Why Does My Website Not Appear In Google Search?

5 billion searches are performed every single day! Yes 5 BILLION, with a “B”, that’s BILLION and it’s not a typo!

That’s a LOT of eyeballs and if you’re website is not displaying on the #1 page of the top 3 search engines, you’re likely missing plenty of potential customers who are looking for your products or services.

According to our research into more than 400 websites….. 89% of businesses spend 300% more time in the first 12 months of getting a new or redesigned website than they do working to ensure their site can easily be found on the top 3 search engines. Whaaaaat? Seriously no sorry that can’t be right, so we double checked our results and it WAS right! 89%!!

Companies are much more worried about getting a nice looking website than they are of developing a website that can be FOUND.

Let’s put this into perspective for a moment…. a website is your online version of a bricks and mortar store (a bricks and mortar store is what you find on your local high street or shopping complex such as Westfields) and yes we understand it, you want your store to look amazing just like you want the same for your website.

Would it really be worth all the effort of creating a beautiful store layout and front window signage if you were never going to receive any significant amount of visitors? If you knew upfront your store was not going to get any significant amount of visitors would you really go into all that effort with the layout design? Probably not…. you probably wouldn’t have signed up to that lease and put yourself in that spot in the first place.

So based on that small piece of logic, we were very VERY surprised to find so many businesses not putting any significant effort in to ensure Google loves and appreciates their website and displays it on the first page of Google when someone is looking for your products or services.

So we’ve crafted a quick Getting Started Guide to help kick start you in the right direction.

But before we get into the nitty gritty of some of the finer points let’s quickly touch on the basics of how Google Ranks your website.

In order to show up for a search term (search term is a phrase or question a user types into a search engine) those exact or very similar words must at least appear across your website somewhere. Google cannot display you as the Best Website Design Agency in Parramatta if none of those words appear on your website.

So if you’re selling Captain America toys you better make sure there’s at least a few pages with the words “Captain America Toys” written on them. This is how Google will first identify all the sites worthy of being displayed within the search term.

So step one in any new website design or website re-design is to ensure those keywords, phrases, questions you’d like your site to display in Google for are written within the content of your pages.

Now that Google has cast your site aside as a potential result you need to build your case to Google and prove that you are worthy, over all your competitors to be shown on the first page.

Here are a couple of insights on how the big 3 search engines score your website.

Google can see EVERYTHING that relates to your business online.

Any article you’ve written, social media post you’ve uploaded or youtube video you’ve uploaded Google can see. Google is also very good at understanding what media across the internet belongs to which websites and which websites belong to which companies. But, you can also make it a lot easier for Google to do its research by ensuring you are leaving some type of url trail to everything or at least a mention of your business name or website URL (url is your websites address).

By placing your business name or url at the bottom of an article you’ve posted on a news site you are enabling Google to quickly and easily link it back to your website and give you some credit for that article.

The same is true with your social media accounts. If you have a link on your website to all your social media accounts or links on your social media profiles back to your website then you’ve again assisted Google in finding your website and you’ll receive credibility for everything that happens on your social media accounts.

Now take these same principles across everything you post online to ensure it can all be traced back to your website and you’ll be well rewarded for it.

Know what your Competitors are doing at all times.

Let me just jump back a little to where I first mentioned that your site has been selected by Google as a potential result for a search term someone has just typed into its search engine. Once you’ve made this stage Google will now start to run hundreds of algorithms to determine which site has the best information based on the search term entered.

In order to do this Google will scour the internet and look for reasons that your website is better or worse than others in the potentials list. Things like how many followers do you have on your social media accounts, how often do your followers engage with your posts, how many times are the articles you’re written for other sites ready, how active are you in trying to engage and educate your audience, how many visitors does your site currently receive, how many pages does the average visitor view and how long do they stay on your site are all key indicators of the credibility of your website.

Generally speaking the site with the MOST credibility wins and is awarded the #1 position in Googles results.

A picture of what Google is trying to achieve should now have entered your head and look a little like a comparison table with hundreds of thousands of sites. And the site with the best score wins. It’s not quite as easy as this but these are the basic fundamentals of being noticed by Google and showing up in a respectable position inside of Googles results.

Now if your site is currently on page 4 or 5, all is not lost, you have been noticed by Google, you simply need to up your game and prove to Google that your site is best equipped at satisfying the user searching for your products or services.

Let’s run through a very basic example using 2 car companies. I’m going to use Tesla (Because I’ve just finished reading Elon Musk’s autobiography by Ashlee Vance) and we’ll run Tesla against Mazda which is the car I drive.

The search term we’re going to use is: “Fuel Efficient Sedan” (This is not a REAL test based on REAL Google results so don’t bother Googling it, it’s not there, this is just for the sake of the example)

So first of all I’m going to assume that both websites have those 3 words somewhere across their websites if not on multiple pages and written multiple times, so they’ve both be pre-selected as possible 1st page results.

Let’s also touch base on the credibility Google can see across the internet. Let’s say that Tesla is right on top of their game and they have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn profiles as well as many others, Tesla will now receive points for all of its efforts in these areas and all the other areas they’re mentioned across the internet. But so is Mazda, it’s a very close competition this one as these two big players are actually both worthy of the almighty #1 position in Google.

Google will now dig deeper and in doing this Google starts to notice some differences in these 2 websites. Firstly Google may see that Mazda’s website actually has these 3 words mentioned across it many more times as Tesla deals in “battery powered cars”.

So now Mazda may have just notched ahead of Tesla a little in the scores but once Google starts to dig a lot deeper into Tesla’s engagement with its followers/customers and every post Tesla uploads to it’s social media channels, they get many more Shares and Comments compared to that of Mazda’s audience who are still very engaged but only at about 50% of its competitor Tesla.

This may be enough for Google to award Tesla the most sort after position on the internet. The number one position inside Googles ranking. Now remember this is just an example, Many websites and articles state that Google looks into more than 500 key areas across every site on the internet (that deserves the attention), all of these key areas they do not discuss with anyone.

This is their Intellectual Property…. for them to know and for all of us to go absolutely bonkers trying to figure out. And it just to make the game impossible to perfect, Google tweak and perfect their algorithms at least every 12 months.

So to be taken seriously by the top search engines you need to be proving your worth. Just like the cavemen did back in their day, it was toughen up and get them game faces on or be eaten. Quite simple and quite a powerful reason to get good game. So toughen up your website, build a case in Googles eyes that eats up all those websites competing with the same attention spans that your website is and watch your business get rewarded for your efforts.

The top 3 Search Engines at the time of writing are:

1. Google
2. Bing
3. Yaho
   

These are the 3 Big Scary Interviewers you’re trying to impress most as they account for just over 93% of those 5 Billion daily searches! So go show them that you your company has GAME!!

We hope you’ve had a little light bulb moment reading this article. If you have any examples of how you’ve made changes to your website and reaped the rewards from the big 3 search engines we’d love to hear your comments below.