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Why is my website not ranking on Google?

Posted on by Phil

So you’re wondering how to make your website rank better on google search? Maybe your website not ranking at all. Maybe you just want it to rank better? It all begins with SEO! This article will give you an overview of 10 main reasons your website is not ranking on google.

Whilst I’ll share these reasons with you, to solve the problem, you need to understand it’s going to take you hours of hard work. And it’s not just a one-off. It takes hours of ongoing work. Work on Technical SEO and Content SEO.

You will know that our computers, smartphones, and apps are constantly and regularly updated to help make them better. The same thing happens with Google Search. In fact, Google Search is updated thousands of times a year to improve the experience and the quality of results. 

What factors contribute to your website not ranking?

The possible issues you might be having can be divided into four sections:

  1. Indexing and crawl issues:
    How to check if your site is on Google, plus reasons that add up to your website not ranking on Google
  2. Technical Health issues with your website:
    Is Google disregarding or de-ranking your website because it’s not set up correctly?
  3. Linking issues:
    Is your internal linking structure and lack of quality backlinks limiting your success? Possibly resulting in your website not ranking as well as it could?
  4. Content and keyword issues:
    Is your content high quality and aligned to the right search intent? Are your keywords just too competitive?

Indexing and crawl issues

Search Engines like Goole are complicated and involve a number of factors- Around 200 in fact! The first thing for Google to show your website in their search results is that they know it exists. So the first few points on the list all deal with indexing and crawl issues. Put simply, you can’t rank if your page or site is not on Google in the first place. If you find these topics confusing, you might want to read up on how Google works or check out our All about SEO Ebook.

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1. Your website/page is not on Google

If you’re unsure whether your site is on Google or not, you can check using the site: search operator in Google. Type site:yourwebsite.co.nz and you’ll see a list of pages found on your domain. If you type in the full URL of a specific blog article, you should see only one search result return. If you see your pages, this means that Google does know about your site and has put (at least some of it) in its index.

Once you discover that your page is in the index, but your website is not ranking well, or you think there is an issue with your website performance, you might want to dig deeper.

 

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The site: search operator helps you find your site in Google’s index

2. Your site/page is still too new

If your site or page is new, and you have submitted your site map to Google Search Console, then it might simply be a matter of chilling out and checking back in a little while. There are a lot of moving parts in getting your content crawled, indexed, and ranked. Sometimes, it takes days, weeks, or maybe even months for Google to finish its discovery process.

3. Your content is noindexed

One of the most common reasons for a website not ranking, or Google not indexing your site or a specific page is because it has — inadvertently — been no-indexed. Adding no-index meta robots tags to a page tells Googlebot that it can crawl a page, but that the results can’t be added to the index.

How can you check if your page is no-indexed? That’s easy if you know how, simply open the page and view the source code. (you may need a web developer or SEO expert to help you with this). If you do this yourself, Somewhere in the head of the page, you’ll find the code below. This tells search engine crawlers that the content of the page shouldn’t be added to the index and, thus, keep it from ranking.

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>

4. Your site/page is blocking Google with robots.txt

You might have told Google not to index your content, but it’s also possible you’ve told Google not to crawl your site at all! Blocking crawlers in a so-called robots.txt file is a sure-fire way to never get any traffic. Blocking robots is easier than you might think. For instance, if you have a WordPress site, WordPress has a Search Engine Visibility setting that — once set to Discourage search engines from indexing this site — does its utmost best to keep crawlers out. Uncheck this to make your site available again.

Technical issues affecting ranking

You have checked and found your pages are indexed, but, is your website not ranking? Then technical problems are something you might need to check. You can do a basic website audit here which will help you understand some key benchmarks.

5. You’re not ranking because your site has technical issues

Your website needs to meet certain technical benchmarks if you’re going to rank well on Google! Loading speed, or how quickly your pages load, is an important factor. Security is important too, and that’s not all. You can read about all the essentials in our article: How website health is calculated, or understand what Techincal SEO packages involve.

If your website doesn’t show up in the search engines at all, technical issues could be the issue. This may even be preventing it from appearing in the search results at all. You could have conflicting code, or plugins causing problems. If you’re using WordPress and in particular a pre-built theme, this could be adding to the issue. We’ve also seen some pre-built themes that actually prevent Google from indexing your site. This is one reason why investing in a custom-built website and an ongoing maintenance plan, can take care of many technical issues under the hood. Using a reputable web design company should ensure this will be set correctly to do that properly.

