Category: SEO Management
You’ve had a new website built, or you’ve had one for a while, and you’ve just searched for your own business name on Google. Nothing. Or perhaps your Facebook page and a directory listing come up, but your actual website is nowhere to be seen.
It’s a horrible feeling, but it’s more common than you’d think, and the cause is often something simple. Before you assume the worst, it’s worth working through a few checks. Most of them take a couple of minutes and need nothing more than a browser.
There’s an important difference to get clear first, though. Not appearing on Google at all is a different problem from appearing but not ranking well. This post is about the first one. If your website is on Google but you’re on page four for the things you sell, that’s a job for SEO, which we’ll come back to at the end.
Check whether Google knows your website exists
The quickest test is to go to Google and type “site:” followed by your web address, with no spaces, for example site:yourbusiness.co.uk. Google will show you every page from your website that it has in its index.
If you see a list of your pages, Google knows about your website, and your problem is about ranking rather than being missing. If you see nothing at all, Google either hasn’t found your website yet or has been told not to include it.
If your website is brand new, give it time
Google doesn’t find new websites instantly. It discovers them by following links from other websites and from information site owners give it. A brand new website with no links pointing to it can take anything from a few days to a few weeks to appear, and sometimes longer.
You can speed this up by setting up Google Search Console, a free tool from Google, and adding your website to it. Once you’ve proved you own the site, you can submit your sitemap (a file most website platforms create automatically that lists all your pages) and ask Google to look at your most important pages. It doesn’t guarantee anything, but it helps.
Getting a few genuine links from elsewhere also helps Google find you. Your Google Business Profile, local directories and any trade bodies you belong to are good places to start.
Check you haven’t told Google to stay away
This is the one that catches out a surprising number of businesses, especially after a new website goes live.
While a website is being built, developers often switch on a setting that tells search engines not to index it, so that half-finished pages don’t appear on Google. That’s sensible. The trouble comes when nobody switches it off again at launch.
If your website runs on WordPress, have a look under Settings and then Reading. There’s a box called “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”. If it’s ticked, Google is being asked to ignore your whole website. Untick it, save, and then ask Google to look again through Search Console.
Other website platforms have similar settings, often in the SEO or privacy section. It’s also possible for individual pages to have a “noindex” instruction, or for a file called robots.txt to block search engines. If you’re not comfortable checking these yourself, whoever built your website should be able to tell you in a few minutes.
Look at what Search Console is telling you
Once your website is in Google Search Console, it becomes much easier to see what’s going on. The page indexing report shows which of your pages Google has included and which it hasn’t, with a reason for each.
Some of those reasons are perfectly normal. Google won’t index every version of every page, and that’s fine. But if your homepage or your main service pages are listed as not indexed, the reason given will usually point you towards the problem, whether that’s a noindex instruction, a page Google couldn’t reach, or a page it decided wasn’t worth including.
Search Console will also tell you if there’s a serious problem, such as a security issue or a manual action, which is when someone at Google has found your website breaking its rules. These are rare for ordinary local businesses, but they’re worth ruling out.
Check your website actually works for Google
Sometimes Google can find your website but can’t read it properly. That can happen if the website is very slow, if it relies on features Google struggles with, or if pages are hidden behind logins or forms.
A simple test is to look at your website on your phone. Google looks at the mobile version of your site first, so if pages are missing, broken or painfully slow on a phone, that’s worth fixing whatever else is going on. Search Console’s URL inspection tool will also show you how Google sees an individual page.
Moved website recently?
If you’ve changed your web address or rebuilt your website and your rankings disappeared afterwards, the likely cause is that the old pages weren’t properly redirected to the new ones.
When a page moves, a redirect tells Google, and your visitors, where it has gone. Without one, Google sees the old pages disappear and has to start again with the new ones, losing much of the value the old ones had built up. If this sounds familiar, speak to whoever built your new website about putting redirects in place as soon as possible. The sooner it’s done, the better.
Still not there?
If you’ve worked through all of this and your website still isn’t appearing, or it’s appearing but nowhere near where it should be, it’s time to get someone to look properly.
A full SEO audit looks at everything from how your website is built to the content on each page and the links pointing to it, and it should tell you in plain English what’s wrong and what to do first. We wrote about some of the free things you can do in our post on getting the most from your SEO, and much of it still applies.
If you’d like a second pair of eyes, the friendly, experienced team at Spire Digital help businesses in Salisbury and the surrounding area with search engine optimisation (SEO), starting with an audit of your website. Give us a call on 01722 320 500 and we’ll take a look.