Have you ever scrolled through Google’s search result pages to find your own site and wondered, “What page is my website on?” or “Why can’t I find my website on Google?”
If your website isn’t showing up on Google’s search results page, a variety of things could work against you.
How to Get a Website to Show Up on Google
When you type something into Google with the hope of seeing your website in the search results, you’re not actually looking for your website — you’re looking for a page on your website.
However, if Google doesn’t know that the page you’re looking for exists or doesn’t consider it trustworthy, your site won’t appear anywhere that matters in the search results.
So, to show up on Google, three things need to be true about your website:
- Google needs to know that your website exists, being able to access all your most important pages
- Your site pages need to be relevant to specific keywords
- You must have demonstrated to Google that your page is worthy of ranking for your target keyword — more so than any other page on the internet
If these things aren’t in place yet, don’t stress! Let us guide you through making your website visible to Google, step by step.
Let’s Talk About Web Crawlers
A web crawler, like Googlebot, is a bot that crawls the web via links. It searches for and reads new content and suggests what should be added to the index. The index refers to Google’s brain, where all its knowledge resides. Googlebot is Google’s web crawler, and other search engines have their own variants.
Googlebot uses a database of sitemaps and previously-discovered links to determine where it should search next. When the crawler finds new links on a website, it adds them to the following list of pages to visit. Googlebot also notes links or broken link changes to keep the index updated. To ensure Googlebot can correctly index your site, you must check its availability to crawlers. If you regularly update your website with new content, Googlebot will visit your site more often.
Google Search Console
You can use Google Search Console to find out how often Googlebot visits your website and what it does there. Google Search Console is one of the most helpful tools to check the availability of your site to crawlers. Here, you can determine how Googlebot views your site.
It’ll also provide a list of crawl errors for you to fix. You can also ask Googlebot to crawl your site again in Search Console. If Google can’t crawl your site well, you’ll never display on the rankings. So, you better find those crawl errors and fix them as soon as possible!
8 Possible Reasons Why Your Website Isn’t Ranking
If your site isn’t showing up on Google, you’ll want to identify the issue sooner rather than later in order to clear it up. If your web page is not available on Google Search, these common reasons may be why.
1. Your Site Is Too New
The truth is that it takes some time for Google to discover new websites and web pages. So, if you just launched your site, chances are that Google hasn’t found it yet. Be patient! Only time will tell.
2. You’re Blocking Web Crawlers
Most websites have a robots.txt file. This file provides search engines with instructions on where they can and can’t go on your website. Essentially, Google can’t crawl URLs blocked in your robots.txt file, which means these URLs won’t appear in search results.
Upon submitting your sitemap via Google Search Console, you should receive alerts regarding any such issues. Simply visit the “Coverage” report and search for “Submitted URL blocked by robots.txt” errors.
However, this only works if Google has already attempted to crawl the URLs in your sitemap. So, if your site is new, you’ll have to give it some time.
3. You Lack High-Quality Backlinks
Even if nothing is blocking Google from finding your page, you still need to prove that it deserves to rank. Building backlinks (links on other websites linking back to your website as a source) proves that your website’s content is trustworthy and relevant. Also, when building backlinks, remember that Google ranks web pages, not websites.
4. You Lack Authority
A website’s authority depends on how trustworthy its content is in Google’s eyes.
You can boost the authority of a web page by:
- Building more backlinks
- Adding more internal links
Start by adding a few relevant internal links to your page and build up backlinks over time.
5. Your Content Isn’t Relevant
Google ranks the most valuable and relevant results for each query. Therefore, your content must align with what searchers expect and want to see. This concept is known as search intent.
6. You’re Not Implementing SEO
SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, ensures your website is optimised to rank at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) and is the best way to make your website appear in Google Search. SEO entails several strategies which boost your rankings and help you earn more conversions online. Without SEO, even the most visually aesthetic site won’t rank on the SERPs.
7. You’re Not Investing in UX
Poor user experience (also referred to as UX) is detrimental to your business’s online presence. Search engines aim to rank websites that provide visitors with a great page experience. So, if users have a negative experience on your website, they’ll hit the back button — signalling to Google that your site shouldn’t rank. This is often reflected in your bounce rate. If you have a high bounce rate percentage, chances are your website is not offering users a good experience or takes too long to load.
8. You Have a Google Penalty
Finally, a Google Penalty is the most unlikely reason your site may not be ranking, but we’ll mention it since it exists.
There are two types of Google penalties:
- Manual: This happens when a Google employee reviews your website manually and finds that it fails to comply with its Webmaster Guidelines
- Algorithmic: This is when Google’s algorithm suppresses your website or a web page in the search results due to quality issues
For a website not showing up in Google, your best bet is to consider each of the above mentioned reasons, consulting Google Search Console as you go along.
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