Why Is My Site Not Showing Up In Google?

By Nicole Ephgrave

[Ed note: Nicole Ephgrave is our in-house SEO "wizard." You can meet up with her in our exclusive "members-only" Search Marketing Lab forum.]

Note from Derek: Quite a few of you have written to say how frustrated you are because your site isn’t showing up in Google’s search results.

Rob wrote me personally to say, “I selected all the best KEIs and sprinkled them properly throughout my salescopy. One of the keywords had a KEI of over 1,500 with over 100 hits a day. Why am I not showing up on Google’s searches?”

Rhys is dealing with a similar problem. For one of his top search terms, he’s ranked #1 in MSN, Yahoo, and Alta Vista - yet he’s not showing up on Google at all!

I’ve asked Nicole, my in-house SEO guru, to give them some answers. I hope her advice helps you, too.

Now here’s Nicole…

Hi Rob, Rhys, and everyone else who’s having problems getting listed with Google. To start, I want to point out that there are two important components to any successful search optimization campaign:

Your on-site optimization efforts — such as “sprinkling” your best keywords throughout your salescopy (like Rob did)

Your off-site optimization efforts — such as getting quality inbound links to point to your site. You need to focus on both these areas if you want your SEO efforts to pay off.

Now, in terms of how to get Google to give your site a good ranking, there are three specific things you need pay attention to (because they’re what the Google spiders pay the most attention to!):

1. Your inbound links

I’ll say it before, but I’ll say it again because it’s just so important: If you want to get a good, solid ranking with Google — one that won’t just disappear overnight — you need to build a network of high quality inbound links pointing to your site.

By high quality I mean, from sites that have a Google page rank of 4 or more. (You can check out a site’s page rank by downloading the Google Toolbar to your browser.)

The best ways to get these links are to:

Get your site listed with the ‘Net’s top directories, like Yahoo and DMOZ.org (the Open Directory Project)

List your site on industry-specific directories

Write content-rich articles and submit them to high page rank article directories

Offer free content to high page rank sites that target the same market as you (but offer different, complementary products)

Participate in forums that are popular with your target market and be sure to include a link to your site in your signature block
Make sure you acquire your inbound links gradually over time, so they look natural. As I mentioned in last week’s newsletter, you can buy links, if you want — just don’t buy a whole bunch at once. Nothing screams “paid advertising” more than 100 links mysteriously pointing to your site overnight!

2. Your anchor tags

It’s not just enough to have any old inbound link pointing to your site… do whatever you can to make sure the anchor tag has your top-performing keywords in it.

Google is looking for hyperlinks attached to actual phrases (as opposed to URLs). The idea is, hyperlinked phrases are more likely to lead to a useful reference site.

For example, if you have a dog training site, Google will pay more attention to a hyperlink that’s attached to a phrase like, “best dog training tips” than a link that’s attached to: www.doghouserules.com.

Here’s what the ideal link looks like: keywordphrase

And like I said last week, make sure your anchor tags don’t all use the exact same keyword phrase. They should include variations on a number of different keywords. That’ll make them look more natural in the eyes of the search engines.

3. Your title tags

Did you know that your title tag is one of the most important tags on your site?

It’s one of the first things the spiders look at when they arrive on your site. That’s why you absolutely have to make sure you include your top-performing keyword phrase in your title tag.

(You can see what your title tag is by looking at the very top of your browser when you’re on your homepage. What information appears there? Does it include your top keyword phrases? It should!)

On top of that, your title tag is the text some search engines display in the listings that appear in the search results. So it needs to clearly communicate to your visitors exactly what they’ll find when they arrive at your site. And the best way to do that is by including the keyword phrases they typed into the search engine.

Finally, I wanted to point out that you need to have patience. Search engine optimization isn’t an overnight cure to your traffic woes. Sometimes it can take up to six months to see the results of your work. But I promise you, the results will be worth it!