Building a new website for your business is a terrific first step toward recruiting new customers. But it’s not enough if you want potential customers AND Google to discover you on the internet.
Google, yes! How will customers find your website if Google can’t locate it?
Google takes time to identify and rank a brand-new website in its search results. So if you just launched your website, we can fairly claim we know why you’re not showing up in search engine results. However, if your website has been up and running for some time, there are more significant issues.
Today, I’d want to walk you through the 5 most frequent reasons your website isn’t ranking in Google’s search engine results, as well as what you can do to remedy it.
Using the Incorrect Keywords
While choosing the proper keywords may seem straightforward in certain businesses. It may be tricky in others. Keywords and phrases are search terms that potential clients could use to locate your law company. Are you letting search engines know that you are a personal injury lawyer by include that keyword phrase in your website’s meta title or the H1 tag of your personal injury page? If you aren’t, Google and users will have no idea what your page or website is about.
Pro Tip: If your homepage’s meta title or H1s say “Home,” “Welcome,” or “Law Firm,” you should replace them right away!
While people may search for “[City] personal injury lawyer” or “injury law firm near me,” there are a plethora of beneficial keywords that might lead a searcher to your website and turn them into a customer.
How can I locate these keywords?
There are several ways to uncover keywords relevant to your business, including employing SEO tools like SEMRush or AHrefs. You may also use Google Search Console to examine how people are discovering your website.
Once you’ve compiled a list of keywords, make sure to associate them with the proper pages on your website. Incorporating them into your metadata, header tags, and site content will significantly increase your SEO efforts.
Your website is not being indexed by Google and doesn’t Rank
Another reason you could not be appearing in search engine results is that Google cannot discover or index your website. This implies that they aren’t saving it in their database for whatever reason.
Your website lacks a sitemap.
Submitting a sitemap to Google Search Console is one approach to get Google to locate your website and start ranking it.
What exactly is a sitemap, you ask?
A sitemap is a list of pages on your website that search engines will explore to learn more about it. While your website may not be crawled right away, you will receive proof that your sitemap was uploaded and crawled.
How Do I Make a Sitemap?
It is simple to submit a sitemap. Simply log in to Google Search Console, pick sitemaps from the left pane, and follow the instructions.
Your pages have been designated as noindex
You may not be in Google’s index because a technical directive in your robots.txt file or a noindex directive at the page level prevents Google from crawling your website. You might not even be aware that something was done.
Noindexing a page informs search engines that you do not want your website’s pages to be indexed in Google’s database. While there may be times when you want to do this, most of the time you want Google to index your content.
If your pages are labeled noindex, you may examine the source code of your website, or if your website is constructed using a CMS such as WordPress, just select “Page” in the left pane, and check the page directives to the right of the page name in the main window.
There are no authoritative backlinks
Once you have a website, you must take actions to establish online authority and credibility in order to be noticed and ranked by search engines. Google strives to provide its customers with the best results possible, therefore it ranks web pages from sites that indicate knowledge in their subject (for example, an attorney blogging about the law) based on their content and domain authority. The quantity of high quality, authoritative backlinks connecting to a website’s pages is a crucial component in determining its rank.
What Exactly Are Backlinks and the effects to Rank
Backlinks are hyperlinks that connect one website to another. They are merely a recommendation or vote of confidence from one site to another. These links are used by search engines to locate and rank your website.
Citations are another crucial SEO criteria for local companies that help define their online authority. These include, to mention a few, Google Business Profile (GBP), Apple Maps, Yelp, and AVVO. These local and legal citations can assist raise the authority of your website and increase your chances of ranking online.
Acquiring backlinks may be time-consuming and difficult, which is why many law firms engage SEO services to assist them increase their websites’ authority and establish them on the internet.
Google has penalized your website
This one is a little difficult to find out, but if you violated Google’s criteria, you may have received a Google Penalty. This may range from creating a large number of spammy backlinks to your website to employing overly optimized anchor text or thin/duplicate content.
If you receive a penalty, you will lose organic traffic and ranks, making your website difficult to locate in search results.
Here are two methods for determining whether your website has been compromised.
Is there a manual action available?
Log into Google Search Console to see if your website has been subjected to a manual action. Select your website in the upper left corner, followed by manual actions in the left column. Once you’ve resolved the issue, you may resubmit your website for review.
Google has published a new algorithm update
Many times, one of Google’s periodic algorithm modifications is to blame for your website’s problems. These algorithm adjustments alter how Google finds and ranks web pages, affecting many websites throughout the internet.
It can be difficult to determine if you have been affected by an algorithm update, so you can check right here on our Martindale-Avvo blog for the latest updates or use a tool like Panguin that works in conjunction with your analytics data to help determine if your website traffic drops coincide with a Google Algorithm change.
SEO Marketing Company to Rank in Google
LadiTech’s SEO services are designed to assist you improve your rankings and increase your traffic. Learn how partnering with our SEO professionals may help your business improve its rankings. Remember that “SEO is a never-ending activity,” thus there is no such thing as a static SEO plan that will remain forever. As a result of altering online customer behavior, search engines have also developed a variety of restrictions. However, you must consider your target audience’s likes and dislikes, the usability of your website, and well-thought-out SEO tactics.
