Why Isn't Your Website Ranking Well In Spite of Your Best SEO Efforts?

Alan Robezzoli • August 26, 2020

4 Reasons Your Site May Not Be Ranking Well With Google's SERP

Frustrated man at a desk holding a HELP sign beside his laptop, like an owner whose website isn't ranking despite SEO work

You know ranking near the top of Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) can provide more exposure for your company, establish your company as an industry leader, and of course drive more traffic to your website – all of which should help you make more money. But what if you think you’re doing everything you can to improve your website’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and still aren’t reaching one of the top positions on the search engine results page? There are many reasons this may be happening in spite of your best SEO efforts.

Here Are 4 Common Reasons Your Site May Not Be Ranking Well:

#1 - You Aren’t Patient Enough

Yes, we live in a world of instant gratification, but apparently, search engines don’t know that. It often takes four months before you begin to see results. There are several steps you need to take to improve your website’s SEO, and many of those steps build on each other. First, you need to develop a strategy and generate awesome content. Then it takes a while for Google to notice your efforts and even longer for it to decide that you’re really providing value.

#2 - Your Competitors Are Doing More

Every savvy marketer is aware of SEO techniques, so don’t think you’re the only one using them. If you’re serious about getting your website to rank well, you have to get serious about SEO. You and your competitors are all vying for the same limited space on page 1 of the search engine results. If your page isn’t ranking well, you may have to step up your game with more link building and more blog posting for starters.

#3 - You’re Missing the Mark on Link Building

Not all link backs are created equal. If you want to get found on Google, you need to find a way to get the right links to your website. Some links don’t help your ranking and some can even hurt it. What you want is a number of links from different sources – including both follow and no-follow links, both from well-known sites and regular sites. It's important to acquire legitimate links and avoid the ones that could harm your rankings.

#4 - Google has Issued a Manual Action Against Your Website

There are a few actions that Google really frowns upon, and if you knowingly or accidentally do any of those things (or someone else does them to your website), Google can completely remove your site from its search engine results page. According to Google, it issues “a manual action against a site when a human reviewer at Google has determined that pages on the site are not compliant with Google's webmaster quality guidelines. Most manual actions address attempts to manipulate our search index. Most issues reported here will result in pages or sites being ranked lower or omitted from search results without any visual indication to the user.” Here Are Google Manual Action Triggers:

A hacked site – A third party has hacked one or more of your website pages.
User-generated spam – Spam has been submitted by site visitors usually on your forum pages, guestbook pages, or user profiles.
Spammy freehosts – A significant portion of the pages hosted on a service are spammy
Spammy structured markup – Some of the markup on your pages may be using techniques outside Google’s structured data guidelines.
Unnatural links to your site – A pattern of unnatural, artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links are pointing to your site.
Unnatural links from the site – Ditto but with outbound links.
Thin content with little or no added value – Flimsy content with little or no added value such as automatically generated content and content from other sources.
Cloaking or sneaky redirects – Not showing the same pages to both users and Google.
Pure Spam – Aggressive spam techniques include automatically generated gibberish, cloaking, and scraping content from other websites.
Cloaked images – Images that show up differently in Google’s search engine results page than seen on your website.
Hidden text and keyword stuffing – The days of using hidden text and keyword stuffing to improve ranking are gone, and Google will penalize you for it.
AMP content mismatch – The content on the AMP version is different from the canonical web page.
Sneaky mobile redirects – Pages that appear to be redirecting mobile device users to content not available to search engine crawlers.

Google tells you how to make it right in its “ Manual Actions Report ” page.

What to Do Next If Your Website Isn’t Ranking Well

If despite all your best efforts, your website still isn’t ranking well, try Power Marketing International’s free SEO report that shows how your website ranks for multiple SEO factors and any technical issues that require attention. Need more help? Give us a call at 484-297-6395 or contact us online . Achieving robust search engine optimization isn’t easy, but we can help get it done right!