6. You’re being penalised for breaking SEO rules

If Google finds you using dodgy SEO techniques that it doesn’t allow — e.g. sneaky tactics like buying links or stuffing keywords into hidden text — your website can suffer. To be fair, when you’re already putting in the effort to make a good website and quality content, it’s counterproductive to try. Even when everything else on your page is perfect, if you’re doing something that Google doesn’t allow then you’re going to have problems ranking.

Most of these things are common sense, so if you’re not trying to trick Google or spam people, you probably don’t need to stress too much. However, there are a few things that used to be common practice in SEO that can now lead to major penalties. So staying up-to-date with SEO trends and algorithm updates is really important.

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Linking issues that affect ranking

Having a good internal linking structure and quality backlinks are important if you want to rank high. Google crawls the web, following each link it finds, so if your links are lacking it can cause you problems with ranking.

7. Your site doesn’t have a proper internal linking structure

Another reason why your content doesn’t show up in the search results: a crucial part of your SEO strategy is not in order. Don’t underestimate the importance of site structure – the internal linking structure – for your SEO strategy. Having a clear site structure leads to a better understanding of your site by Google. If your internal linking structure is poor, chances to rank high are lower – even when your content is well-optimized and awesome.

8. There are not enough backlinks to your site

If you just started out with your website, your content won’t instantly rank. Not even if you have optimized everything perfectly and every bullet in Yoast SEO is green. To be able to rank, you’ll need some links from other websites. After all, Google has to know your website exists.

Content and keyword issues affecting ranking
If everything else is as it should be SEO-wise, then the reason your page or site is not ranking might be related to your content or keywords. You can also take our Content SEO fitness quiz to see if you might have issues with your site’s content.

9. Your page is great, but there’s too much competition

In most cases, the reason a page doesn’t rank is that there’s simply too much competition. If you optimize your content for competitive keywords and keyphrases, such as [cat behavior], [robot vacuum cleaner], or [real estate agent], chances are high you won’t rank for that term.

To find out if this is the problem, check the results pages for your keyword. Do high authority sites, such as Wikipedia or Amazon, dominate the first page? Do you see many sites that have already firmly established themselves in this niche? Odds are, your site doesn’t have the authority that these other sites have (yet). So you can optimize all you want, but unfortunately, that’s not enough to rank high in the search results if your niche is too competitive.

10. Low-quality content, or wrong type of intent

One final thing that could be the reason your content isn’t ranking: it doesn’t match the intent of people searching for your keyword. Search intent is becoming an increasingly important factor for search engines these days: do people want to buy something, go to a specific website, or are they looking for information? Even if you’re targeting a more long-tail keyphrase if your content doesn’t match the dominant intent of searchers, odds are search engines won’t show it in the results because it won’t be what people are looking for.

Optimized content still not ranking?

There are multiple reasons that could prevent a website or post from ranking. Have you optimized your post correctly? If so, then the most common cause is likely to be that the competition in a niche is just too fierce. Unfortunately, SEO is a long-term strategy. You need to work hard and be patient. In the meantime, there are a lot of other aspects of your SEO (site structure, link building) you can tackle. Try to focus on all aspects of website optimization, and try to be the best result.

SEO is a full-time job!

If you want to see results from your site, you need to understand that websites are like staff. The more you put in – in terms of training and upskilling – the better their performance and their results will be! SEO is not rocket science, but it is still pretty complicated. There are two main components which are on-page SEO and Off-page SEO. So if you get these right how long does SEO take to show results? It takes years to master and hours to implement and stay on top of. Just like your website itself, SEO is an investment and over time it will pay off!

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Sales Funnel: The Secret to Business Growth

Posted on by Phil

Reaching your full potential

When it comes to growing a business, we’ve said it before. And We’ll say it again… There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. That being said, if there was one secret formula for success and growth, it would be Inbound marketing using conversion funnels. But what is an Inbound sales funnel? How can this simple concept help your business grow and reach its full potential? Let’s break it down.

What is a Sales Funnel?

