Reaching the top spots of the search engine results pages is a goal worth striving for. When you get your business on the front page of the SERPs, you increase brand exposure, establish yourself as an industry expert and secure qualified leads. When your site isn’t ranking, it can be incredibly frustrating. Is there something you’re doing wrong? Do you need to wait more time? Is there a way to speed things up?
Below are the three most common reasons why your site may not be ranking and how to address them.
- You need to give it more time.
When it comes to SEO, you need to be patient. We know this can be hard to do, considering that most people expect results right away. But, SEO is a process that doesn’t happen overnight. As long as you are following the best SEO practices and contributing high-quality, relevant content, you should see your site rank higher over time.
Why is SEO such a process? In a nutshell, things must be done in a certain order. Everything starts with your strategy. It takes time to research, develop and implement a strategy that supports your goals. Then, you need to produce content that helps you meet these objectives.
Google then sends bots to your website to check out new content. The more content you add, the more Google will send bots to visit. The purpose of the search engine bots is to make sure that you are providing value to your readers. On average, it takes around four months to see improvements, though it can take longer.
- Your website has technical issues.
A website can look great to the naked eye, but that doesn’t mean it looks great to the search engines. This is why it’s so important to work with a reputable website development company that understands what Google looks for. Here are some of the biggest issues that we see when redesigning poor ranking websites are:
- Duplicate content
- Poor quality content
- Content that hasn’t been updated
- Confusing navigation
- Incomplete metas, alt tags, schema markup, etc.
- No company blog (you need this to refresh content)
- Multiple pages that could rank for a single keyword
- Your site has been penalized by Google.
Some penalties will remove your website from Google’s search results. To find out if you’ve been penalized, check the Google Manual Actions report and address the issues. If you’ve received a report, this means that someone has identified your site as no longer compliant with Google’s guidelines.
The main reasons for penalizations are:
- Someone loaded malicious content to your site (hacked site)
- Spam comments posted on your blog
- Spammy hosting services
- Unnatural links to/from your site
- Thin, low-quality content
- Manipulative use of images
- Sneaky redirects
- Hidden text and keyword stuffing
To get your website back in Google’s good graces, you will need to address these issues. Remember, SEO is a process, so you’ll need to give your website time to bounce back from the penalty.
If your site isn’t ranking where you want it to, you may need to be more patient, or you may have an issue that needs to be addressed. Get down to the bottom of your ranking issues by contacting Magna Technology today.
