 | HELP! My Website is Not Ranking Well in Search Engines |
If your website is not ranking well or even worse your website was ranking well in search engines and then fell off the grid so to speak then this may be a good article to possible help you! There is a lot going on in the online world of search engines and it is important to understand what may be happening and understand that what may be happening is not necessarily your fault.
There are things you can control and things you cannot control when it comes to ranking well in search engines. This is determined by establishing a certain philosophy about how to rank well and use this philosophy to achieve it consistently over time.
Hopefully, this article will cut down your time and frustration and re-focuses your energy in a different way in order to get ranked well. It will also help to maintain a well informed website for the most important entity that is involved... your visitors!
There are things you can control and things you cannot control when it comes to ranking well in search engines. This is determined by establishing a certain philosophy about how to rank well and use this philosophy to achieve it consistently over time.
Hopefully, this article will cut down your time and frustration and re-focuses your energy in a different way in order to get ranked well. It will also help to maintain a well informed website for the most important entity that is involved... your visitors!
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Lately, I am finding a lot of webmasters are having trouble ranking their website and spend way too much time focusing on what they think search engines like Google are doing to penalize them. What ends up happening is that they see their website rank well and then 3 months later it drops off the grid for a specific key term for no apparent reason. They begin to panic and wonder what the problem is. They mess around with their website and change this, change that in panic and frustration and what ends up happening is that they make the problem even worse. To me, this seems like the old rabbit chasing the carrot problem on the stick. Then they wonder what they did wrong regardless of how well designed the website is. The first thing they need to do is relax!
Yes, many tines there are issues on how they formatted their website to rank well in search engines, and there are times that it is not. Granted, you always want to be up on the latest information on what search engines deem important. However there is this fine line that can actually make the problem worse. What we need to remember is that search engines are computer programs like everything else the minute you turn on your computer. They have a set of rules that they use to determine how a website will rank. These rules can be a variety of factors. One rule may be the number of incoming back-links. Another rule would be keywords on your website. A keyword is a group of words that determine what your website is all about and what people would type to find your website.
Now, In the case of Google, these rules change and change very often. One day, you may rank well, the next day you may not and the following day you will again. I would guess that Google makes over 100 changes a day to its search engine algorithm which determines how websites rank. They have to do this because the internet is growing at a very fast pace. It is getting bigger every day and the search engines need to adjust to make sure that place a premium on quality websites.
However you need to remember that it is not a personal attack on your website if one day, the rules change and you drop off the top search engine spot for a particular keyword. As long as you can still be found, it may simply be something that the search engine developers are tweaking around with. It may not be something that you did to harm yourself.
I have seen search engine results where one website would drop off in its rankings for a particular keyword while its competitor's website will dominate the top 10 spots. Yes, the top 10 spots! To make matters worse, the website that dropped off is 1000 times better looking with better quality content than the one that is on every position of the search engine results. To me, that doesn't seem right at all and goes against concept of naturally ranking search engines. If I was betting, I would think that the search engine program may have a flaw in it (or in computer terms we call it a bug). It isn't the fault of the website that fell off because if you look at the problem objectively and in its true nature, a search engine should only give one result per website. That way everyone gets a fair shake and is ranked evenly. It just seems like something is wrong in this particular example with the way the search engine is currently functioning. Again, one of your websites for some reason is taking a big hit with ALL of its keywords (not just one or two) and is totally gone even if you type the exact domain in the search engine box, then yes it is important to make sure that your website doesn't have a internal problem.
Also, I find that a lot of website owner outsource to search engine companies in order to rank their website. These companies use whatever method or tactic, even if it is illegal and black hat, that happens to work at that time to obtain results. Then what happens once the website is working well there is no need to use the search engine company anymore and everything is good. Following that, the search engine itself will correct the flaw that was giving the website a boost and then the website will fall off the map completely because reality caught up with the method(s) that were being used. All this took place without the website owner realizing that they just spent a ton of money for short term results because the search engine company they hired manipulated the system and eventually the search engine caught on. This happened a lot during the early 2000's when search engines was not as sophisticated as they are today.
Again, there is a fine line. If you have been using bad SEO tactics in the past that got you ranked well, like keyword stuffing or white text on white background, then there is a good chance that you will be penalized once the search engine re-indexes your website. But you have to keep one thing in mind? Who is your audience? People, humans, not search engine robots. You need to focus your website content and design on that objective by building your website with that philosophy in mind.
