What you will find in this article:
Help! Why doesn’t my website show up on search engines? I typed my name and my website doesn’t show up in the first search results.
Why can’t I find my website on the internet?
No, I’m not talking about MY website. I’m talking about YOURS!
This is a great classic of digital marketing literature. Be careful! There is a clear difference between appearing on Google and being first on Google .
Appear on Google = find your website in Google search results. In relation to a certain phrase or word typed in the search bar, Google returns one of the pages of your website. It means that Google bots have crawled your web page and inserted it into their database. Technically your page has been crawled and indexed .
Being first on Google
finding a page of your website directly in the first position or among the first Google search results (always in relation to a certain phrase or keyword). This is the position on the first page for organic and non-paid search results. Technically, this is called positioning .
If your website does not appear on Google and you still have doubts, later I will explain the difference between indexing and positioning.
But now let’s see
Why your website usually doesn’t appear on Google:
- Google has not indexed your website yet ( maybe because it is too new )
- Your website is not optimized for Google crawling ( not set up for SEO )
- Your keywords are too competitive ( there are websites that rank above you for certain search terms )
- Your website uses “noindex” tag on all or some pages (you are telling Google not to be found)
- Your website has been penalized or removed from Google search results
My Website Can’t Be Found: The Oldest Story on the Internet
Every morning in the world, an entrepreneur or a company manager wakes up and knows that he will have to ask this question to any web marketing expert: ” Why does my website not appear on Google? “.
Every morning around the world, a digital marketing specialist wakes up and knows that he will have to think of a quick answer to give to his client or he will starve.
Maybe you already know this story.
You should know that there are thousands of reasons why your website is not appearing in search engine results.
To get started
Try answering these 3 simple questions:
- What keyword are you searching for on Google for your website? If you don’t know what a keyword is or want a little refresher on the topic, read my dedicated post .
- How long have you had your website up and running? Is it a project you’ve had online for a few days or is it a site that’s been up and running for several months/years? This can make a difference.
- Are you sure your site is not appearing on Google? Do you mean that www.yourwebsite.com does not exist on any search results page? Or is it not on the first page of the SERP? ( If you don’t know what a SERP is, read this post ).
Once you have narrowed down the problem, you can think more about the possible cause and therefore the solution to adopt. I can help you do that.
My Website Doesn’t Appear on Google – Case 1
Do you fall into category 1?
For example, do you have a website that promotes the services of your accountant firm in Grottaferrata and have you typed “Dr. Rossi Accountant Grottaferrata” in the Google search bar but your website does not appear?
It is likely that whoever created your website has not set the essential SEO tags for indexing your website . Let me explain better why your website does not appear on Google.
Using this keyword “ Dr. Rossi Commercialista Grottaferrata ” as a search term it is extremely difficult for your website not to appear in the top positions on Google.
And even if it’s not visible in the top position – because it’s occupied by a competitor who’s advertising for that keyword – your site should at least be immediately below.
What I am writing below
May not be the exact solution to your problem. But know that if you have an accounting firm, your name is Dr. Rossi and you live in Grottaferrata, these are a group of keywords that you should use to index your website on Google.
If not, you should take a look at your website tags , meta tags , keywords , meta descriptions , web page texts . You should check if you have created a sitemap for your site . If Google is reading your sitemap and how often. You should take a look at the robots.txt file on your server.
This is a real SEO Audit that usually provides an SEO Specialist as a basic service . If you want to clear up any doubts about why your website is not visible on Google, I suggest you call me!
Do you want to try to do a simple check yourself? Use Google search operators .
Go to Google and in
The search bar write (obviously you have to replace yourwebsite.com with the name of your domain, exactly the name you gave to your website without www. in front.
For example, in my case it would be . Google should then show you all the pages of your website that have been indexed by the search engine. If the page does not return any results (as in the image below), it is time to worry.
Climb your Google rankings with your SEO Optimized Article! Learn the framework in this free guide. Perfect for entrepreneurs and novice bloggers.
My Website Does Not Appear on Google – Case 2
You should know that it makes a big difference to Google whether your site was created a few days ago or a couple of months or even years ago.
The age of a domain is not a ranking factor for Google , but being online for many years with your website helps to position you.
If you have put your website online
a few days ago, it is normal for it not to appear in Google results yet. In these cases, an SEO Specialist would tell you that the site has not been indexed yet .
What does it mean?
