Why isn’t my website showing up in search results?
You’ve worked with a web designer and love your new website. But when you type in relevant search keywords to Google–you’re not seeing it. Why isn’t my website showing up in searches!? In this post I will bust some myths on Search Engine Optimization (commonly known as SEO) and commonly asked questions after a web design project has been completed.
SEO Takes 3-6 Months to “Work”
Yep, you read that right. It’s time to be patient and let the search engine crawlers do their work. What’s a search engine crawler, you might ask? They were created at the dawn of the internet to keep track of how big it was growing, but became useful tools to search for web pages that could be indexed and ranked by search engines. It takes a while for a crawler to search through the nearly 1.2 billion websites that currently exist in the world. Crawlers not only look for new websites, but they also update old website information regularly. This process can take 3-6 months for a new website to be crawled, indexed, and then ranked. An SEO expert may know how to speed this process up a bit but it’s generally out of a web designer’s hands.
So, is it the web designer’s job?
Another question that comes up is whether or not this is the web designer’s job. And the answer is complicated. A good designer will implement SEO best practices from the start of designing the website. They should make sure the page loads quickly, that clients can easily find what they’re looking for, and that it has responsive design for mobile devices. Another level of SEO a designer might take is embedding text that relates to your business’ field. But there are many other factors that play into SEO outside of web design and generally that is the job of an SEO expert, not a web designer. Web Design work tends to be a short contract with clients, whereas an SEO expert may work with a business for a long time as SEO is constantly evolving.
Think about it like this. You have a pizza restaurant and want local people to be able to find your restaurant so you can boost sales. Your web designer will make sure you have a solid website that is easy for customers to navigate. Within a few months you start seeing lots of sales and everything seems to be running smoothly—your website is doing what you intended it to do! But suddenly, a year later another pizza restaurant opens up in your area and your business suffers. When you search for pizza in your neighborhood, you see that their restaurant comes up first and 3rd party reviewing sites like Yelp! and Google are giving rave reviews of your competitor’s site. On the flip side, let’s say you’re opening a new pizza restaurant in a neighborhood with lots of great competitors. When your website is complete, you might not come up in searches as easily because other restaurants have had time to build their business and SEO before you.
In both of these situations you need an SEO expert to get your page into the top of search results because this is beyond the scope of a web design project. This involves some expertise outside of the website, like developing backlinks, indexing your site with search engines, and developing a social media presence. I always hand-off a project by completing Squarespace’s SEO checklist but have some expertise in SEO that can be added on to website packages.
What can an SEO Expert do for my website?
SEO Experts use keyword research, content creation, link building, technical audits, and more to improve organic search results. That sounds like a lot of jargon, right? That’s because it’s a complicated tech field that many business owners outsource, just as you outsourced for a website. It is a valuable part of your team to hire an expert to do these tasks for you, but you can also learn how to do some of these things on your own. A great place to start is Google’s Digital Marketing & E-Commerce Certificate through Coursera.
As you may have learned in this article, coming up in search results can take months even after you’ve worked with a web designer that has implemented SEO best practices. Often times you can hire an SEO expert to help speed up the process and bring your website to the top of desired search results. You can always schedule a consultation with me to discover what you could be doing to boost your SEO even after you have a completed website.
