Why is my website not ranking on Google?

Search engines are becoming increasingly sophisticated in how they analyze and compare pages, so it’s hard to know for sure. That being said, here are a few reasons that might apply to your situation:

Your backlink profile isn’t competitive for the searches you want to appear in

It’s no secret that search engines highly value backlinks. Each backlink signals a vote of confidence for your site, and that vote of confidence only amplifies by the quantity and quality of backlinks you receive.

For each page that ranks for a target keyword, you can check to see how many backlinks they have by using a tool like Moz. This insight can help you understand whether backlinks are a part of what’s holding your site back, and it can redirect your attention towards targeting more realistic keywords.

You aren’t optimizing your pages for SEO

Even if you have a relatively stellar backlink profile, it would be hard to rank any of your web pages without following some on-page SEO best practices.

Look back at the pages you want to optimize for search and check to see if they:

• Use the target keyword in places like their URL, title, H1, subhead, etc.
• Effectively address the keyword’s search intent
• Cover several topics that complement the keyword
• Have other pages from your site linking back to them with relevant anchor text

It’s also worth reviewing your brand’s search visibility. There may be all types of opportunities for inserting your brand into pages that already rank (e.g. getting your products added to an e-commerce vendor’s page).

To find these opportunities, you can use them. Just search any keyword you want your brand to be visible in, add your brand, and you’ll see which of Google’s top ten results don’t mention you—and can benefit from doing so.

Hopefully, you’ll find at least one of these tips helpful!