Having an online presence is crucial for any small business. Depending on which survey you read, between 60% and 95% of consumers google search for products or services online before they buy. So if you’re not showing up in their searches, you’re missing out on vital business.

How do you fix this? Well, first, you need to work out the root of the problem – either your site isn’t showing up in Google searches at all, or it’s there but buried several pages deep in the search results. Either will prevent your customers from finding you, so let’s address them both.

Your site is not showing on Google search at all

It’s easy to find out if your site is on Google. Open the Google search panel and type site: followed by your website address, e.g., site:yourwebsiteaddress.co.nz. If that search doesn’t find your site, then it’s not discoverable through Google.

Often, this is a technical issue. Google is constantly crawling the web with bots, finding and indexing websites so it can display them to its users when they perform a search. Several things can stop Google’s bots from indexing your site.

Your site is too new: It can take anywhere from a few days to a few months for Google to index a new website.

Your site has errors in the code: You might be missing some index tags, or your robots.txt file is inadvertently blocking pages from being crawled.

When you get your site designed and built with Moreweb, we’ll make sure your code is correct and help to speed up your site indexing by submitting an XML sitemap to Google.

Your site is ranking poorly on Google

Google’s main aim is to show the most relevant websites to a customer based on the search terms they use. If your site has poor SEO (search engine optimisation), then it will not appear high in their search results. To help Google find and suggest your site, you should ensure it fulfils the following criteria.

Mobile friendly: Google prioritises sites that will work well on phones and tablets. You can test your site’s mobile responsiveness at https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly.

Quick to load: Solutions to help your site load faster include using a good web host, compressing your images, enabling caching, and using clean, simple themes.

Contains SEO-optimised copy: By using keywords (words and phrases that your customers are most likely to use when searching for your product), you’ll help Google to decide that your site is a good match for your customer. The most important places to use keywords are in your page titles, headings, and scattered throughout your body copy. Don’t go overboard, though, because Google will penalise sites that “keyword stuff” their content. Check out our blog on free ways to find keywords for your site.

Is updated frequently: Google loves sites that are updated with relevant, quality content regularly – such as informative blogs. It increases the frequency with which Google’s bots will index your site and gives you the opportunity to include more keywords.

All of Moreweb’s small business website packages include a responsive design and an SEO strategy that attracts online traffic from the start.