Three reasons why your website isn’t showing up in Google

Visitors are the lifeblood of your website. If people aren’t visiting your website, your investment in your website is wasted. And search engines are the best long-term source of website visitors. So if you aren’t being found in search engines, then people who are looking for the product or service you offer are not going to find your website, much less visit it.

Here are some common problems - with simple solutions - we encounter when auditing business websites that aren’t getting enough traffic.

1. Your website is showing up in Google - but for the wrong things

When writing content for their website, many website owners don’t use the keywords they want to be found in Google for. As a result, when they come to check their rankings, their site is nowhere to be seen.

I was asked to look at one website where the owner wanted to be found for “retirement village”. Yet the website didn’t mention that phrase anywhere. Why? The owner had decided that “retirement village” had negative connotations, and had deliberately excluded that term from all their marketing - including the website. Yet if you think about it - what would you search for if you were looking for a retirement village?

Fortunately, this problem is easy to fix, provided you have a website that lets you edit the content on your pages. Simply change the content in each page to ensure that you are using the keywords you want to be found for. Even better, if you have the option to set the “Title” tag and the “Meta Description”, edit these to include the same keywords you are adding to the main content - they’ll have proportionally greater impact than just changing the main page content.

2. Your website isn’t specific enough about what your business does

The great thing about the web is that you can reach a global audience. The bad thing about the website is that you are potentially competing in a global marketplace.

It’s not news that you should focus your business and your marketing on your target audience. If you don’t, you’re going to get swamped by bigger, better-resourced competitors. Your website should reflect and emphasise your focus.

For example, if you run a Quickbooks training business in Tauranga, don’t expect your website to show up in the first few (dozen) pages of Google search results if you just search for “Quickbooks”. The competition is simply too fierce.

Instead, you should try to focus on the audience you want to reach and choose keywords that will help you reach that audience. In this case, using keywords such as “Quickbooks training” will certainly improve your chances of being found. Even better, emphasise the location you operate in: “Quickbooks training Tauranga”. Create a whole page just on this subject if you have to!

3. You’re not thinking locally

One of the biggest sea changes in search is the way that Google is getting very good at figuring out where you are when you search so it can show you results that are locally relevant to you. That means you need to think about your geographical reach, and make sure that people in your local area find you when they’re looking for a local supplier.

For example, try searching “gift baskets tauranga” in Google. You should see a map of Tauranga in the right-hand column with a number of markers showing the location of businesses that sell gift baskets. If you do the same for your business, what happens?

You’ll also see a list of “Places for gift baskets near Tauranga”. Notice how the Places list appears above the regular search engine results. This is dynamite - if you can get your business listed near the top of that list. Fortunately, achieving this is not that difficult at the moment - if you’re quick.

Your business probably already has a Place page, created by Google on your behalf. If it does, you can simply claim that page for your business. After that you can change it to reflect what you do and sell. Take care to complete the whole listing - this will definitely help move you up the list. If you can’t find your Place page, simply visit http://www.google.com/places and run through the setup process from there.

At Totali, we build websites that are designed to ensure high rankings for your business. To find out more and to see examples of the type of work that we do, visit our website at www.totali.co.nz/chamber-of-commerce, or call David Parrott, Business Development Manager for Totali, on 07 928 8867, to find out how we can build you a website that delivers more customers and makes your business more efficient. David has over 10 years experience working with businesses to help them develop effective web-based solutions.

Posted on the 3rd of March, 2011, Written by David Parrott. Subscribe to our RSS Feed or our newsletter.

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