A sales funnel can be defined as the process of converting potential customers into actual customers. It involves guiding prospects through each stage of the buyer’s journey from discovering your product or service all the way to making the purchase decision. This process includes multiple steps such as gathering leads, qualifying them, nurturing them, and ultimately closing the sale. A well-crafted sales funnel will streamline this process so that you are able to quickly convert more leads into paying customers.

The Benefits of Using a Sales Funnel

Using a sales funnel has many benefits including increased efficiency and better results. By having an effective system in place you will be able to maximize your time and resources while still achieving great results. Additionally, using a sales funnel allows you to track your progress more accurately than ever before which will help you understand what works and what doesn’t work with regard to your marketing efforts. Finally, by having an effective system in place you will be able to generate more revenue for your business in less time with fewer resources than ever before!

Why You Should Use a Sales Funnel

If you want to increase revenue and reach new heights with your business then you should definitely consider using a sales funnel. Not only does it provide an efficient system for converting prospects into buyers but it also gives you insight into what works best for your business so that you can optimize your marketing efforts accordingly. Additionally, using a sales funnel is relatively inexpensive yet highly effective which makes it an attractive option for businesses of all sizes!

How Do I Create an Effective Funnel?

Creating an effective sales funnel is all about understanding your customer’s needs and creating content that speaks directly to those needs. This means doing careful research on who your target audience is, what their pain points are, what kind of content resonates with them most strongly, and so on. You’ll also want to think strategically about each stage of the funnel – from initial contact through post-purchase follow-up – so that you can craft messaging that speaks directly to where each person is at in their buying journey. Finally, be sure to use analytics tools to measure the success of your efforts over time so that you can make adjustments as needed.

Take your business growth to the Next Level

By now you have probably realized just how powerful a tool a sales funnel can be when used correctly! If implemented properly, it can help streamline the process of turning prospects into buyers while also providing valuable insights about what works best for your business so that you can optimize accordingly. But how much revenue can your website generate? Well that depends on how much work you put in. So if you want to take your business to the next level then investing in an effective sales funnel is definitely worth considering!

How is Website Health Score calculated?

Posted on by Phil

What is Website Health

Website Health Score is a method we use to Audit a website. Your Website Health Score is a critical part of your website performance and is based on the number of your total errors and total warnings that were found on the pages crawled on your site. Errors have more impact on your Site Health Score than warnings, so it is recommended that you address errors first if you can.

Nexus-Website-Health-Score

Our website Audit has over 130 checks — types of issues the tool checks for. The type of check found on the site, the number of unique checks found on the site, and the number of issues fixed for one check matter. Fixing all issues related to the same check (for example, all Broken links fixed) will have an effect on the overall health of your site higher than fixing two errors from two different types of checks (for example, Duplicate content issues and Broken links).

Your Site Audit will also provide a list of notices.

As far as notices go, you will still want to fix these issues as they still impact your SEO, but remember:
errors will have more weight on your Site Health Score compared to warnings and notices. Make sure you are addressing any major issues your site may have (errors) so that you can ensure you are making the best efforts to help lower your overall score.

Excluded Checks

If you exclude any check from your audit, the problem will no longer appear in your report, and we will no longer check for these issues in future crawls. At the same time, the audit will no longer take into account any of the instances of excluded checks when calculating your Site Health in the future crawls.

You can track the total number of errors, warnings, notices, or specific issues that Site Audit finds on your site over time with the Compare Crawls and Progress reports in the tool.

What the Website Health score DOES NOT depend on

The Site Health Score doesn’t depend on the number of pages crawled on the site, since the frequency of each error’s occurrence is what accounts for the score. However, the larger the site, the more attention you should pay to issues relevant to large sites, such as internal linking and site structure.

Other factors on Site Health Score

Because of the way our bot navigates a website through hyperlinks from the main page, each crawl can find new issues on the same site. Therefore, we recommend that you crawl a website in its entirety (as long as you have the crawl budget). At the same time, you can also set your audit’s crawl source as Sitemap or a file of URLs.

There may be times when a crawl finds a new issue (pages with slow loading speed, for example) that has a strong overall effect on your score at the same time that you cleaned up some of the other less significant ones (such as fixing URLs that are too long). In such a case, your site’s total number of issues could go down but your score would also go down.

