Your website Google rankings is an important factor to consider when evaluating the success of your new site. The question about your website not being visible in Google is answered quite simply with one acronym: SEO – Search Engine Optimisation. From a website development perspective we do everything we can while building your site to optimise how your website displays on search engines, but this isn’t the end of the journey for you. And there’s a whole industry built around what comes next: SEO.
Below is a thorough explanation of why new websites often face challenges in ranking well on Google quickly. It’s a common concern for our clients, and understanding the factors involved can help set realistic expectations and guide your future efforts.
Common factors that affect your website Google rankings
Your site, being new, will struggle to rank (appear on the first few pages of Google) for some or all of the following reasons:
Time and trust factors
Google prioritises websites with established domain authority, which takes time to build. New websites often lack the history and trust signals that older domains have accumulated. Typically, it can take weeks or even months for Google to fully index and rank your content. Your website Google rankings take time to improve.
Indexation challenges
Your website may not be fully indexed yet. If Google hasn’t crawled or indexed all your pages, they won’t appear in search results. You can set up Google Search Console for your site and submit a sitemap to help speed this up.
Keyword competition
Targeting highly competitive keywords can make it difficult for a new site to rank. Established competitors with stronger backlink profiles often dominate these spaces. Shifting focus to lower-competition, long-tail keyphrases can yield better results initially. So, if we find that ‘skincare’ is competitive, adding more niche focus keywords to your pages will allow your website Google rankings to climb more easily. For example ‘organic South African youth skincare’ or similar.
The biggest challenge your new site may face is that there aren’t enough pages for you to optimise the site for multiple searches – this is applicable to single page sites most especially. So, if we wanted to grab visitors searching for ‘natural organic youth skincare Durban’ we’d need a page where the content is solely focused on that. This is why you’ll see lots of sites out there with a blog section – it allows the site owner to create many, many unique pages, each with its own unique focus keyphrase, drawing in visitors for a variety of searches.
Content optimisation
High-quality, optimised content is crucial for your website Google rankings. Google’s algorithm evaluates factors like relevance, search intent, and keyword usage to determine rankings. If your content doesn’t align with user expectations or lacks depth, it may struggle to rank. In all the sites we build, we install a plugin called Yoast which allows us (and later, our clients) to tell Google what each page is about. This plugin also covers content length, keyword density and a variety of other factors so that you can know whether or not that page is optimised as far as possible.
Backlinks and authority
Backlinks from authoritative websites (like social media sites, business listing sites, and news sites) are one of Google’s strongest ranking signals. Building a robust backlink profile takes time and effort but is critical for improving rankings over the long term.
Things you can do to improve your website Google rankings now
Focus on content
Create high-quality, relevant content that matches what people might be searching for (even if they don’t know your business by name) and targets less competitive keywords.
Build backlinks
Invest in strategies to earn backlinks from authoritative sites within your niche. Posting regularly on social media (especially Facebook where you can include a link to your website in your posts) is a good starting point.
Google Business Profile
Set up a Google Business Profile. It’s free.
Be patient: SEO is a long-term strategy
Consistent effort will yield results over time. Organic SEO is a slow process – for a quick fix, you could consider running Google Ads where you will pay for a position on the first page.
If you’d like assistance with any of these steps or further clarification, please contact us to discuss your goals.
We’re client objective obsessed and would love to help your business achieve your objectives.
