Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published in 2018. As of June 2021, it’s been updated and republished to reflect current information. The article was cleaned up, recommendations were reassessed, and references refreshed.
“How can my website rank at the top of search engines for keywords related to my service and/or product?”
That’s the million-dollar question every business wants answered.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a million-dollar answer. Or, at least, there isn’t one single million-dollar answer.
Your website might be lagging in the rankings for several different reasons. If you’ve been at this for a long time, and you still find yourself asking “Why isn’t my website ranking?”, consider the following possibilities as a starting point to your ascent to the search engine heavens.
You Haven’t Given It Enough Time
The first rule of SEO, especially in the beginning? Patience. According to this Google Webmaster video, SEO simply takes time.
We’ve linked the above Google video before, but we like to back up our claims like this whenever possible.
In it, she states that, in general, it takes four months to a year to first implement improvements and then for you to start seeing results.
To rank well, things need to be done, and they need to be done in order. (It will do you no good to build a bazillion links if they all go to a website that isn’t able to convert the traffic.)
It takes time to research, create, and implement a strategy and begin producing content.
Then it takes more time for Google to realize changes have been made, and then you must wait for the search engine to determine if you are really providing new value.
One thing is for sure, SEO is not an overnight process.
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Your Keyword May Not Mean What You Think
The term “SEO” is obviously an important one to us in particular (which we discussed in our blog about increasing traffic more than 200%). At one point, though, our homepage couldn’t be found in the rankings for that term at all. We didn’t do anything to the page to make it drop out of the rankings, it was just gone one day.
So, we really started looking closely at the search results page for that keyword.
We had been ranking on the second page for a long time, only ever able to crack #10 on occasion. And then it disappeared.
Our blog page, however, didn’t.
Turns out, when you really look at that first page, it’s easy to see that Google does not believe people searching for the term “SEO” are looking for a company to do the SEO for them.
Instead, they’re trying to find as much information about what SEO is or how it is done.
That’s why (not including paid results) nearly every result on the first page is a guide to SEO, a discourse on what SEO is, and whether you need it.
Google itself is currently hogging at least two spots on the front page.
So, for a while, we were of the opinion we simply couldn’t rank on the first page anymore. It’s simply not what Google considers an appropriate answer to the query of “SEO”.
Of course, just to prove us wrong, Google began ranking our homepage again.
The point of all this is that you may want to rank a certain page for a certain keyword, and despite all the good SEO you do, it never quite seems to break for you because the word means something different to you than it does to Google.
Take a closer look at the first page and see if maybe the types of results Google wants to show are different from the kind you want to provide.
Your Website’s Beauty is Only Skin Deep
They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and this is certainly true when it comes to a search engine algorithm. While you may have web design renowned across the land for its stunning beauty to the human eye, Google may see it differently.
Why doesn’t Google appreciate it the way you do?
Perhaps you haven’t accounted for every SEO angle?
There could be any number of things holding you back, including:
- Duplicate content
- Insufficient content
- Old, untouched, stale content
- Confusing navigation
- Slow load times
- Split keyword focus, so there are multiple pages that could rank for a given word
- Incomplete basics, such as metas, alt tags, and schema markup
- No blog or other way to continually refresh your content
You Have Gone Unnoticed by the Internet at Large
Links are still a thing, and probably always will be. And while there are a bajillion ways to get them, not all of them are worth having, and some could actually be detrimental.
You need a good portfolio of links from various sources. Some should be no-follow, some should be from really good sites, some should be just normal sites.
Buying links is out of the question. Link schemes, also bad. It’s important to find natural ways to increase the good links and avoid the ones that may raise flags for Google.
Of course, links could be a problem in another way, too.
For example:
You’ve Been Noticed by the Wrong Part of the Web
Some people may start using some unethical tactics toward your website.
They don’t actually need a reason to do this. They may simply choose your website as a target to inject malicious code. Or they may start scraping your blog and republishing all your content. Or they could start building countless links to your site from questionable websites.
Google is pretty good at spotting a negative SEO attack, but you don’t want to risk the kind of penalty that could result from it, so stay on guard.
And this brings us to our next entry:
You’ve Been Put in the Google Penalty Box
Google’s Manual Action Penalty can completely remove your website from their search results.
If you’ve previously ranked really well and then dropped significantly (or even completely out of the rankings), you may be on the wrong side of a penalty.
The only thing you can do is check the Google Manual Actions report and start correcting the issues.
