Why Is My Site Not Ranking?
We all get excited during our first week, when we've created our brand new, first ever, website. So we get a bit despondent when we go hunting for it on Google, and don't find it. Why is my site not ranking? What's gone wrong?
A Sanity Check
Our enthusiasm is to be expected, but it needs to be tempered with a little realism. Difficult I know, in our first week of being a webmaster. But there are a few questions we could ask ourselves before we get uppity and start demanding answers.
Question 1: What was the competition for my keyword? Let's say it was 250. So Google has 250 sites to look at. You can do the same. Look at those sites and ask yourself, honestly, "If Google had to choose their site or mine, which gives the user the better answer?". Chances are, we need to spruce ours up a bit before Google will knock that other site of its perch and give us the medal.
Question 2: Assuming that my content outranks all the 250 competitors, have I been on the scene long enough to qualify as "stable" and "durable", or am I a "freshman" on the scene. Google looks at the site history. Have I been around longer than those 250 and earned enough respect for Google to put me ahead of them? Probably not.
Question 3: So I'm a proven force in the industry, with top grade content, and a pedigree history. But did I register my site with Webmaster Tools? If I didn't, maybe I should.
Question 4: So I'm a proven force in the industry, with top grade content, and a pedigree history, and I have my site registered with Webmaster Tools. But does my site have a sitemap? And if it does, did I tell Google where it is? If I didn't, maybe I should.
Question 5: So I've done all that, and I'm still not ranked. Ah! Did I go to Webmaster Tools and trigger a "Fetch"?
Question 6: ... you get the message I guess.
My Solution:
With only 6 weeks of WA training under my belt I don't feel inclined to take on 250 competitors. I don't really feel ready to take on 100.
Today, at 3pm, I targeted 5 keywords, 4 of which had competition less than 10, and the other had competition of 47.
At 6pm (3 hours later) here are the results
- 3 keywords ranked on page 2
- 1 keyword ranked on page 3
- 1 keyword not ranked (yet?)
Conclusion?:
The numbers speak for themselves, I'd say. What do you think?
Recent Comments
134
Thanks for this wonderful article when i published my first page,the pleasure of "ME" having published was enough,said simple words to myself"so who cares if my site is not ranked in top 100?" i did not check my site first 2 months .
The trick is to take it easy, as you said,why should my new site out rank the other 300 a week after i publish
Yes, we don't naturally connect the dots quite as intuitively as we should (well, I don't) so I need to kick myself from time to time.
Chris that's rubbish....fancy not having your keyword ranked after 3 hours, should be ashamed of yourself ;-)
I'm a patient guy. The previous attempt took 6 hrs to make page 1, and 16 hrs to make #1 on page 1. I can handle it.
Did exactly as you instructed and no1 on page 1 for niche website in 30 seconds it works !!!
Illuminating. The part about targeting low QSR keywords to achieve faster ranking is very sound advice.
Interestingly it is the one thing that WA stress, over and over again, but seems to go straight over students' heads. So I keep hammering on about it.
Great blog. I've working on getting ranked over the past few days. Have had the help of the community. Have done most of the above but not fetch. What is that?
It's slightly different for Google vs Bing.
Either way, once you have your page setup the way it should be. See my notes on that at Page or Post Creation - My Method Then go to Webmaster Tools, Dashboard.
In Google: Crawl, "Fetch As Google", give the URL, "Fetch & Render". When it's complete, hit "Submit".
In Bing: Diagnostics and Tools, "Fetch As Bingbot", give the URL, "Fetch".
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It's not only about keywords but also about PATIENCE! Good post Chris. Many are tempted to think that after only 3-5 weeks they are ranked in google and win lots of money. Well you will win money. Just follow every step of the training, have imagination, always check for low competition keywords.....and absolve the 5 courses! At the end of them and after some work it's impossible not to be rewarded.
We do need things to be instant these days. My Mum used to say "Good things come to those who wait".