Yes, keywords are important. Meta tags are also important along with sitemaps but you but you don't need to go overboard with all this stuff when trying to rank well. You don't try to chase the search engine system by making changes every-time a search engine makes a change. Don't get caught up in this. You will be spinning your wheels, chasing your tail and it is a lot less productive then developing quality content. You aren't going to knock on every door on the planet trying to sell your website right? No, of course not! So it is the same thing here.
Develop your website as attractive as possible and visitors will most certainly come! Remember, things like this takes time and effort with all the competition out there. You need to keep focused on delivering the best information possible to your visitors, because like I said, they are the most important part of the whole equation. To do this, focus on making sure your website is clean and concise. Focus on keeping your visitors engaged with quality information that can help them achieve their goals and the rest will fall into place. Here are some additional website optimization tips and techniques. Hope this helps!
Find out more information about our website promotion and/or our search engine optimization services.
Yes, many tines there are issues on how they formatted their website to rank well in search engines, and there are times that it is not. Granted, you always want to be up on the latest information on what search engines deem important. However there is this fine line that can actually make the problem worse. What we need to remember is that search engines are computer programs like everything else the minute you turn on your computer. They have a set of rules that they use to determine how a website will rank. These rules can be a variety of factors. One rule may be the number of incoming back-links. Another rule would be keywords on your website. A keyword is a group of words that determine what your website is all about and what people would type to find your website.
Now, In the case of Google, these rules change and change very often. One day, you may rank well, the next day you may not and the following day you will again. I would guess that Google makes over 100 changes a day to its search engine algorithm which determines how websites rank. They have to do this because the internet is growing at a very fast pace. It is getting bigger every day and the search engines need to adjust to make sure that place a premium on quality websites.
However you need to remember that it is not a personal attack on your website if one day, the rules change and you drop off the top search engine spot for a particular keyword. As long as you can still be found, it may simply be something that the search engine developers are tweaking around with. It may not be something that you did to harm yourself.
I have seen search engine results where one website would drop off in its rankings for a particular keyword while its competitor's website will dominate the top 10 spots. Yes, the top 10 spots! To make matters worse, the website that dropped off is 1000 times better looking with better quality content than the one that is on every position of the search engine results. To me, that doesn't seem right at all and goes against concept of naturally ranking search engines. If I was betting, I would think that the search engine program may have a flaw in it (or in computer terms we call it a bug). It isn't the fault of the website that fell off because if you look at the problem objectively and in its true nature, a search engine should only give one result per website. That way everyone gets a fair shake and is ranked evenly. It just seems like something is wrong in this particular example with the way the search engine is currently functioning. Again, one of your websites for some reason is taking a big hit with ALL of its keywords (not just one or two) and is totally gone even if you type the exact domain in the search engine box, then yes it is important to make sure that your website doesn't have a internal problem.
Also, I find that a lot of website owner outsource to search engine companies in order to rank their website. These companies use whatever method or tactic, even if it is illegal and black hat, that happens to work at that time to obtain results. Then what happens once the website is working well there is no need to use the search engine company anymore and everything is good. Following that, the search engine itself will correct the flaw that was giving the website a boost and then the website will fall off the map completely because reality caught up with the method(s) that were being used. All this took place without the website owner realizing that they just spent a ton of money for short term results because the search engine company they hired manipulated the system and eventually the search engine caught on. This happened a lot during the early 2000's when search engines was not as sophisticated as they are today.
Again, there is a fine line. If you have been using bad SEO tactics in the past that got you ranked well, like keyword stuffing or white text on white background, then there is a good chance that you will be penalized once the search engine re-indexes your website. But you have to keep one thing in mind? Who is your audience? People, humans, not search engine robots. You need to focus your website content and design on that objective by building your website with that philosophy in mind.
Yes, keywords are important. Meta tags are also important along with sitemaps but you but you don't need to go overboard with all this stuff when trying to rank well. You don't try to chase the search engine system by making changes every-time a search engine makes a change. Don't get caught up in this. You will be spinning your wheels, chasing your tail and it is a lot less productive then developing quality content. You aren't going to knock on every door on the planet trying to sell your website right? No, of course not! So it is the same thing here.
Develop your website as attractive as possible and visitors will most certainly come! Remember, things like this takes time and effort with all the competition out there. You need to keep focused on delivering the best information possible to your visitors, because like I said, they are the most important part of the whole equation. To do this, focus on making sure your website is clean and concise. Focus on keeping your visitors engaged with quality information that can help them achieve their goals and the rest will fall into place. Here are some additional website optimization tips and techniques. Hope this helps!
Find out more information about our website promotion and/or our search engine optimization services.