Why am I not ranking for key terms?
SEO takes ongoing work over many months to see noticeable results. There is no instant gratification like you get with Google Ads. Factors that you need to consider when reviewing your SEO ranking are; time, web development, content, keyword competition, and Google my Business.
In this article, we will discuss these factors and how making simple changes will have long-lasting effects on your website’s performance.
How long does it take to rank on Google?
The simple answer to this is months. We generally tell our clients to not expect any SEO results until 6 – 8 months in.
Why does it take so long to rank on google? Google’s AI bots crawl through the whole internet to find every available web page. Google then indexes that page with everything they know about the page (topic, user behavior, content type, and updates). As a result, this process can take a few weeks to rank for even your own business name.
A question we get asked a lot is how long does it take to rank #1 on Google. There are a lot of factors that go into this answer and everyone’s situation is different. Studies have shown that on average it takes 3 years to rank #1. Only 5.7% of top-ranked websites took under 1 year to achieve their #1 ranking.
Website performance and design
When Google bots crawl your website they take into consideration the user experience. If your website is slow to load this is flagged and will have negative implications on your web ranking.
A design mistake we see regularly with our clients is using an image of text on their websites. The Google AI is very smart but not smart enough (yet) to read images. If you have an image on your website with keywords, you are missing out on having them included in that page’s index.
For more information on how web design affects your website’s SEO, we have an article that goes into more detail and can be found here.
How does my content affect my SEO score?
Content is a great opportunity to insert keywords into your website. Using H1 and H2 tags highlight important words and phrases that you want Google to pick up on. The content you upload to your website should be original. Any duplicate content will be flagged and Google will not include that page in web searches.
Google’s index includes how often a page is updated. If Google sees that a page is regularly being updated with fresh and up-to-date content, they know that your content is current and relevant.
Why is my website not ranking for keywords?
If you are struggling to rank for your keywords, this may be due to the competitiveness of that keyword. You are competing with everyone else looking to rank for that keyword in your region. Creating a niche can help you secure traffic through less competitive keywords.
In the below image you can see the competitiveness of the keyword “SEO”. There are 2.9K searches in Ireland every month and 2.1 Million worldwide for the keyword “SEO” with 3.2 Billion results. As a result, the keyword difficulty for SEO has a score of 94%.
If the keyword you are targeting has a similar result, try looking at keyword variations. This will show you more specific keywords with lower difficulty scores. You can access this information with free tools such as Semrush.
How does Google My Business affect my SEO?
A lot of web traffic comes through “local SEO” or maps. When searching for a service you will be first met with Google ads. Following these Google ads, you will then find local SEO results in the form of dots on a map. If you don’t optimize your Google My Business, you will miss out on the opportunity to rank on map results.
Conclusion
If you are having trouble having your website rank for your key terms on Google, get in touch with BeQuick Media who will develop a bespoke SEO strategy plan for your website.