website isn’t showing up on Google

Reasons Your Website Isn’t Showing Up on Google

Your website isn’t showing up on Google search. What could be the reasons your website isn’t showing up on Google?

Before we get started on trying to find out the reasons your website isn’t showing on Google. You need to run this simple test to find out if your website (url) has been indexed by Google.

Search for the exact url of your domain on Google. Example: https://seomarketingmap.ca

Google indexing can be said to have occurred when Google crawlers have crawled your web pages and are aware of its existence.

Below is a sample of what you should get if your website has been indexed by Google.

Google Search Result
Google Search Result

Some noteworthy information you should understand about Google indexing of your website is that Google indexes web pages of your website individually. While it could be true that Google is aware of the existence of your website, there’s a possibility that it has not indexed some pages of your site. As a result, those pages will not be able to show up on Google for relevant keywords.

Before you can conclude that your website isn’t showing up on Google, you should see these 3 conditions which are necessary for your website to show up on Google.

  • Google is aware of the existence of your website and has indexed all or at least the pages of your website you want to rank for.
  • There’s a page of your website with contents containing some keywords of users’ queries.
  • You’ve met most Google’s factors for ranking web pages

Reasons Your Website Isn’t Showing Up on Google

For your website to actually show up on Google, you must meet all 3 conditions discussed above. If you’ve met all these conditions and your website still does not show up on Google, then something is truly wrong. You should investigate to find out which among the following reasons your website isn’t showing up on Google.

1. Website is Still New

If your website is “fresh from the oven”, there’s a high probability that it won’t show up on Google search.

However, if a search of your site’s url on Google produces at least one result, that means Google has indexed your site.

There’s also a possibility that even though Google has discovered your site, it is yet to discover some of your web pages. This is common for newly published web pages.

You can check if Google has indexed specific pages of your website by searching for yourwebsite.com/a-page-you-want-to-show-up-in-google/.

Example:

google search result
Google Search Result

If no result is produced by either a search of your site’s url or a search of a specific page of your website, that means your site or web pages have not been indexed. You may need to speed up the process by sending a manual invitation to Google crawlers to index your site. The  requires that you submit a sitemap through Google Search Console. Further down this post, we’ll talk about how to index your website on Google.

2. Web Page Has “No Index” Tags Active

No index Meta tags is used to instruct search engines not to index certain pages of your website.

No index tags is a piece of html code that looks like this:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”/>

It is often used by developers during development to stop search engines from indexing particular web pages that are yet to be completed. Sometimes, when the job is done, they forget to remove the “no index” tags. To fix this, you should manually inspect your site codes for no index line of code and remove it.

3. “Discourage Search Engine Box” is Ticked

This is similar to the “no index” tags. This is a setting in WordPress where you’ve the option to select whether or not search engines should index your site.

This setting is automatically active for new WordPress sites. You must manually uncheck this box before search engine crawlers can index your website.

4. Website isn’t SEO Optimized

Search engine optimized content is one of the surest ways to show up on Google search. When your website is not showing up on Google, it could be as a result of incorrect SEO practices.

When search engine crawlers visit your web pages, they crawl it for meta contents, links, keyword saturation among other SEO requirements. It’s really important that you constantly review and improve your SEO strategy to rank on Google.

5. Competitive Keywords

One way your website might not show up on Google is chasing after high-volume keywords at first. High authority domains have been proven to rank higher and faster for high volume keywords.

So, if your website has not gained a high domain authority yet, you might want to compete for lesser volume keywords with lesser competition.

6. Website was Removed by Google

This situation occurs when Google temporarily or permanently removes your website from search results. There are a number of reasons Google. They include:

  • Ban

This is a situation where your domain is completely removed from Google index.

  • Penalty

This is a situation where Google temporarily suspends your domain from search results. This penalty can be issued automatically by Google algorithm or manually by a Google quality .

The common reason for Google removal of domains is contravention of quality guidelines.

The good news is that Google will most likely alert you of a ban to your website through Google Search Console. You can also remedy this situation by modifying your site and submitting for reconsideration.

How to Index your Website on Google

There are many ways you can get Google to index your website. One of the easiest is via Google Search Console. However, if you want Google to index a specific page of your website, you will need a different approach with Search Console.

Do this:

  • Log into your Google Search Console.
  • Navigate to Crawl Fetch as Google.
  • Paste the URL you want indexed into the search bar.
  • Click the Fetch button.
  • Click Submit to Index after Google finds the URL

Conclusion

Now that we’ve discussed why your url is not on Google, you can now proceed to optimize your site for search engines. After you identify the reasons your website isn’t showing up on Google, you should move swiftly to fix or remedy it.

One quick way you can confirm if there’s been a change is with Google Analytics which keeps track of your website traffic. If your website has been begun to get organic traffic, then the problem has been fixed. Congratulations on your success!

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