You’ve undoubtedly entered your company name into a Google search to see where your blogs, service pages, and other content ranked. When you saw the results, you might have been disappointed. Your spirits may have sagged even more when you saw that your competitors consistently rank above you.
Why is this happening? There are a lot of potential reasons, actually. Below you’ll find some of the most likely culprits.
If you can answer “no” to any of the following questions, then you’ll have a pretty good idea of why your site isn’t ranking as well as you believe it should. More importantly, you’ll learn what you can do about it. Talk to an expert with Site Social SEO to learn how we can help boost your online presence in ways that will have you laughing at the competition. Send us an email or call 407-712-0494.
Is Your Website Mobile-Friendly?
You’re really missing the boat when it comes to SEO if it’s not. Google has developed what it calls the “Mobile First Index.” This basically means that Google places a priority on indexing mobile sites first, then desktop sites. Since most searches are performed on smartphones and other mobile devices, it really makes sense from Google’s perspective.
If you already have a website that’s responsive to mobile users, then this probably isn’t too much of an issue for you in terms of the effect on your ranking. But if you don’t, then your ranking will probably continue to drop until you make the necessary changes.
Does Your Website Have Schema Markup?
This isn’t as “in the weeds” as it sounds. Schemas are basically the HTML tags that are used to make your page recognizable to search engines. Google and others use schemas to improve the quality of their search results and make it easier for searchers to get where they want to go.
If you don’t have it, you’re making it harder for search engines to interpret what’s on your site. Because of this, you won’t have as good a chance to be included on the SERP (search engine results page). A Site Social SEO professional can tell you a lot more about why schema markup is so important.
Is Your Website Fast and User-Friendly?
A slow site is an unpopular site, no matter how fantastic your content might be. Unfortunately, people aren’t patient. They don’t feel like waiting for a site to load – instead, they “bounce,” or leave for something else.
This will have a domino effect that will ultimately impact your ranking. Google takes site speed into account when ranking websites. They have to index billions of pages. They can’t wait around to index yours, so you won’t show up in search results.
The slower your site loads, the lower your it will rank. Site Social SEO can show you easy, efficient ways to speed up your site.
Does Your Site Have Engaging, Quality Content?
So, your site moves at warp speed, it’s really user- and mobile-friendly, but you’re still not ranking as high as your competition. Maybe the answer lies with your content. There are a lot of businesses that make huge mistakes when it comes to content. It either doesn’t answer readers’ questions, it’s flat-out boring, or, worse yet, it’s simply copied and pasted from some other site.
All of these are huge no-nos. Your content has to engage readers. When that happens, they stick around long enough to read what you have to offer. They share your content with others. Not only does this get more people interested in your company, it also helps position you as an authoritative source of information.
When you focus on the end-user, good things will happen – including ranking higher in search results.
Is Your Website Secure?
When you look at your URL, does the address start with “http” or “https?” That “s” might not seem like a big deal, but it really is when it comes to your ranking. HTTPS stands for Hypertext Transport Protocol Security. Basically, it means the connection between a web server and a browser is secure.
Google favors HTTPS websites – and that’s a fact. It used to not mean that much, but now it does. If two sites are equal in all other areas – quality content, speed, user-friendliness, etc. – Google will rank the HTTPS site higher than the HTTP site.
Talk to Site Social SEO and we’ll show you how you can make your site an HTTPS site, and help you gain the trust of search engines as a result.
Do You Have Authoritative Backlinks to Your Site?
If you have low-quality backlinks, meaning that sites filled with fluff or spam link to your site, that will hurt your ranking. You can typically increase good backlinks by posting informative content that people like to read. The more people who like it, the more people will share it – and you’ll have strong backlinks in the process.
You can use this Google Search Console tool to see exactly what kinds of backlinks you have. If they’re lousy, we can show you ways to fix the problem.
Is Your Site Optimized Throughout?
You not only have to use strong keywords in your content, but you also have to incorporate those keywords into your image descriptions (your alt tags), headers, meta descriptions, and more. If your site isn’t ranking high enough, you should maybe look into keyword research. If you’d rather not deal with it, a digital marketing company like Site Social SEO can do it for you.
Are You Active on Social Media?
Whatever you might think of social media, you can’t deny that it’s big business. It could be huge for your business as well. If you don’t share content on your social media sites, you’re missing a huge opportunity to spread the word about how great your company really is. When people see that, they’ll take the time to visit your site. The more visitors you get, the higher your ranking will likely get as well.
Is Your Website Well Established?
This one you might not have a whole lot of control over. While Google prefers a level playing field, they tend to rank older sites higher than newer ones. It might not take that long for you to make enough of an impression on Google to rank well, but if you have a new site, it could still take a few months to start to gain traction.
But if you have an older site and you’re not ranking, then it’s probably because of some combination of the factors listed above.
Contact Site Social SEO to Rank Higher
Your best chance of ranking as high as you believe you should is to get in touch with Site Social SEO. We’ll clearly spell out areas where you can improve, and then put a plan together to get your site where it belongs.
Learn more about what we can do for you by calling 407-712-0494 or contacting us via email.
