Your Quick SEO Guide to Why Your Website Is Not Ranking

Creating a website is a big investment that can bring in a lot of profit for your business. But, what happens when your website isn’t ranking on Google? Do you abandon it with all hope lost? When your website isn’t ranking, it is important to first determine the reasons why it’s not ranking and then create solutions for it.

Don’t just easily abandon your website!  Here are the 5 major reasons why your website isn’t ranking and how to deal with it. Let’s get started!

Reason 1: Pretty website, poor content.

Probably considered the top reason why your website is not ranking in search engines is the poorly written content.

There’s no easier way to say this but, even though your website might be pretty, if the content isn’t that good, none of your patrons or readers would like to come back to it. Isn’t content the reason why people come back to websites every now and then?

To address this, here are a few tips that you can implement to improve your website’s content:

Reference credible sources.

Whenever a website makes a claim about the efficiency of a product or anything that tests the product’s credibility, the writer must make the time to research it.

However, it is imperative that the source of information must come from credible sources. How do you know if the source is credible? For one, their claims must come from actual research studies. Searching for research studies have now been made easier thanks to Google Scholar.

Cite sources properly.

Since you’re going to make a reference from credible sources, you also must be able to properly cite them in your posts. There are a number of ways of citing sources properly.

There’s the American Psychological Association or APA, Oxford, Chicago, etc. Whatever you’re used to. Sure, we’re not writing thesis papers in our posts, what we’re trying to say, however, is that your references must be properly cited in order to prevent plagiarism.

Write using the proper grammar.

There’s nothing like finding a good-looking website only to find that their content isn’t written using the correct grammar. Spelling mistakes, tenses issues, the use of passive voice, improper punctuation marks–I get it, this must be the way the new generation speaks!

But in written form, bad grammar is the equivalent of amateur and unprofessional. There are a variety of tools you can use to correct or find grammatical mistakes, like Grammarly! It can do it for you, free of charge. Why let your website continue to rank poorly because of bad grammar?

Place links when and where appropriate.

Link placement is an art. As a content writer, you need to know where links should be properly placed. Having links all over the place as well as having excessive links can actually get you in trouble.

It could cause your website to be put in Google’s penalty box (more on that later). Putting relevant links from your site or links within your site will allow more ways for your website to become more credible. But, remember, links must be used sparingly and appropriately.

Write about relevant topics related to your field.

When you have a website or a blog, it’s so easy to just write about topics or think of topics. However, if the purpose of your website is to not only inform your customers about how your day went, then it must be said that strategic content planning is required.

If your website or business is selling bicycles, some of the topics that you might want to consider writing about might be any of the following:

1. – Reviews of protective gears such as helmet, knee pad, elbow pad, gloves, etc.
2. – Where to buy the best cycling shorts or shirts.
3. – Accessories such as water bottles

Some other topics that might be relevant would be:

1. – The best trail to bike on.
2. – How-to maintain a bike.
3. – Choosing the appropriate wheels for your ride.

We cannot stress how important content planning is to make your website successful. In this way, your readers will always have something to come back to whenever they go to your site. 

Reason 2: Your keyword strategy is weak.

Another possible reason why your website is not ranking is your use of keywords. When it comes to SEO, keyword is the key.

That said, planning for your keywords is essential and if you don’t have a keyword strategy in place, you’re going to be wasting a lot of time and money. Keyword stuffing has lost its place in the world of content writing.

Just like if you randomly put links anywhere in your site, you’ll be penalized for stuffing your website with keywords randomly! Just like when you’re putting in links, you need to put keywords where it matters and when it matters.

Reason 3: Your website is new.

Some people think that once all the keyword strategy and content planning is in place, their website will automatically shoot to the first page of Google. This is a misconception.

Just like everything else in life, ranking takes time. It may be weeks or months. If you’re confident that you’ve done everything correctly in terms of having great content, a user-friendly website design, properly used keywords, properly placed links, etc. then, all you can do for now is to wait. 

Reason 4: Google’s penalty box.

Google’s penalty box is a big pain especially if you’re trying your very best to make your website rank. Because sometimes, it’s just not your fault why you’re in the penalty box.

Google’s penalty box is basically like landing on the jail tile on monopoly. Google will review your website for any bad links that are embedded or linking to your website. By bad links, we mean links that direct people to spam or phishing websites.

In order to avoid this, here are some steps that you can take in order for your website to avoid being penalized.

1. – Review links linking to your website through Google’s Webmaster Tools. You can begin doing this by downloading all of the links available on your site.
2. – Once downloaded, you can use tools that can help you inspect and filter through each of the links. You can use Monitor Backlinks or SEM Rush.
3. – Inspect the links and take note of the ones that have:
   1. – No relation to your website.
   2. – Low quality content.
   3. – Links that direct to adult or gambling sites.
   4. – External links that are also linking to low-quality websites.
4. – The final step that you can do once you have identified these bad links is to ask the webmaster to have your website removed from their backlinks. If they are asking for payment in return to have your website removed, you can report them to Google and they will disavow these websites for you. 

Reason 5: You’re in a very competitive market.

Finally, a reason why your website might not be ranking is because you are currently in a very competitive market.  There isn’t so much that you can do to address this, except to keep on creating high-quality/credible content that is relevant to those within your locality.

When you’re in a very competitive market, you just can’t surrender. After all, you created this business because you have something to offer. That only means that you can give your target audience a different perspective. Write about topics from a different point of view.

Make your content more powerful, meatier, and juicier. Being in a competitive market only means that you have to work harder and work smarter to get to the point that you want.

Final words from Be Eminent

There you have it, a list of the basic reasons why your website isn’t ranking. Think of your website as your own body. When you enrich it, it will become stronger thus having the power to show up in the first pages of the search engine results. If you’re having trouble making your website rank, you can always reach out to our team here at Be Eminent. Contact us today to learn more!