Having a website is a great way to get more people to know about your business by finding it online. But it’s not an instant shortcut to page one of Google’s search listings. Getting there can take a lot of time and work optimizing your website for search engines. And it helps to have some SEO expertise backing you up.
How does Google determine search results?
To bring up the most relevant results for a user’s search term, Google ranks all the pages on the web using a complex algorithm. There are aspects of this algorithm that even the experts don’t fully know about, and it’s changing all the time to keep improving the user experience.
Google’s search algorithm is based on a number of factors, including:
- The age of your domain name
- Relevance of static content (About Us, Services, FAQ, etc.)
- Quality and frequency of updated content (blog posts, recent news, etc.)
- Outbound and inbound links
- Mobile-friendliness
- Website load and page speeds
- User experience on your site – e.g. bounce rates
- Social signals
- Meta-data (back-end coding and HTML)
- Security (SSL certificate)
Why is my website not listed in Google’s search results?
You’ve probably tried Googling various search terms to see how well your website stacks up in Google’s search listings. It’s understandably frustrating when you don’t see your website listed on the first page or even the second page. Here are some of the reasons that could be behind this…
- Your website hasn’t been indexed yet
Google works very quickly, but it still takes time for its bots to work their way through billions of webpages to index them. If you’ve recently created a website for your business, then it might not show up on Google at all because it hasn’t been indexed yet. Here are some tips to help get your site indexed faster.
2. Your website’s SEO isn’t up to scratch
If your website has been indexed and you finally find a link to it on page five of Google, then it might just be that your SEO needs some more work. If Google’s bots scan your website and decide that it’s not relevant enough to the user’s keyword or that your content isn’t of a high enough quality, then it’s going to get pushed down the rankings. Consider how you can improve your SEO with the ranking factors listed above, or let us help you improve your SEO.
3. Competition is high
If you’ve poured time and money into your website’s SEO but still find yourself coming up short, then it might just be that competition in your field and for your keywords is too high. If others are doing it better, you’re still going to get pushed down the pages. Conduct some more keyword research to find keywords and phrases that are less competitive.
Rising up the search engine results pages doesn’t happen overnight, but here at Hallen Media, we’ve got the SEO skills and knowledge needed to get your brand seen by more people online. Contact our team to find out how we can help boost your SEO and improve your brand’s visibility online.