9 Reasons Your Content not Ranking in Google

What could be more frustrating than writing content and having Google ignore it? Some many common reasons and obstacles that prevent you from getting your content to the top of Google. According to Seopedia.com, Google dominates with around 93% of the market share globally. That’s why Google rankings matter! Let’s look at some reasons your content may not rank on Google.

You’re Keyword Stuffing

The most common reason your content won’t rank is that you’ve overstuffed it with keywords. Keyword stuffing is when you use a keyword phrase so much that the meaning of what you’re saying becomes unintelligible to both people and search engines. Here’s an example. Pretend someone is trying to get ranked for “best mangoes in town”: Keyword stuffing would go like this:

I’m Lenny, and I have the best mangoes in town! I sell the best mangoes in town, so if you want the best mangoes in town, visit my store! If you want to buy the best mangoes in town from me, then come on down to my shop! The best mangoes in town are at Lenny’s storehouse!

This obvious example of keyword stuffing triggers Google’s spam filters. 

Your Content Isn’t Genuinely Helpful

If you want your content to rank well, it needs to be informative and genuinely helpful. Put yourself in the user’s shoes and consider what they might be looking for. If you can craft a piece of content that answers their questions and gives them value, you’re off to a good start.

You can use content analysis tools to look at the headings and sub-headings of top-ranking sites that contain similar content. These are the questions people are looking for answers to, and your content should address those concerns too to be competitive. Your content should also be user-friendly.

User-friendly content:

Is factually correct and based on research

Is easy to understand

Is organized into sections with descriptive headers

Is written in plain language that’s easy to understand

Your Content Isn’t Mobile Optimized

According to Google, 60% of all search queries are made on mobile devices and occur in multiple locations. Google has stated that “more Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries, including the U.S. and Japan.”

Businesses that want to rank higher must focus more on getting their content found on mobile devices. When you think about it, this makes sense, given how many people use their smartphones to find information when they’re out and about or simply living in a multi-device world where they move from computer to phone or tablet throughout the day.

If your sites aren’t optimized for mobile users, users won’t find your content, meaning many people could be interested in what you offer but can’t see your content. How to correct this? Use responsive design. A responsive website automatically adapts its layout to accommodate different screen sizes. That way, visitors can see the same content regardless of viewing it on a desktop or a smartphone.

Don’t use Flash animations or features that aren’t supported by mobile browsers. Most notably, Flash isn’t supported by iOS products like the iPhone and iPad. If you have Flash elements on your page, make sure there’s an alternative version available for mobile visitors who won’t be able to access them.

Your Metadata Isn’t Set Up Correctly

Metadata is invisible to your website’s visitors, but specifying it on your site is still important to rank well in search engines. The metadata tells search engines which keywords are relevant to the specific page so that they can send people looking for that information directly to you.

You need a proper meta description. The meta description is a brief summary of the article that will appear under the title in search results. It should include keywords related to the article so that search engines can quickly determine what the article is about.

Meta descriptions aren’t as important as they once were, but they are still an important piece of code to add to each page and post on your site.

If you don’t have a meta description or aren’t long enough, Google will automatically create one for you by pulling text from the article itself. If you don’t have any metadata set up, use a plugin like Yoast SEO. Once installed, you can add metadata to your pages and posts.

Your Content Isn’t Unique Enough

Your content should be unique and original if you want it to rank highly. Some big search engines will ignore duplicate content or, worse yet, penalize you for having it. This includes plagiarized or paraphrased content that doesn’t have a unique slant. You should also try not to duplicate content from other pages on your own website, as this will confuse search engines and won’t help your cause either.

Your Site Isn’t Being Crawled Properly

One reason your site may not rank is Google has problems crawling it. Use Google’s Search Console to see if and how Google crawls your website. Search Console provides the basic information about your site, including its URL and the number of pages.

But, more importantly, it’s a tool for examining how Google crawls your site and what URLs the Googlebot crawls and indexes. If you find any issue with this crawl information or other aspects of your site’s indexability, follow up with Google Support to ensure the issues are fixed. 

Your Site Has Security Issues or Lacks an SSL Certificate

An SSL certificate is a security certificate for websites. It essentially works as encryption, allowing your website to move information securely between the web server and the browser. This is especially important for e-commerce stores that accept payment or sensitive information from their visitors.

SSL certificates are necessary if you run online shops using WooCommerce or other e-commerce solutions like Shopify and BigCommerce. But SSL certificates are also critical for all types of websites, including blogs, static company sites, and more.

Google has even started to use SSL (HTTPS) as a ranking signal in its search algorithm. If you want your content to rank well in Google search results, you need to make sure it’s served over HTTPS.

Your Website Loads Too Slow

If your site doesn’t have a fast load time, it will affect your rankings and lower your conversion rate.

When measuring how fast a website loads, look at page speed and page load time. Regarding page speed, Google looks at how long it takes for the server to respond after being asked for a web page. Page load time measures how long it takes for the web page to load after the browser receives the HTML document from the server.

Both factors affect SEO rankings because they impact the user experience. If your website is slow, users are less likely to stay and read any of your content, meaning they might not convert.

Check your site with a free tool like PageSpeed Insights or Pingdom. These tools will give you much information about what’s slow on your site and how to fix it.

You Don’t Use Outbound Links

Search engines value sites that provide links to other high-quality, relevant resources. Linking to other websites within your content can boost your SEO.

 But be discriminating with the links you use. The best outbound links are to authoritative websites. These are sites that Google has already ranked high in its search results.

You show Google that you trust them and their content by linking to authoritative sites. In return, they’ll start to trust you too.

You Don’t Use Internal Links

You must build your website’s authority to rank well in search engines. One of the most effective ways to do this is by creating a good internal link structure.

Internal links are hyperlinks that point at (target) the same domain as the domain that the link exists on (source). An internal link points to another page on the same website or blog. Internal linking is often used in main navigation menus, sidebars, blogrolls, and/or footers, and other related blog posts.

Internal linking can help spread your website’s authority across multiple pages so that no page is left out in the cold.

The result? Improved rankings and more traffic.

The Bottom Line

Hopefully, these tips will get your website ranking with Google and drive more traffic in your direction!