Question: I just received your workbook in the mail and I look forward to improving my Google ranking for my fledgling business by implementing your tools and techniques. My question is — how long does it take to rank in Google? I can’t find my business anywhere. My website is ~ and the name of the site is ~. I started building the website on Sept. 3, so it’s been a month. I use SquareSpace which has a lot of SEO tools automatically built in. I’m doing my best to learn all about building websites and SEO and starting a business and I feel like I’m doing a lot of the right things — but I can’t even find myself 10 pages back in Google. I don’t expect to be on the first page yet, but it seems like I ought to be able to find the business somewhere. Am I doing something wrong?
SquareSpace says everything is set up right and it just takes time. I just want to make sure I’m on the right track. I’ve set up Google Search Console, I’ve looked on Google Analytics and my numbers are going up — but I still can’t find myself anywhere on Google. If I were on the 10th page then I could feel like if I moved to the 5th page, I’d be making progress — and then I could shoot for the 1st page and the 1st 3 rankings.
I’m afraid that the name of my business “~” is too generic, but I like it. But even so, shouldn’t I be able to find myself somewhere?
Thanks for your direction and help. I look forward to hearing from you.
Answer.
This is a common question, and you need to break it down into constituent parts. First, is your site properly set up at all? For example, the robots.txt can “block” a site inadvertently. Related to this, you want to find out if Google has “discovered” the site, “at all,” because if Google doesn’t even know you exist, obviously you can’t rank. So first tests –
Ok, we’ll assume you pass these tests. Which means you are NOT being blocked by Google and you are “already” in the index. (I checked your site, and it’s fine). So this is NOT your problem; I just wanted to point it out in the blog post, as in terms of diagnostics, ALWAYS start at the beginning.
Now, you need to move on to Keywords and rank. So, first you need to find out here if you have a penalty against your site. That’s doubtful if it’s a brand new site, and doubtful if you have NOT engaged in any crazy link-building. So you want to do some simple keyword tests.
So, in this case, you ARE being indexed and you ARE able to rank. So all the technical stuff is OK. (However, I did “view source” of your home page, and it is EXTREMELY cluttered with code like this –
mask{fill:rgba(174,153,90,.4)}.social-icons-color-standard.social-icons-style-knockout [data-slice-type=”social-icons”]:hover .vsco:hover .use-mask{fill:#ae995a}.social-icons-color-standard.social-icons-style-solid [data-slice-type=”social-icons”] .vsco .use-mask{fill:#ae995a}.social-icons-color-standard.social-icons-style-solid [data-slice-type=”social-icons”] .vsco .use-icon{fill:transparent}.social-icons-color-standard.social-icons-style-solid [data-slice-type=”social-icons”] .vsco .use-background{fill:#fff}.social-icons-color-standard.social-icons-style-solid [data-slice-type=”social-icons”]:hover .vsco .use-mask{fill:rgba(174,153,90,.4)}.social-icons-color-standar
You should probably check with Squarespace and see if they can “clean up” all that garbage. Many of these big “for profit” web designers are very heavy on images and very poor on clean code. I doubt that is your problem, however, because you can see in your source code a TITLE tag, and H1 tag and visible content. So the content is “there.”
Now, the rubber hits the road. You have to think in a very “competitive” way about your keywords and your possible rank. The process is:
Identify a target keyword phrase > Optimize the website with both ON PAGE and OFF PAGE tactics > check (over time) to see if you rank.
So you can go awry here in a number of ways –
So, rather than just passively waiting (which, I take it is what Squarespace advises), you need to be PRO-ACTIVE –
SEO is a game, and you CAN win at it. But you have to “be focused” and dot those i’s and cross those t’s to win! I hope this helps!
Got a question? Click this link to or call . is founder and Senior SEO / Social Media Director of the . He teaches the SEO training classes for the group, and therefore provides most of the SEO tips for this blog. His goal with this blog is to provide an easy 'one-stop shop' for the busy marketer looking for tips, tricks, and secrets on how to get to the top of Google and Bing for free using proven SEO tactics. When not dreaming up SEO tips, Dr. McDonald lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, two dogs, a cat, four iguanas and twelve children (just kidding). Really you read down to the bio on this guy? Enjoy the blog.
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