If you’ve published a website or blog and are wondering why it’s not appearing in search engine results pages (SERPs), there are a few potential reasons.
You Haven’t Submitted Your Site to Search Engines
Search engines like Google won’t know your site exists unless you submit it to their index. Here are some ways to submit your site:
- Google Search Console – Register your site and submit your sitemap
- Bing Webmaster Tools – Same as above for Bing index
- XML sitemaps – Create an XML sitemap and submit it to search engines
- Manual submission – Manually submit URLs to Google, Bing and other search engines
Submitting your site is the first step, but it doesn’t guarantee immediate indexing. It can take days or weeks for search engines to crawl your site and add it to their databases.
Your Site Has Thin Content
Search engines want to show the most relevant, high quality sites in their results. If your content is thin, basic, or doesn’t offer much value to searchers, Google may not deem your pages worthy of ranking.
Some signs of thin content:
- Pages with less than 200 words
- Generic information that could apply to any site
- Limited media elements like images/video
- Pages optimized solely for keywords, not users
Make your content dense, meaty, and offer in-depth value related to your keywords. The more helpful your content is for searchers, the better chance it has to rank.
Technically Flawed Site
Search engines analyze technical site factors when crawling pages. Issues like the following could limit indexing and ranking:
- Broken links – Fix any 404 errors and broken internal links
- Slow load speed – Improve site speed through optimizations
- Mobile responsiveness – Use responsive design for good mobile experience
- Duplicate content – Avoid copying content across pages
- Poor structured data – Use proper schema markup for rich snippets
Speeding up your site and providing a seamless user experience, regardless of device, can help with SEO visibility.
Low Quality Backlink Profile
The types of sites linking back to yours also impact rankings. A few low quality links likely won’t hurt, but patterns of spammy links could trigger algorithmic penalties from Google.
Be cautious when building backlinks, focusing on relevant sites with good reputation. Avoid:
- Link schemes and networks
- Comments on irrelevant, random blogs
- Spammy article directories
- Paying for backlinks
Natural link building, through high quality content promotion and outreach, can improve domain authority and search visibility.
Issues With Page Authority
Page authority metrics like Domain Authority and Page Authority (Moz) or PageRank (Google) evaluate the link equity passed to your site/pages. Issues like the following could depress your page authority:
- Age of domain – Older sites tend to have higher authority
- Low domain authority – Few quality links to home page
- Irrelevant links – Many unrelated sites linking in
- Bad neighborhood – Sites you link to have low authority
Page authority factors take time and effort to improve. Focus on building domain authority through quality content, link building, and neighborhood cleanup.
You’re Using Black Hat Tactics
Aggressive SEO tactics might offer fast results, but could seriously hurt your site long-term. Avoid tactics like:
- Keyword stuffing
- Sneaky redirects
- Automated scraping or spinning
- Doorway pages with thin content
- Hidden text or links
- Purchasing backlinks
Google is very good at identifying and penalizing spammy tactics. Tread carefully to avoid manual webspam actions that could significantly hurt traffic.
Your Site Is Too New
Don’t expect overnight success with a new website. It takes time for search engines to fully crawl, index, and rank new pages. Some things that impact new sites:
- Server location – Hosting on a known server helps
- Brand mentions – Early links from established sites
- Site speed – Faster indexing of fast loading sites
Have patience and focus on building authority signals. Over time, if you create valuable content, your rankings will improve.
You Have Keyword Gaps
Are you targeting head term keywords but ignoring long-tail variations? For competitive markets, long-tail keywords may be easier to rank for.
Analyze your top targets and related long-tail keywords with tools like:
- Google Keyword Planner
- Ubersuggest
- Ahrefs
- SEMrush
Identify low competition long-tail variants that align with your targets. Optimize your content for those phrases.
Your Site Has Low Expertise, Trust and Authority
Google wants to feature sites seen as reputable sources on their topic. Signals like domain registration length, social media activity, author expertise, press mentions and quality links improve E-A-T.
Some ways to build expertise and authority:
- Contributor bios and credentials
- Customer testimonials and reviews
- Businesses listings like BBB and Chamber
- Images of team, office or work samples
- Brand mentions in respected publications
Improving your reputation takes time. The more you establish expertise, the more likely search engines will deem your content authoritative.
You Have Low Engagement Metrics
User engagement signals like click-through-rate, time on site, and pages per session influence perceived content quality. Low values for these could limit your rankings.
Some ways to boost engagement:
- Improve click-through-rates with better titles and snippets
- Add related internal links to retain visitors longer
- Feature visually engaging images, video, graphics
- Write long-form, in-depth content
The more engaging your content is, the higher quality search engines may associate with it.
You Have a Manual Action Penalty
Manual webspam actions are Google’s harshest penalties. A manual action restricts your whole site or specific pages due to egregious quality issues.
Some examples of manual penalties:
- Unnatural links – Paid links, private blog networks, etc.
- Low quality content – Auto-generated content, thin pages, etc.
- Harmful practices – Malware, cloaking, sneaky redirects, etc.
Manual actions are severe Google punishments that restrict pages from rankings. File a reconsideration request and correct issues to potentially lift penalties.
Your Site Has a Low Crawl Budget
Crawl budget refers to how much of your site search engines will index. Sites deemed low quality or spammy have lower budgets.
Some signs of a low crawl budget:
- New content isn’t indexed quickly
- Pages disappearing from SERPs
- Seeing less pages indexed over time
Improving technical SEO factors and overall content quality helps increase crawl budget. Monitor indexing with tools like Search Console.
Conclusion
There are many potential reasons your site may not be appearing in search results. By analyzing factors like content quality, technical SEO, backlinks, authority signals, and penalties you can diagnose issues holding you back.
Have patience, focus on creating high quality content, and avoid spammy tactics. Over time, search visibility and rankings should steadily improve as long as you build a solid foundation.