Usually it is one of three things: Google does not know your site yet, Google knows it but does not understand it, or somebody else answers the question better. You can find out which in about fifteen minutes.
Step 1: does Google know your site at all?
Type into Google: site:yourdomain.com. What comes back is everything Google has stored from your site.
- No results? Your site is not indexed. That is not a ranking problem, it is an access problem.
- Results, but fewer pages than you have? Google is getting into part of it and not the rest.
Set up Google Search Console if you have not. It is free, it takes ten minutes, and without it you are working blind.
Step 2: is Google allowed in?
Three things that make sites invisible by accident:
noindex. A line in the page saying: do not include this. It often survives a rebuild by mistake.- robots.txt. A file that turns crawlers away. Check
yourdomain.com/robots.txt. - Content that only appears after JavaScript runs. Google can run JavaScript, but it is slower and less reliable than plain HTML. What is in the HTML is seen for certain.
Step 3: does Google understand what the page is about?
Open your page and ask three questions:
- Is there one clear H1 saying what this is?
- Does the term you want to be found for actually appear on the page — in your customer's words, not your industry's?
- Does every page have its own subject, or do five pages say roughly the same thing?
That last one is the problem more often than people expect. Five half-pages on one subject compete with each other; one good page wins.
Step 4: is somebody doing it better?
Search your own most important term and look at the first three results. Do they answer the question better than you do? Then that is the job. "Better" usually means more direct, more concrete, and with the answer at the top instead of after three paragraphs of throat-clearing.
What not to do
- Repeat keywords until the language creaks.
- Buy links. It works for a while, and then it works against you.
- Pay an agency that guarantees position one. Nobody can guarantee that. Anyone promising it is selling you something other than what you think you are buying.
How long before you see anything?
A new page can be indexed within days. Earning a position for a term with real competition takes months. Anyone telling you otherwise is in a hurry to get you signed.
More on what I do here: findability. Or read why speed counts.