It means that the algorithm that scans the billions of sites that populate the web has not yet added yours to the search engine index . This is the simplest (and least worrying) reason why your site is not yet visible on Google.
And you don’t have to do anything special to solve this non-problem. You simply have to wait for Google’s spiders to “notice” your site and they will directly take care of making sure it is indexed.
From the moment you publish the site, consider that it can take up to 10/15 days before this happens. So be patient!
Because personal telephones were uncommon, telegram was used extensively. These days, most people use their personal phones and email, therefore they denmark telegram data are useless. The idea was created by the British Post Office as an urgent mail service.
Just a little tip
Have you submitted your website to Google? By that I home owner data mean have you submitted your sitemap to Google crawlers, as I mentioned above.
You should know that one of the best ways to submit bab directory your website to Google is to submit your sitemap through your Google Search Console account. Or, if you have a WordPress website, use SEO plugins to indicate your sitemap URL.
What is a sitemap?
It is that file in XML format that the search engine analyzes to crawl the pages of your website and find out if you have published new content. Submitting the sitemap to Google is a fundamental operation for your site to be shown in search results.
In this video, Danielle Weisberg explains how to manage a website’s sitemap using Google Search Console, the free tool that Google makes available to website owners.
What to do instead if more than 2-3 months have passed since your website went online and there is no trace of it in the search results? In this case the mystery becomes even more intricate.?
It often happens that whoever took care of putting your WordPress website online forgot to uncheck a fundamental setting found in the backend .
In the section dedicated to the website reading settings there is the item “ Visibility to search engines ”.
If you have ticked this option, you are discouraging search engines from indexing your website. Since you have gone online and want to be found on the web by your customers , you need to make sure that this tick is not present in the WordPress backend of your site.
Why on earth would the check mark be present?
When a site is under construction (or maintenance), the webmaster, developer or whoever is taking care of creating your website, discourages search engines from indexing a site that at that moment is rather an open construction site . ?️
There are provisional texts, test page formats. In short, it is good practice to insert the check when the site is not yet published. But it is essential to remove it once you have decided to go online !
My Website Doesn’t Appear on Google – Case 3
But then you thought to check page 2 of the search results . There was no sign of it there either. So, fingers crossed, you decided to take a peek at page 3. Your eyes became more watery and a tear started to roll down your face. Was your site there, buried on the third page by dozens of competitors or other useless websites?
But the good news is that your website exists! Google knows about its online presence. Those who don’t know about it are your customers. The very ones who allow you to keep your business going every month.
In this case there is only one thing you can do: implement an SEO positioning strategy . You have to work on optimizing your website.
Being first on Google, the difference between indexing and positioning
This case is to explain the difference between indexing and positioning. If you no longer find your site on the first page of Google, it does not necessarily mean that it has disappeared from the search engine.
Website indexing = the website pages are present in the Google index and have been crawled.
Website positioning = result in SERP resulting from a specific search intention of the user on Google.
You may also be interested in: Website Optimization, Are You Doing It Right?
First of all, always consider what keyword you are searching for your website on Google. As I said, your site could have been demoted in the rankings and slipped to the second or third page of the SERP because your competitors have strengthened for the keywords you typed.
Keep in mind that the reasoning
You should do is reversed: writing your name on Google and seeing if it appears on the first page is not very strategic . Nowadays, a web search of this type no longer makes sense because the SERP is elaborated based on additional factors such as geo-localization, browser settings, previous searches of the user, etc.
So not just for the one keyword you typed in the search bar and for which you didn’t get the result you were hoping for. But for all those keywords, or search terms, that your potential customers type into Google when they are looking for the service or product you offer on the market.
Why is my Wix site not appearing on Google?
Another reason why your website is not appearing on Google could be this.
You have decided to build your website yourself and you have relied on a pseudo CMS like Wix (or other similar platforms). In fact we are not talking about a Content Management System – like WordPress – but a design-driven platform .
For those who don’t know, Wix is a website building platform that is currently very popular and used by many small businesses and professionals/artisans to create their websites.
Easy to use = Easy results
Many people think that creating a website is enough to give it visibility. It is not that easy . To make it grow and bring profit to your business, you need to carry out specific activities.
Wix is a slightly different platform than WordPress. Not only in terms of how it works, but also in terms of the goals you can achieve using these two tools.
Wix has standard modules to work on the optimization and positioning of your website. BUT YOU WILL NEVER HAVE the leeway that you can afford with WordPress to get important SEO results and find your website in the first position on Google.
