My New Website Doesn't Show Up in Search. Why?
The launch of a new business is an exciting time. You put a lot of time and energy into perfecting your logo, brand, and of course, your website.
You work over every detail and set the launch date. Then, everything goes live. The site is up and the door are open for business -- but no one can find your site. Your business website isn't showing up in search.
This is a frustrating situation to find yourself in, but there are reasons why your site isn't showing up and fortunately, some ways to fix this problem.
New Websites Don't Immediately or Automatically Show Up in Search
A new website doesn't immediately start to show up in search the moment it goes live. It can take a few days or even a week for Google to crawl your website and see how it should rank. Then, it can take weeks after that for sites to show up in search results.
But, sitting around and letting time pass isn't the way to get your new website to start showing up in search.
There are things you can do to expedite the process and get your site showing and ranking faster.
How to Get Your Website to Show Up (and Rank) In Search
Here are a few ways you can get your site to start showing up and ranking in search.
#1) Make Sure Your Website Is Indexed
Your website should be indexed by search engines so they become aware of your site. There are a few ways you can test to see whether your website is indexed and steps you can take to get your pages indexed if they aren’t.
First, check to see whether your site is indexed. You can do this by searching the exact URL in Google and seeing if your website comes up. If not, you need to be indexed. Next, submit your website for indexing. Google has this option on its search console. This basically tells the crawlers that your site is live and ready for their attention.
#2) Build Links That Point To Your Website
Additionally, Google’s crawlers find your website through inbound links. Once you know that your site is ranking on Google, you can take steps to increase those rankings so your page shows up more often.
Consider developing a marketing and SEO strategy to announce the launch of your website or the opening of your business. This should help when news outlets and relevant blogs link to your page and create inbound links that search engines can follow.
Also, create social media accounts for your brand that include links back to your website, and build profiles on business directory websites that also link back to your website. Each link that mentions and points back to your business from other site helps boost your SEO.
#3) Create Content That Keeps Crawlers Engaged
Getting search engine crawlers to visit your website once isn’t enough. You want to make sure you provide enough information to these bots to tell them about your brand. You can start by submitting a sitemap to Google that gives crawlers information about your website. (This can be done through the search console link above.)
You also need to check to make sure each page has relevant content that benefits your brand. Make sure your pages have target keywords related to your products or services, information about your locations, and metadata that search engines can understand. Without great content, you’re bound to confuse both human visitors and search engine crawlers.
Finally, you want to keep creating content. This gives crawlers (and people) reasons to return to your website. This can be as simple as highlighting a customer review or as dedicated as the creation of a blog to write articles for SEO. Each time you post something new on your website, search engine crawlers evaluate it and determine where it should fall in the SERPs.
#4) Develop a Realistic Keyword Strategy
One of the main reasons why brands won’t show up in search results is because they target hyper-competitive keywords. They focus on national keywords even though they are local businesses, or expect to immediately stand out against some of the most experienced pages on the web.
For example, a new law firm might try to rank for the phrase “attorney,” not realizing how competitive that term is. Instead, they can create a local keyword strategy where they rank for “local Tampa attorney,” or “Tampa workers comp attorney.” Simply adding these additional words and phrases dramatically reduces the competition to rank well. While it will still be hard to break through, especially with a new website, it won’t be impossible.
Oftentimes, these targeted keywords are more likely to drive customers who click and convert than more generic options anyway. Someone looking for a specific attorney type at a specific location is likely looking to hire someone, as opposed to people simply wanting to learn what attorneys do or what fields they represent.
If your website and content marketing strategy is fully-functioning but you’re not getting the traffic you want, you may need to adjust your keywords to target SERPs with less competition.
#5) Optimize Your Website for Technical SEO
SEO extends beyond the worlds of content and keyword optimization. There are multiple technical factors to consider when you want to increase your rankings. For example, a few steps you can take to make sure everything is functioning normally include:
- Check your settings in WordPress, Wix, etc. to make sure you are open to search engine visibility.
- Review your messages in the search console to see if your website has been penalized or sandboxed because of content violations.
- Install SEO widgets that check the health of your website and each page.
- Complete SEO audits to make sure the backend of your website is healthy and optimized.
- Optimize page speed and user experience using. Page Speed Insights is a great tool to help.
The problem might be as simple as making sure your pages are open to crawlers after the website development process or could be more complex. Google and other search engines try to be as communicative as possible with domain managers to make sure the reasons for penalties are clear and fixable. Plus, when your website is thriving on Google, it likely will start showing up on other pages as well.
#6) Use Structured Data Markup on Your Website
Over the years, the internet continues to evolve and become more structured. Google, Schema.org and others are helping force more standardizing structure on the web. Structured data and structured content include:
- Reviews
- Events
- Local Businesses
- FAQ
- Datasets
- Job Postings
- Articles
- Products
- & More
Google provides a wealth of educational material around structured data and structured content. Read through understanding how structured data works. Structured data not only helps improve search rankings to be found, it also enhances your website visibility to appear in many result types of Google, Bing and other search engines.
Make Sure Your New Website Is Performing at Its Best
If you just launched a website and want to make sure it’s in the best possible position to rank well and drive traffic to your brand, then reach out to MyArea Network. We offer free website consultations where we review your pages and SEO factors to make sure you’re in the best position to drive sales. We can’t promise a first position ranking or hundreds of visitors overnight, but we can create a plan for improvement.
Contact us today to make sure your new website is growing your business, not holding it back.
