7 Reasons Why You're Not Ranking On Google’s First Page Yet

Here you will learn what’s stopping your excellent site from . hitting the first page of Google No Google doesn’t hate your website, but your poor rank definitely has something to do with the 7 reasons you'll find below. Let’s go! #1- You’re Still In Google Sandbox Do you have a new website? Perhaps it’s still on probation and unable to complete normally? That’s called being in Google's Sandbox. is an alleged filter (supposedly added in March 2004) that stops new websites from ranking highly in the SERPs. Google Sandbox In other words, with the filter actively working against you, you can’t rank even if your SEO is perfect. Seems unfair but Google does this to prevent fly-by-night, churn-and-burn sites from ranking quickly with black hat spam, especially in more competitive and valuable SERPs. How to Get Out of Google Sandbox Faster? the good news. You to get out of the sandbox. First, don’t need to pay for an SEO service you’ll need to wait a bit. Some time needs to pass and usually it’s 6-8 months. Second, proceed with building a trust and social fortress around your site. Third, Open up branded accounts with: Facebook; Twitter; Pinterest; LinkedIn; Reddit; Etc. become active on social media. Google wants to see you participate in your niche and that there's a real person behind your branded account and website. Fourth, Your social activity+social signals you scoop up for your site will . make Google trust you more avoid adding affiliate links. Fifth, Google has no problem with affiliate sites as long as they provide value. But more often than not affiliate sites are thin affiliate sites whose are barely above pure spam and Google actively strives to remove such sites from their SERPS. affiliate campaigns It’s best not to risk it, especially early on when you have no traffic and no one’s gonna be . clicking on your affiliate links and this is a bonus tip as almost no one does this, send local citations to your site. They will funnel a bit more trust to your property and yes, Finally, citations help even if you run an affiliate business. #2- You’re Targeting The Wrong Keywords Source: https://www.sherpamarketing.ca/whats-the-difference-between-short-tail-and-long-tail-keywords-580 By “wrong” I mean head terms that are impossible to rank for. Honestly, this is the most common mistake SEO newbies make. They see a head term with 300 000 searches per month and become fixated on it. They imagine ranking for it, and think that if they could just rank for just that one keyword all their problems would go away. Of course, the real world doesn't work like that at all. First, head terms are reserved for the oldest and strongest of websites on the internet. New sites can never rank for them. Second, head phrases come with extremely murky search intent. Take for example the keyword “ ”. SEO It boasts a huge search volume, with hundreds of thousands of searches per month. But what do these people really want? To read about SEO? To learn the definition of SEO? Are they looking for SEO services near them? Or are they looking for a general SEO specialist to do an SEO audit for their property? Who can really tell? That kind of traffic is next to useless in my opinion. The answer to this problem is to target long tail keywords. Long tail keywords contain the head term + 4-5 extra words. They are usually really low competition and even new sites can rank for them. In fact, to tie this with the previous point, targeting really low competition keywords (or better yet ) is one of the easiest ways to get out of the Sandbox faster, because as soon as you start ranking for stuff you’re officially out of the probation period. KGR keywords #3- Your Site is Ugly and Users Bounce The times when ugly sites but with good content could rank is long gone. Web users are spoiled now and know that they have ample choice of websites for any query they type in search. So, if someone clicks on your site from the SERPS, lands on your page and is welcomed with a website that seems stuck in the nineties, they will immediately hit the back button. This will tell Google that your site is so bad no one can even stand to be on it. And then they’ll demote you and you’ll lose your high ranking position. So in order to successfully compete, you need to have a that’s also decent looking, a branded logo and a consistent color scheme. fast website Notice that I didn’t mention ? custom design That’s because you don’t need to pay a developer to customize your blog. A good premium theme enhanced with Elementor will do the job just fine. #4- Your Content is Mediocre Likewise, gone are the days where you could rank with just words on the page. It used to be that Google would rank anything as long as there were to tell them what the article’s about. at least some keywords present But now in 2021 and beyond there’s more than enough content for any keyword imaginable and content quality is the way to stand out from the sea of mediocrity. What Does “Content Quality” Mean? Quality content is the one that matches the user intent and answers the searcher’s query in full. People online are looking for answers and if you can furnish them with what they need and fast you’ll be in good shape. Again, I mention that you don't need to have custom design for your content to stand out ( does help a ton though). creating engaging visuals Instead do thorough research and really bring your A game with every piece of content you publish. That’s enough to rank for the majority of search terms, because most bloggers are winging it with their content creation, while creating helpful and useful content remains absolutely crucial to rank in Google. #5- You Built Links Too Fast and Now You’re Stuck Never build links without the accompanying social shares. Links are a relative rarity on the web. They happen, but not nearly as often as you’d think Think about it, how many of your readers have blogs? How many or them are actively publishing content? How many of them are willing to link to you? Some probably, but not too many. And then consider this. How many among your audience have Twitter and Facebook accounts where they can share content? All of them! And many of them will share your content with their followers. The point is that social shares are abundant on the web and they always naturally happen before links. So, before building a single link you need to pave the road for them to happen. What to Do if You’ve Already Built Links Without Social Shares? Luckily, this is an easy fix. Stop all link building and start sending social shares immediately. This will “make” the algorytm believe your links are genuine and you will get unstuck #6- You’re Impatient Maybe you're ranking just fine. Maybe you’re ranking better than normal even though you're on the 5-th page? What do I mean? It takes a page and show it’s true rankings potential. 6 months to fully mature It takes on average to rank on page 1 of Google. 1+ year The point is that ranking in Google organically is a long term process and it seems even longer when you’re impatient. The solution is to create more content so you create topical authority and have more chances of ranking; and to build more links because links can significantly speed up the process. Bonus tip- Proper site architecture is also crucial to speeding up the rankings process. is nothing more than interlinking your site in such a way that PageRank flows to your money pages powering them up and giving them above average ranking position in a shorter time frame. Site architecture Uff, what a mouthful of a sentence, I know :) #7- You Have a Google Penalty Applied to Your Site If you have a Google penalty applied against your site you will struggle to rank even if you do excellent SEO. Penalties are in a lot of ways similar to Google Sandbox, but the difference is that they won’t go away on their own and you have to put in a lot of effort into fixing them. There’s no room for it here as it’s a vast topic for a whole other guide, but basically all Google penalties are divided into: Manual penalties; Algorithmic penalties. You can check for manual penalties in your Google Search Console. Go tp your Google Search Console and click on “manual actions” tab to see if you’ve been affected. If you have an algorithmic penalty you won’t be informed and you’ll have to figure it out on your own. The easiest way to figure out is to see if you have a huge drop off in traffic coinciding with a time frame where there were no known Google core updates. If that’s the case then you need to see what is going on with your traffic. If you see a drop-off like this it’s time to investigate further. Source https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/new-google-panda-rollout-ten-days/ Conclusion It’s going to be harder to rank in Google. That's one that is guaranteed to come true in 2021 and beyond. SEO prediction However, we as webmasters can’t despair over it. Instead we need to equip ourselves with knowledge, skill and perseverance to success. If you have a struggling site, make sure that one of the reasons above is not the culprit for your poor rank. If it is, fix it and move on. As long as you keep moving, learning and doing, you’ll ultimately succeed.