If you have received one of these reports, it means a human reviewer has determined that your website is no longer compliant with Goggle’s webmaster guidelines.
What could cause a Manual Action? According to Google, you could be penalized if the reviewer determines that you have:
- A hacked site – Someone has uploaded and hidden malicious content on your site.
- User-generated spam – Spam comments on forums or blogs.
- Spammy freehosts – A significant portion of the pages hosted on a service are spammy.
- Spammy structured markup – Markup on the page is outside the guidelines, like making some content invisible to users.
- Unnatural links to your site – If you have a lot of links deemed artificial, deceptive, or manipulative (including buying links or participating in link schemes), you may be penalized.
- Unnatural links from the site – Same as above, but now they’re coming from your site.
- Thin content with little or no added value – Your pages need to offer some real value to users.
- Cloaking or sneaky redirects – I.e., showing different pages to users and to Google.
- Pure Spam – This includes most of the stuff already mentioned, just more aggressive and overt.
- Cloaked images – Manipulative use of images in order to get more clicks.
- Hidden text and keyword stuffing – These are oldies but goodies, and apparently, it’s still enough of a problem for Google to list it here.
To get out of the penalty box, you must first fix the issues, and then … wait. A review for reconsideration can take several days or weeks, or even longer depending on the request. The key is to keep on a the straight and narrow with all your website and marketing tactics.
You’re Not Using a Holistic Approach
SEO, content marketing, social media, PPC, email marketing and many other online endeavors all work together as a holistic strategy to drive traffic to your website. And they all matter when it comes to SEO because Google is looking at more signals than just those you’re putting out on your website.
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We’re not just trying to sell you on our other services, here. Online marketing is simply a far more rounded strategy than it once was.
Elements like time on site, number of clickthroughs, number of mentions around the internet, and engagement on social media all figure into your rankings. Granted, some of them affect your rankings more indirectly than others, but they all play an important role.
We’re not saying that posting regularly on Facebook is directly connected with better rankings.
We’re saying that building a community on social media will lead to more people visiting your site, clicking your links, and reading your content, which in turn, lead to more than just better rankings.
These days, though, the most common reason your website isn’t ranking is probably because your competition is doing more than you.
You’re Forgetting About Your Real Competition
At first glance, SEO might seem like it’s a battle royale between your website and Google. But remember, Google, though it certainly has its requirements, is just the middleman. The real competition lies between you and your competitors.
Search engine optimization is no longer a clandestine tactic known by only a select few. It’s now part of every marketing plan out there, and for every link you’re not building, and every blog you’re not publishing, and every video you’re not making, your competition might be. You’re all aiming to set up shop in a very limited space.
If you’ve been dipping your toes into SEO, you may start to see a little movement up the rankings. However, the simple fact is that those who wade out into the deeper end of SEO are going to see more results than you.
The bottom line: do more than your competition is doing. That starts with a thorough analysis of everything your competitors are doing and ends with you doing it even better!
You Need to Get Back to the Basics
You may be thinking that there is a lot to do to start climbing to the top of the search engine rankings.
And you’d be right.
But the best place to start may be simply getting back to the basics. You can start small and make simple changes to your website, even before you start thinking about whether you should hire an agency or go in-house for your SEO.
Have you checked your title tags, meta descriptions, and alt attributes? They may not have a huge impact, but they do carry some weight. And what about your keyword usage throughout the site? It seems simple, and it is, but it still matters.
If you’ve already done this, and you’re not ranking yet, you may just need to give it a little more time.
Or…
You may need to dive into a serious overhaul of your website.
Either way, examine your current situation, start small, and begin making the changes you can.
You may be surprised how much they help.
SEO doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Download this ebook and see how all these components fit together to help you build your rankings.
WHY ISN’T MY WEBSITE RANKING? This is the common question that everyone faces. I feel you have given a better description to solve the problem. Good job. Thank you for the information.
yes i agree with your answer.According to me also the more competitive your target keywords are, the more SEO work it will take for your website to reach the first page.One of the most common reasons websites fail to rank is that they target search keywords with a huge amount of competition. The tougher the competition, the stronger your website needs to be in order to rank on the first page (and especially in the top few positions).Poor on-page optimization etc.Thats why your website is not ranking list.
What does “Even Small Changes Can Make a Difference” means? I get that there is something out of sight. For instance you will increase your rank if you change a little something but you can not see it. So make no headway. Right?
That’s a good question, and as I look back over that section of the blog, I realize I really should have gone into a little more detail (instead of just using it as a way to sum up and bring the blog to a close).
