Search5 min read
The question comes in two completely different versions. “My site isn't on Google at all” is a technical problem and is usually solved within a day. “My site is there, but doesn't come up when I search for my service” is something else, and it takes months. The first job is to find out which of the two you're in — and that takes half a minute.
First
Before anything else, find out whether Google knows about your site at all. The answer changes the whole direction and saves money on optimization that won't help.
Exactly like that — with a colon and no space after it. If results come up, Google knows your site. If nothing comes up, the problem is technical and no amount of optimization will fix it.
Google shows the approximate number of pages found. If the site has forty and three come up, indexing has stopped somewhere along the way.
Copy a sentence from your home page and search for it in quotation marks. If it doesn't come up, that particular page isn't indexed.
If you don't come up first for your own name, something's wrong. It's the easiest query you'll ever have.
It's free, and it's the only source that tells you what Google sees. Without it, everything else is guesswork.
In Search Console, when you inspect a specific URL. If the last crawl was months ago, then as far as Google is concerned your content is still the old one.
If site: returns nothing
Each of them stops indexing completely. They're checked in minutes and almost always fixed in hours.
If site: returns the pages
Here the site is indexed but doesn't come up for what you do. This is no longer fixed with a setting, and it doesn't happen in a week.
In order
The point of the order is not to pay for optimization while the site is technically closed off — that's the most common way money gets thrown away.
First, without exception. Until Google can see the pages, everything else is wasted effort.
Every page with its own title and its own description. It's cheap, takes a day and has an immediately visible effect on clicks.
One for each service you actually sell. A single “Services” page listing ten things doesn't rank for any of them.
From the text, not just from the menu. A link in a sentence says more than a link in a list repeated on every page.
Answers to the questions people ask you on the phone. It's both the slowest and the most lasting part of the work.
Last, and never by buying them. Bought links are the only thing on the list that can hurt you instead of helping.
Questions
If your question isn't here, call us — we answer by phone too.
+359 882 95 89 89Crawling usually takes from a few days to a few weeks. Submitting a sitemap through Search Console shortens the wait.
Getting into the index isn't the same as ranking, though. A page can be findable from the first week and still not come up for a competitive query for months.
No. Organic results can't be bought, and Google doesn't take requests for them. Only the ad slots, which are labelled as ads, are paid for.
Anyone who promises you first place within a fixed time is either talking about ads or not telling the truth.
A short dip after a switch is normal, especially if the URLs have changed. If the URLs are redirected correctly, it usually recovers within weeks.
If the drop lasts for months, the problem isn't the switch itself. More in redesign without losing rankings.
Almost none for rankings, and some risk if the directory is one of those that exist only for links.
The exception is the real places where your customers look for you — industry catalogues, maps, local directories.
As many as the separate things you sell, plus the answers to the questions people ask you. The number on its own doesn't help.
Ten pages, each with one clear question, do more than forty empty ones.
Related services
It's rarely just one thing. Here are the services that go with this one, and why.
Next step
Send us your address. We'll tell you which of the two troubles you're in and what can be fixed right away — with no obligation.
