content on social media with attractive, click-bait titles, well-differentiated tags and blog categories, meta descriptions, and meta keywords.
5. Not indexing your website with Google
Let us first understand what indexing means. A “no index” tag is a set of codes that are implied on some pages to avoid search engines from crawling into your website for information. Because of this, your website is not found by the users amongst the top ranking websites on search engines; thereby not getting you the traffic you deserve. The no index tags are used by developers while they are creating a website and these tags are generally also removed before the website goes live. However, if your developers fail to remove this tag, you become a victim of hampered performance.
As a solution to this, you need to make sure that your website is indexed. By indexing, you allow search engines to crawl your website, however, in a more organized and controlled manner. Indexing also is beneficial as it provides search engines with access to only those web pages that you really want to appear on the result page. Reach out to your content management team and have them remove the “no index” tag for the web pages you wish should appear on the search result pages of search engines.
6. Not interlinking your content structure
By failing to interlink your content to other articles on your website that can provide similar relevant information, you have the user feel lost on your website. With so much knowledge and information to grasp from other websites, they might feel rather uninterested in you and exit your website before looking any further. By not having relevant links within your content structure, you also confuse your visitors as to where they should be looking for information after visiting your website. All in all, this hampers your ranking on the search engines.
As a solution to this, you need to focus on interlinking your articles on the website. Interlinking keeps your audience engaged and interested as they get access to so much information, so conveniently, all at once. You basically are feeding them what they want on a silver platter. You should ensure that you add internal links on your posts so that your audience doesn’t lose interest in what all you can offer. By gathering topics similar to the primary post, you can boost the overall user experience and by not, you defy the very purpose of an SEO strategy.
Final Thoughts-
Having great content and still failing to have your website top the charts of search engines can be rather demotivating for businesses. The world is on the internet today and you need to make sure that everything you do with your website is on par with the trends of the internet in general. For you to be able to rank on top of search engines, optimization of the content is important; however, with the understanding of some other basic errors that you might be making is also equally important.
However, still, it should be remembered that SEO is not a short-term goal, it is a long-term strategy. Research and educate yourself on everything that you can do correctly and optimally, put in the hard work, and sit back to realize the results- perhaps not immediately, but definitely!
