Why Your WordPress Site Isn’t Visible in Google Search
Reading Time: 4 minutes Whether you are trying to promote your brand or business, sell your product or service, or you simply want to have your voice heard nowadays, you need to have a strong online presence. The easiest way to do it would be to set up a WordPress website or blog since it doesn’t require you to actually write any code. However, even if you have set up your website properly and posted some great content, it still might not be invisible in Google Search. Why is that?
Well, there can be many reasons why your website isn’t showing inside the search results and why you are prevented from reaching your target audience. In this article, we have put together a list of five most common reasons why your WordPress website isn’t being shown inside the search results. Keep on reading for more info.
Table of Contents
1. Your Website is New
This is a pretty common reason why your website might not be showing inside the search results. When it comes to determining the exact amount of time that is needed for Google to index your website, the jury is still out. In some cases, websites get crawled by Google in as little as four days, but it can be as much as six months! To make matters even more frustrating, Google has never really specified what you need to do in order to speed up the process.
Some factors which can contribute to your website being indexed faster are the number of inbound links, especially if they are coming from reputable authority websites, and the amount of traffic your website is currently receiving. Ultimately, you can submit your website manually, but in most cases, Google will do it automatically, as soon as there is at least one link pointing to your site.
2. You Haven’t Done SEO for Your Website
Even if your website has a ton of great and useful content, which Google loves, it still might not make it more visible because it’s not optimized for search engines. You see, Google’s spiders and crawlers don’t read your content in the same way humans do. In order to figure out what your content is actually about, they rely on stuff like title tags, meta descriptions, keywords, keyword density, as well as the actual relevance of the content. That’s why SEO is so crucial nowadays, regardless of your niche or your target audience.
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Now, because SEO is not something set in stone and because Google will introduce a new algorithm every so often, you need to make sure that you are on top of all the latest SEO guidelines and developments. For instance, keyword stuffing used to be a practice that worked like a charm about six or seven years ago, but in 2018, it’s completely useless.
3. You Are Targeting Extremely Competitive Keywords
On one hand, you want to target keywords which are competitive, because that’s what people are looking for. But on the other, you may not get very far if you are trying to target those short, general keywords everyone is after. For instance, if your WordPress website or blog is about power tools, you should probably target something other than “power tools”.
The solution would be to target long-tail keywords, which are more specific, and which usually contain clear intent. This will point you directly to your target audience, and on top of that, you won’t have to bend over backward to integrate these keywords into your content, because they are usually phrases and sentences we use in everyday speech.
4. Your Website Has Been Removed from Google
Another common reason why your website might not be showing up inside the search engine results is that it has been removed by Google. For instance, Google will penalize your website if it’s over optimized. This happens if the keyword you are trying to target appears in your title tags, subheadings, alt text, URLs, and multiple times inside your content. The same will happen if have been buying links that lead back to your website. Fortunately, penalties are only temporary, and they will be lifted once you have fixed the problem.
If your website has been deindexed or banned, the results are permanent. Google usually does this if your website is posting illegal content, or if you have completely plagiarized someone else’s work. This also applies to hidden and text were written by robots and other illegal SEO practices.
5. You Have Prevented Google from Crawling Your Website
The problem with this one is that most people aren’t aware of it. When you build a brand new WordPress website and launch it, the feature which tells Google and other search engines not to crawl your website will be enabled, which means you need to disable it. It’s an easy fix: all you have to do is go to:
Settings->Reading, and check the box named Search Engine Visibility Option.
With that, you will enable your website to be crawled and indexed by Google.
Summary
As you can see, there are plenty of reasons as to why your WordPress website might not be visible in Google Search. Some are rather trivial, and others require you to roll up your sleeves and fix the issue yourself. But, even if you have done everything by the book, and your website still isn’t being shown, then it’s probably just a matter of time before it gets indexed by Google. In that case, the best advice would be to just wait.
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Co-Authored With
Peter Hill is the best editor of BestEssayTips. He is a socially active person, likes traveling and photo/video editing. He finds himself in writing. Feel free to contact him on Google+.
