At this point, you have been dumping dollar after dollar into your website without seeing the rankings, traffic, and leads follow suit. Maybe, you felt like you broke the Google code and were ranking really well. Your business was booming and all of the sudden, a large portion of your rankings were gone overnight. It is all too common to think that Google and other search engines are working against you and keeping you from growing your business. Simply put, that is not the case. Something has happened or hasn’t been happening on or off your website that is causing this. It’s always better to think of these search engines as a business partner rather than the driving force behind you not ranking. These could be the top 5 reasons you’re not ranking.
Technical SEO Errors
Technical errors are always the best first place to look if you’re not ranking. It can seem overwhelming to think you need to be an SEO expert to be able to identify these errors, but there are so many available tools out there that would crawl your website just like a search engine would and help you find these errors that may be on your website.
- 404 Errors – These can be a ranking killer for your website. When someone goes to a page on your website, the page can come back as not being found (404 Error). These can be fixed with a simple redirect.
- Broken Links – The linking structure on your website is very important to your user experience and the search engines know that. Imagine clicking a link and having it go to nowhere or to a dead page. It hurts the experience and your rankings.
- Mobile Friendliness – With a majority of searches happening on mobile devices these days, you need to make sure that your website is responsive to mobile devices.
- Duplicate Content – Google and other search engines want good, unique content on each page of your site. If you have pages on your site that have the same exact content as others, search engines don’t know which page to show in the results and might not show either.
Algorithm Changes
Changes don’t happen often but some of the bigger ones have had a major impact on rankings. The general rule of thumb is to make sure your SEO efforts are as organic as possible. Most of the time when there is an algorithm change, it is to combat those that are participating in Black Hat SEO tactics. Do your SEO the right way and the impact will always be minimal. If you do experience a rankings drop, make sure you have an expert in your corner that can help you navigate the changes and fix the issues.
NAP Inconsistencies
If you want to rank locally and implement directories in your link building efforts, your name, address, and phone number need to be consistent. When some is performing a “near me” search or a geolocated search, Google checks your directory links to try and give the user the best result for their query. If your business is not listed consistently, it can put into question where you actually are and hurt your rankings.
Speed and Server Issues
There are a few things around your website speed to keep in mind to ensure it’s not one of the reasons you’re not ranking.
- Your website hosting service matters. In most cases, a basic plan will suffice, but for a bigger website that needs to interact with its users, it is ideal to not cheap out on your hosting provider. Like with most things in life, you get what you pay for.
- Depending on how you look at it, it can be bad that anyone can build a website these days. If you really want to use your website as a major marketing tool, have it built by a professional on WordPress without page builders. Once again, you get what you pay for.
Competition Links and Content
Chances are you aren’t the only one who provides the services that you do. The secret is out and someone else has hopped into your market and is taking all the real estate on the results page. How does this affect your ranking though?
- Links – Search engines can be looked at as just a big popularity contest. Every link you have pointing back to you is a “vote” in the popularity contest.
- Content – Search engines love big sites that post relevant and unique content as much as possible.
If you do everything else right but don’t have as many links and content as your competition then you will be missing out on the ranking opportunity!
Knowledge is power, so if you know the reasons you’re not ranking, then it’s up to you to fix it. If you want a free assessment of your website contact us today!
