Reasons your website has been removed from Google's search results
Your heart might skip a beat or two when you see that your website has been removed from the Google search results altogether. A lot of business owners tend to assume that this simply can’t happen. However, Google has strict terms and conditions in place, and any sort of breach can result in your website being removed from its search results altogether.
In this blog, we delve a little deeper to explore why this may have happened.
Your website has been penalised by Google
If your website has a penalty applied by Google, it may not show up in Google’s search results. If you haven’t followed Google’s quality guidelines, you may have a permanent or temporary removal from the Google search results.
There are three primary types of Google penalties:
- Your website is sandboxed, which means you experience a sudden drop in Google traffic, but your domain is not penalised or deindexed.
- Your website is penalised, which means that your domain still exists, but domains (that is, your website) cannot be located via a Google search. Google can manually apply penalties or they can occur due to algorithm updates.
- Your website is deindexed, which means your domain is completely removed from the search engine results.
To find out whether you have a penalty, check Google Search Console for any penalty alerts. Once you know what has happened, you need to take the appropriate steps to fix your website. You can then submit your website for reconsideration so that you get back onto Google.
Your UX is poor
Nowadays, Google does not only consider links and keywords. It is concerned about the entire user experience you deliver to its searchers.
If you improve your UX, people will stay on your website for longer, bounce rates will drop, and ultimately, Google will pick up signals that your website is relevant and of high quality. This will help your rating.
To make your UX better, here are a few places to start:
- Incorporate visual elements to engage visitors and break up chunks of content;
- Streamline your website’s navigation so people can find the information they require without having to think twice;
- Speed up your website’s load time by using page speed optimisation tools.
If you’re struggling with this, the best thing to do is hire an experienced web development company that can ensure your website delights anyone who visits it.
Your keywords are too competitive
If your presence on Google has gotten worse and worse, it could be because you’re targeting keywords that are simply too competitive. Now would be a good time to revisit your keyword strategy.
If you only aim to rank for highly competitive keywords, you are going to be competing with big brands, and it can be incredibly difficult to make your voice heard. It’s fine to have all those highly competitive words and phrases on your site, but you also need to include a strategy that targets the less competitive phrases.
It makes sense to target long-tail keywords, which contain three or more keywords.
Yes, long-tail keywords will have a lower number of monthly searches. However, you are going to have a much better chance of ranking higher, meaning visibility will be much better.
It’s simple mathematics:
- You have 500 firms targeting a high-value keyword with 5,000 monthly searches; the bigger sites, with more content and more regular updates, will likely take out the top spots on page 1 of the results.
- You have 10 firms targeting a low-value, long-tail keyword with 50 searches per month; all ten firms have a higher chance of appearing on page 1 for that search.
Furthermore, those conducting such searches will have a very specific search intent, which means you’re much more likely to have people landing on your website that are genuinely interested in your legal services.
To fix your keyword strategy, go back to the drawing board and conduct keyword research. Tools like Google’s Keyword Planner, KeywordsFX, and Keyword Tool are ideal. Start targeting less competitive phrases to boost your visibility.
You have not optimised your website effectively
Your SEO could be the issue! There are hundreds of different ranking factors that Google considers when ranking a website. Plus, with algorithms changing all of the time, what worked a few years ago may not be effective now.
You should start by carrying out an extensive SEO audit of your website. This will enable you to discover any areas that need to be improved so that you can make the required changes to achieve a top ranking.
Here are some areas to help you get started:
- Create high-quality, unique, in-depth content that answers people’s search queries;
- Incorporate keywords in your website copy, page titles, and headings;
- Streamline the design and navigation of your website so it delivers an excellent user experience;
- Make sure your website is quick to load;
- Clean up your technical SEO and website code.
Your website isn’t indexed
Websites that are not indexed by Google will not appear in the search results. Not only can this happen when a website is new (and you’ll need a bit of patience when you submit a new website for indexing), but also if your website has ‘no index’ tags. These tags will prevent search bots from crawling parts of your website and indexing specific pages.
If your website operates on WordPress, it could be that one of the in-built features is instructing the search engine not to index your website. This setting can be manually disabled. Head to ‘Settings,’ ‘Reading,’ and then uncheck the box next to ‘Search Engine Visibility.’
Finally, Google crawlers may not be able to visit portions of your website due to a robots.txt file. Make sure you didn’t disallow pages you actually want to rank by accident.
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