Anyway, what I meant by that is that sometimes it’s easy to forget about the basics of SEO. People may want to rank for a certain term, but then realize that they haven’t actually included that term in the content on the page. They may have some relevant terms, but not that one. So maybe find a new way to include it naturally. Then, things like Title Tags and alt attributes are very small things, and may not have a huge impact, but they do have SOME impact, and they’re simple things that anyone can optimize. Hope that helps explain a little more what I meant.
Truly, our industry is frustrating. Let me go back, this is a great article, and I wish that business owners and website designers understood this. It pains me so much to hear from a business owner that they don’t trust any SEO companies due to the fact that they have been burned multiple times in the past, shotty work, over promising, or my favorite, “We built SEO into your website when we first put it up, money every month please”. Hell, I’ve seen claims of having SEO done to a website that had no sitemap, robots, a structure that would make you cringe, no H1’s, no description tags, essentially nothing, and the business owner wondered why they got no results. Sorry for the raving, but this is a huge passion piece of mine when so many companies are giving the rest of us a poor reputation even before we get to introduce ourselves.
I totally agree with you. This is something we have to deal with it on day to day basis. Especially when someone has misinformed or misguded business, its hard to explain that why we are trying to do something or why we need 3-4 months where others are promising them to rank #1 in Google in just one month. Once I met with a client who was guided by another seo person and he thought that writing his website name all over the internet (spamming) is okay and he couldn’t understand that why I’m not spamming at all.
In most cases it’s Time vs Expectations. Hard keywords take longer to rank and need more effort. Also using Google Search console it’s very useful if you are not looking to invest in paid tools, as the website might rank good, but for wrong keywords.
Hi Martin, yes, trying to rank for competitive, popular keywords will take significantly more time and effort. The Google Search console is a great resource for those looking for a free keyword tool to use.
I am going to try not to be paranoid now with all the negative stuff my site could be hacked and attacked with. This was very thought provoking and I am going to look back on some site security! Then, I am going to work on being patient and letting my site get some organic traffic by continuing to do keyword research and write great content. Thanks for all the info here – it really was helpful.
Yeah, that can definitely get nerve wracking, but don’t let the idea of malicious internet users get you down. We had a problem with scrapers a while back, taking and republishing all our content, and it was hurting our rankings. It took some time, but it did get sorted out eventually.
Your website should be “responsive”, this means when your site is viewed on a mobile phone or an iPad it will take the shape of that particular device.
True. Website responsiveness is critical to ranking. Most new websites are built with that in mind, but if the site was designed more than, say, 5 years ago, it may need to be revisited.
Thanks for your very informative inputs, I have been struggling to rank a website since the past 1 year, though took it from not ranking for any keywords to rank on 3 to 6 pages for most of the keywords but it has remained stuck there for a long time.
I think duplicate & insufficient content and hidden text can harm your website rankings. You can also called as negative SEO.
I think having toxic back links harm website ranking more than anything. Most of the time, owners don’t have any idea if they are having links pointing to them from bad neighborhood or have broken links at the first place.
One major issue not mentioned is the fact that performance of the website in terms of the page loading times and other performance factors can negatively affect SEO before content is even determined to be relevant. If your website is loading really slow or there are a ton of errors that cause loading issues, then you website is going to start on the back foot right off the bat.
That’s a good point, and you’ve got me remembering all the times clients have immediately jumped on the “why haven’t you written a million blogs for us yet” bandwagon. And we try to gently remind them that it doesn’t matter how many or how awesome such content is if we’re just dumping it on a site that still has some serious foundational concerns.
Such a great reminder about the cost, time and effort that goes into any worthwhile endeavor, especially SEO. Thanks Andy!
From my experience, almost everyone tries to experience with DIY Seo before consulting a Seo specialist and the major mistakes they keep doing is the keyword stuffing to the extent that one can not read through the main idea of the texts. Also i hardly come by proper meta tags and definitions on these sites.
Yeah. While there are definitely a lot of things that small companies can do on their own to kickstart their optimization efforts, its extremely important that they don’t try any major overhauls on their own without understanding all the potential ramifications.
This guide helped me a lot understand about Indexing of search engine bots. But the mistake I was made on site was, I did not create a sitemap and not submitting on Search console. That thing was screwed my blog and I dont get any traffics.
You’re definitely not alone on that one. A lot of websites we work with are lacking sitemaps. It goes back to those basics that need to be in place before a lot of the more complex SEO strategies can be done.
