Step one: is it indexed at all?
Type site:yourdomain.com into Google. If it lists your pages, Google knows about the site and the question is why it ranks where it does; skip to the next section. If it shows nothing, work through these causes:
- It is new. Google can take anywhere from a few days to several weeks to find and index a new site. Submitting it in Google Search Console with a sitemap speeds this up considerably; see what a sitemap is.
- A noindex tag. WordPress has a 'Discourage search engines from indexing this site' checkbox under Settings, Reading, often left on from development. Builders have a similar switch. Pages can also carry a noindex meta tag individually.
- robots.txt is blocking Google. A line reading Disallow: / tells crawlers to stay out.
- The site is behind a password or a 'coming soon' page.
- A manual action. Search Console's Manual Actions report will say so. Rare for a legitimate business site.
- The domain used to belong to someone else and carries a history. Also rare, but worth checking the Wayback Machine.
Step two: it is indexed but nobody sees it
This is the common case. Your pages exist in Google but sit on page three for the searches you care about. Search Console's Performance report shows which queries show your site and at what position. The usual reasons:
- The pages do not say what people search for. A homepage that says 'Welcome' and 'Quality you can trust' does not tell Google it is a plumbing company in Brampton. Each service and area needs a page that says so in plain words.
- Competitors have more and better content, and more links and reviews. For a competitive term, that takes months of work to overcome; see how long SEO takes to work.
- The site is slow or poor on mobile, which costs ties against similar pages.
- You are searching for your own company name and another business shares it. Google Business Profile and consistent naming across the web fix this over time; see what Google Business Profile is.
What to do this week
Set up Google Search Console if it is not already, submit the sitemap, check the Pages report for 'excluded' reasons, confirm the noindex box is off, and look at the Performance report for what you already rank for. Then pick the five searches that matter most and make sure each has a page written for it. The guide on what SEO is and how it works explains the rest, and SEO services is the version where we do it.