A site nobody was ever told about is a shop with no door.
Having a website and being findable are separate purchases, and a great many people only made the first one.
Check first that it can be indexed at all
A surprising number of sites are quietly telling search engines to stay away, usually a setting left on from when the site was being built and never switched off.
It costs nothing to rule out and it explains the most extreme cases, the ones where not even the business name finds the site.
Nobody ever said what you sell
Pages full of welcome and philosophy and nothing that names the thing somebody would type. If the words are not on the page, there is nothing to match.
This is the most common cause by a distance, and it is the cheapest to fix because it is writing rather than building.
You are new, and that is not a fault
A site published recently has not been weighed against anybody yet. The honest range before ordinary results move is six to twelve months, and nothing shortens it.
What you can win sooner is the map, because most competitors have not finished theirs either.
It is too slow on the connection people use
Not your office connection. A phone on mobile data, on a bus. If the page has not appeared by the time somebody looks up, they have gone, and no amount of writing recovers that.
You are competing for the wrong words
Chasing the broadest possible phrase against everybody in the country is a losing bet for a small business. The words worth having are longer, narrower and nearer.
Somebody typing exactly what they want, in the town where you are, is worth more than a hundred people typing something vague.
Questions worth asking
How do I check whether Google knows about my site at all?
Search for your exact business name plus your town. If nothing of yours appears, the problem is indexing or the listing rather than competition, and that is a different and usually faster fix.
I have visitors but no enquiries. Same problem?
No, opposite problem, and better news. Traffic arriving and leaving means you are found and not convincing, which is about what the page says and how easy you are to contact.
Does posting on social media help my website?
A little, indirectly, and less than people hope. Those links are mostly nofollow. They are worth doing because people read them, not because search engines weigh them heavily.
Should I pay for ads until it works?
That is a reasonable bridge if the margins support it, and it is what ads are genuinely good for. Just do not confuse it with the slow work: the day you stop paying, that traffic stops.
Is my website too small to rank?
Size is not the measure; answering something is. A five page site that answers five real questions beats a forty page one that answers none, and it is a much easier thing to build.
Send us the address and we will tell you which of the five is actually happening to you. Get a free audit.
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