Hello! Can I ask a question
My website is ranking on the 2-3 page which is highly competitive.
I don’t know the reason why my website not ranking up for a long time.
You have solved my problem up to the extent. Thanks!
I think this is a great article to put what SEO really is into perspective for business owners. I’ve noticed other comments on here that talk about the frustration that comes along with a “bad apple spoiling the bunch” because of empty promises and minimal effort put into the SEO for business owners who don’t know much about how SEO works. There’s a great deal of stress put on business owners to be able to trust the web developer that they’re working with and an article like this helps them out. Good post.
yes i agree with your answer.According to me also the more competitive your target keywords are, the more SEO work it will take for your website to reach the first page.
Useful post. Blog and content marketing is very important part to back up all other SEO efforts but majority of the business owners do not focus on it because they don’t have time to write useful content for the end users, they lose big opportunity which can really pay off in long run in terms of high quality organic traffic
Great article, collaboration of SEO with blogging and marketing strategies are really the key to a more successful promotion of business which will lead to higher ranking.
this article was so useful for me. i notice that my site which was having a daily page view of 12k now find it hard to get 5k daily page view. in search of what to do i find this article .
thanks for some much for this wonderful article here
It’s a great article and really helpful. If I talk about some traditional SEO methods then I would like to say that they are in use from a long time so while keeping the target audience in mind we have to switch our approach towards social era like Facebook, Instagram etc from where we can attract more visitors. And yes along with Off page Techniques, On page techniques will also do effect.
Well before concluding on why your website is not ranking, I would just start from scratch and compare every metrics from the number of words in the page, page speed, Keywords in H1, Title, Meta and some relevant keywords in the article. After Onpage, I would look at Technical which are just website architecture, interlinking, crawling errors, and fixing 301 & 404 errors. After that I would start comparing the Offpage SEO (backlinks) which is my favourite part. Most of the time you will be lacking on these if your competitors are ranking highly above you.
Great article. I think most effective way for good ranking is: title, descryption, content, website performance and good quality external links.
Thanks Andy Eliason! This is really an informative and helpful article. Engaging and authentic content, a self-describing meta description, high-quality backlinks etc. helps websites in higher ranking. It takes a lot of time because SEO is not an overnight process. It takes a constant effort to rank your website at reaching the top spots of the SERP.
Thanks Andy!. Youve made some valid points. I really does take time to gain traffic. SEO is not a very quick process. SEO work also needs patience. It takes effort to get to the top of the serp.
Strongly agree with you bro.
You mentioned some important things to rank a website. First of all UI of a website matters a lot in the ranking of a website. If your UI is not good looking, fewer people will visit the site and no chances of website rank. Second thing is that the content should contain those keywords that user put in the search engine to search for a specific information. More the user related keywords in the content, higher the chances of website rank. It was a valuable article on the topic of SEO.
I think regularity in SEO is the key to success to rank on Google page. I fully agree that SEO is not an overnight process and it takes time so we must have patient.
A great article and information has been shared by you for all of us who are really worried about the website ranking.
Thanks Andy! This is very informative but I don’t why my website is not performing well in search engine maybe because it is just 4 month old?
That is a definite possibility. A website that young definitely has its work cut out for it in order to show Google that it is as authoritative as the more established sites. At the same time, even a site that has been online for years can still be looking at 6 months or more to start seeing some real changes from a new SEO campaign. It all depends on the industry and the competition for those relevant rankings.
Hi Andy!
Wow!! grate a post… it should be mandatory reading for all small business owners who delve into the online world (which should be all small business owners).
You often see “shortcut to success”, but I think you can truly credit the content of this post as being one of them. my website was not performing any ranking from the last 2 years because of duplicate and Insufficient contents. And its really helpful
Hi Andy. Thanks for this great article. Your point about not underestimating our competition is so true. It’s always important to monitor our keywords and how they stack against our competitors’.
very informative ,what about keywords planning and competitors analysis ???
Even after working very hard i am unable to get my website for better ranking due to more competition on that keyword.
Agreed! There are always frequent algorithm updates on google that could change the game.
This is a very interesting piece. I’ve been struggling to rank my website for some time now. How long do you estimate it takes to start seeing the full effect of seo
I have made 200 backlinks and 150 no follows then what is the next step for more do follow backlink. should I go for Gust post and influencer marketing?
Thanks for sharing your valuable content. I think normality in SEO is the way to progress to rank on Google page. I completely concur that SEO isn’t a medium-term process and it requires investment so we should have tolerance.
