Do you want to increase organic traffic to your website?

In case you’re scratching your head over your website search ranking results, there’s a good chance that you have asked yourself the following question:

“Why isn’t my website ranking higher?”

As a website marketing professional, I hear this question quite often. This question is fair and essential. However it’s difficult to reply. The most honest answer for this question is:

“There could be a million reasons for poor search engine rankings.”

To give the best answer requires an in depth examination of the site’s different parts. From my experience there are a few common mistakes that present themselves as roadblocks to better search engine rankings.

1. Your website is targeting the wrong keywords.

When somebody complains “our site isn’t ranking,” my first question is “what are you attempting to rank for?” A site does not simply rank in the crude, unadorned sense of the word. A site ranks itself for something called keywords.

For instance, partyandweddingfavor.com will not rank for the phrase “i want to start a business”. Why? Because their website does not contain that term anywhere. (I checked). Success Harbor does have the organic position for “i want to start a business“. Why? Because I have a large amount of information that is committed to starting a business. I blog about it. I receive linkbacks on the subject, and the phrase shows up many times on Success Harbor.

Success Harbor will rank for terms related to entrepreneurship and running a business. It makes sense because our content deals with the topic. The keywords important to our search rankings are naturally part of our site content. The website ranking question relies upon the keyword question.

That is the reason each SEO strategy must start with keyword strategy.

To start with, you should start with defining the keywords that you want to rank for. Then you can ask the question. Rather than asking “why doesn’t my site rank,” ask “why doesn’t my site rank for a given keyword.” This question will get you precise and practical answers.

For example:

• Why doesn’t my site rank for “New York City walking tours?”
• Why doesn’t my site rank for “Budapest thermal baths?”

You can begin to reshape your site in a way that focuses on keywords that are important. Begin focusing on keywords rather than only seeking after more traffic.

2. Your website is not mobile optimized.

Since the introduction of Google’s most recent algorithm, mobile optimization is more essential than ever before. Analysts have alluded that mobile usage has exceeded the use of desktops. There is a high probability that a greater percentage of your potential clients conduct their searches through the use of mobile devices.

In the event that your website is not mobile enhanced, you won’t appear in mobile search results. It’s that simple. Google clarified that their algo upgrade is “boosting the website ranking of mobile friendly pages.” That positive turn of events has an implicit negative culmination. Google downgraded the ranking of non-mobile-friendly pages. To rank a site higher implies that some site needs to rank lower.

In the event that potential clients are using cell phones – I don’t see why your clients wouldn’t use their mobile devices to search – , your site should be mobile optimized. By using Google, you can, in five seconds, discover whether your site is mobile-optimized or not.

3. Your website is slow.

Slow websites hurt your business. Why? A site that loads slowly is likely to kill conversions. Likewise, visitors want websites to load fast. Slow websites do not rank well.

Could this be the reason your site isn’t ranking? Mobile or desktop, it makes no difference. Speed is the most important ingredient for higher website ranking and improved traffic.
Since the year 2010, Google has downgraded the ranking of slow websites. Today, the algorithm evaluates the speed of a site, paying little respect to how a client is attempting to access it.
In the event that your site is slow, it explains the reason as to why it’s not ranking. Enhance your speed, and you’ll most probably enhance your ranking.

4. Your website doesn’t have the right content.

The major reason as to why websites don’t rank is because they don’t have the appropriate content. Many people think, “Let’s get a site up,” and the traffic will happen automatically. It doesn’t work that way. Gaining rank requires the content. However, not just any content. It must be “the right” content.

What is “the right” content? Any content that has the following elements can be viewed as “the right” content.

• “Fresh” content. A site that has regular updates will most likely outrank a site that has stale substance. Sorry, that press release from two years ago won’t do.
• High quality content. Google rates the quality of your site’s content and ranks it accordingly. This is easy. Find the highest ranking content for your target keywords and create superior content.
• Lots of content. Long contents usually get top-ranks in the SERPs. Landing pages, homepages, and content pages with more than 2,000 words have a higher possibility of ranking on the first page of Google.
• Visible content. Recently, I assessed an ecommerce site that was not ranking for their most important keywords as well as their own branded merchandise. The issue? The content was only accessible by tapping on tabs. This reduces the indexation and ranking of the content. The solution? Make your content more visible. Don’t make clients click.
• Above-the-fold content. Web crawlers survey the significance of a given keyword by its placement on the website page. Keywords that show up near the top, i.e. over the fold, will probably be viewed as essential, and therefore ranked. On each page try to include your most important keyword within the first paragraph.
• Tagged content. In addition to the placement in the source code, web crawlers likewise review the importance of content based on how it is identified. The most critical labels for SEO are the title tag, the alt tag and the H1 tag.
• Semantic content. You should not expect to rank if you are stuffing your content with keywords. Rather, you ought to use your keywords sparingly and add other important keywords. For instance, assuming you are focusing on the phrase “website design.” You will presumably need to use semantic variations e.g “website designer,” “website optimization,” or “website redesign.”
• Frequent updates. Are you posting content frequently? Website marketers have recognized a cause-effect relationship between the production of content and the ranking of the given content.

In the event that you don’t have a content strategy, your website’s poor ranking makes sense. The web is content-driven. By grasping and executing on content marketing, you will begin to see your rankings rise.

Final thoughts

Every entrepreneur, start-founder and small business owner wants their site to rank higher. Most websites have poor rankings because people ignore the fundamentals of search engine optimization. Their loss can be your gain if you follow the advice above.