How to Advertise a Startup Business

Posted on by Phil

The ABCs of Advertising a Startup Business

You’ve passed the point of asking How to start a business… And now as an entrepreneur or business owner, you may be wondering, how in the world do I get people to know about my business? After all, if no one knows your business exists, they can’t buy from you. Don’t worry—we’ve got your back. Here are the ABCs of advertising a startup business.

A is for Advertising on Social Media

Social media is one of the most efficient ways to advertise. That’s because you don’t have to spend too much money and it reaches a wide variety of people. Start by creating a strong presence on the major social media platforms like Facebook, and Instagram. You can create content that provides useful information about your industry or product/service offerings. In turn that will help establish trust between potential customers and your brand. Additionally, consider running ads on social media platforms—you can target them based on age, location, or interests so that you are reaching the right type of customer for your business.

B is for Blogging

Blogging is another great way to reach potential customers and build trust with existing ones. You can use blogs as an opportunity to showcase knowledge about your industry or offer tips related to using your products/services more effectively. Plus, blogging regularly will help boost the SEO ranking of your website since Google loves fresh content!

C is for Collaboration

Collaborating with other businesses and organizations can be a great way to get exposure for both parties involved. For example, if you own a bakery and partner up with other local businesses like restaurants or catering services in the area who need bread more frequently than individual customers do; this would increase their visibility while also giving them access to quality bread at discounted prices. Additionally, consider sponsoring events or partnering up with influencers in the area who could promote your product/service offerings on their social media channels—this type of collaboration is invaluable for startups looking to get noticed quickly!

 

Advertising a startup business doesn’t have to be difficult if you know where to look for opportunities! By utilizing things like social media advertising, blogging, and collaborating with other businesses/influencers in the area; you can easily get noticed by potential customers without spending too much money upfront. You can check out 18 more ways to market a start-up here at Hubspot. Also, do some research into what would work best for promoting your particular business and start advertising today! Good luck!

How Much does App Development Cost?

Posted on by Phil


How much does an app cost you ask? This is a very important question you should definitely be asking. More importantly, you should be asking what type of app do I need? If you’re not sure perhaps you could ask what types of Apps are there? All of these questions are important as you start determining your app design and app development cost.

Many factors influence the price, and the pricing structure can vary tremendously for each app development company or freelancer. Below are ballpark prices (NZD, excluding GST) on how much is an app may cost. They are not set in stone and a full scope and breakdown of any project are recommended before deciding how to proceed.

A Simple Web App Cost – $8,000 to $10,000
A Simple PWA – Progressive Web App Cost – $10,000 to $20,000
Average PWA Development Cost – $60,000 to $150,000
Average Native Development Cost – $80,000 to $150,000
Complex Native App Cost – $250,000 +

Graphic of app costs

What Factors influence App Cost?

The cost of building an app ranges from $8,000 to $300,000 and depends on numerous factors such as

  • Type of App
  • The complexity of the design and the number of screens that need to be visualised (designed)
  • User Journey
  • Development process;
  • Quality assurance phase; How much testing
  • Number of functions and features;
  • The intricacy of those functions and features;
  • The complexity of the database;
  • Number of and complexity of 3rd party integrations;
  • Implementation of security protocols like HIPAA or GDPR;
  • Third-party integrations (e.g., payment gateways, social media, APIs)
  • Size and level of the development team
  • Location of the development team
  • Platform for the app (iOS, Android, or both)

Where should I start?

When it comes to making a start in building an app, you (as mentioned above) need to understand what type of app you need. To do that, you must first understand what your app will do. What problem will it solve and how will it do that? These two factors will determine not on the cost of building the app, but the scope of the functionality you may need if you can create it in stages and what the ongoing costs are likely to be. Other things to consider are whether your app will be built for iOS, Android, or both platforms. This will impact your development approach and costs.

Your best bet is to brainstorm your ideas, write up a wishlist of features, create a list of essential features for your app’s minimum viable product (MVP), and talk to a few app or web development companies about the project. And like choosing the right marketing agency, the same goes for web or app development. You need to know they understand what you are trying to achieve. You want them to be honest about the best way to bring your idea to life. The last thing you want or need is to commit 100k or more on something that could cost 20k.

If you would like to talk to the Back9 team about App development, hit the button below.

Contact us


Updated 12 June 2024