A great article and data have been shared by you for every one of us who are extremely stressed over the website ranking.
You just said the right words. SEO is not an overnight process. We must make the strategy and right kind of plan, and have to wait for the result. One of the major thing which stack us in backward is right competition keywords choosing and on page SEO optimization. If we could give emphasis on these 2 things primarily, we could gain much better results. And other things as you mentioned in your post also should be highly considered by any blog owner.
Btw, thanks for sharing a much-needed topic which really appreciatable. Keep up the great work!
Hello
A really useful read for beginners and strugglers. One other factor that needs to be addressed is correcting and resolving pagespeed which has some factors to rank well. Aim for the high echelon of the green zone. With that resolved, SEO is the process of helping search engines find the content on your website that best matches the intent. But the understanding how to CORRECTLY APPLY the SEO is pivotal to your success. Times have changed, you can achieve a page one ranking on Google within a couple of hours.
Its a new website it would some time to rank well in search engines. First need to reduce the website errors and following the updates of search engines, It would be help to website ranking.
I am here because my website is not ranking on the keyword. One thing that competitor very big like HomeAway and Airbnb. But some site who has not good backlink they are ranking on the first page.
Good Job in explaining the stuff. But still there could be many factors that might be responsible for the ranking.
Does Google sandbox plays huge part in the ranking too? I’ve seen new websites shooting up in rank like the sandbox does not exist.
It’s better to write long format content powered by longtail keywords so that one can cover most topics in a single article instead of creating a new article which in turn leads to thin content issues.
Can anyone help me in finding out whether my website is affected by any google algorithm update because the ranking of website has dropped suddenly.
I am searching on the internet about how to get rank then I found your blog. I am totally impressed by your blog information. Thanks.
Ok, how to know where the problem is? I’ve been checked all the points and factors which might cause the rank drop. Google console is showing up no manual penalty or anything, So How to know where the problem is lying? Seo is just confusing even though We’ walk through the google’s guidelines.
This is a very nicely written article with very key points mentioned. Even I am facing this issue- my website is 3 months old now and is still not ranking in SERP. I would give it a check on all the points that you have mentioned here. Thanks for this mate!
Sir thanx for sharing this information. But tell me one thing that how much DA you need actually to rank in google search results in which competitors are having DA of 40-60?
Please answer.
And once again thanx for information
Well, brother, you should not ONLY be looking for DA and pa while trying to outrank someone who has DA more than 40-60. The first thing should be checking out their link profile, especially the website where they are getting referral traffic with a do-follow BL and then according to that. you should be trying out your BL building work. if you’d like to know more about this please feel free to msg me
The biggest issue with me is searching a good keywords for SEO.
I like the part where you say beauty is only skin deep…
It’s not about how the website looks, it’s about how to make it convert well!
And also getting the traffic the website needs 😉
How to rank your website, blog post, or page on Google’s first page at the top. Learn the techniques and strategies to win every time.
You should try different technique line first on-page optimization with H1, H2, H3, title and your website structure then you need to apply all schema code,then go for off page activities and try to create baclink through guest blogging and press release submission. Try to implement these technique and wait for a while you definitely get the results
You mentioned some important things to rank a website…
Overall speed and performance aside from content is important too!
I am doing SEO for the past 6 months and my website ranked on 2 pages of google search engine. suddenly I lost the ranking of my site Now my site is stuck on page 13 for the past 1 month. what should I do?
The ranking of the website mostly depends on the difficulty on the keywords we are trying to rank our website. So, in my experience if the website is new, does not have a high domain authority, it is better to select long tail keywords with less keyword difficulty score.
Content, too plays a major role in ranking a page for a specific keyword. Gone are the days, one can write 400 words content and rank a page. These days, a website needs indepth content with readability flesch score above 60.
Apart from this, website also needs quality backlinks to rank. SEO is not a one solution fit all process. For each website, we need to create a strategy based on the niche the website needs to rank.
I think Consistency in SEO is the key to Rank your website on Google. If you are creating back Links with regularity so your website will be Rank soon. And one More important things is that DA and PA. If DA is over 50 your website will rank easily.
Are you guys agree with my Opinion ??
Your article is very informative . I learn more knowledge by reading your article
Thanks Andy! This is very informative blog. As per my Experience High DA Back links, Blog Posting, Social Media Posting, Guest Posting will increase our Domain Authority and Page Authority. Need to Fix Website loading Speed, Google Insight Speed for Desktop and Mobile Version. it will help us to increase our ranking.