There are common threads for businesses that struggle in search results, and BFL provides practical steps to boost online visibility!

Key Takeaways 

• Many businesses fail to show up on Google for a variety of reasons, including common culprits like technical website issues, weak local signals, limited content, and insufficient authority.

• Consistently ranking for your company’s relevant search queries requires so much more than simply adding keywords to your website.

• Your reviews, website, Google Business Profile, content, and backlinks all combine together to create your local search visibility.

• Improving search visibility is a long-term process that requires a wide range of optimizations, as opposed to being some kind of one-time fix. 

• Working with experienced digital marketing specialists like the Big Fish Local team can help identify the specific obstacles that are holding your website back from being found. 

Why Your Business Might Not Be Showing Up On Google As Much As You Need It To

For a lot of consumers, Google is the first and foremost place they turn to when they’re in need of products or services. This means if your business doesn’t appear in front of potential online customers, you’re inevitably missing out on an endless amount of valuable opportunities. 

The tough news for a lot of business owners is that simply having a website isn’t even close to a guarantee that Google will ever rank it, and your site’s overall search visibility depends on a number of factors like:

• Your website’s relevancy to specific searches
• How well Google understands your business
• Your content’s quality
• Your local search presence
• Your site’s overall authority 

The good news for all businesses is that poor online visibility isn’t permanent, because once you pinpoint what exactly is holding you back, you’ll then be able to start addressing underlying problems!

You May Need To Give Your Google Business Profile More Attention 

For most local businesses, your Google Business Profile is an essential factor for online presence.

Poorly optimized, outdated, and incomplete profiles can make it increasingly harder for Google to accurately understand your business, which is part of how it determines when and where your website should appear in local search results.

This is why every business profile needs to contain accurate business information. You should also be adding photos to your profile on a regular basis and responding to customer reviews to demonstrate your activeness. 

The information on both your Google Business Profile and website also needs to be consistent, because any conflicting details could lead to unnecessary confusion for both customers and search engines. 

Your Website Might Not Be Fully Optimized For Search Intent 

Another common issue that we see among struggling websites is keyword targeting, without considering what people actually want when they search certain keywords. 

An example of this would be a plumbing company wanting to rank for keywords like “plumber”, even though that broad of a term doesn’t help Google users enough. On the other hand, someone searching for a term like “emergency plumber Columbus OH” subsequently has a more specific intent. 

Effective SEO strategies involve creating content that directly addresses an ideal customer’s relevant services, questions, locations and problems. Instead of keyword stuffing on existing pages, a lot of websites should reconsider how they’re providing useful information for the searches they want to rank for. 

Your Website Could Have Technical SEO Issues 

There are also many times when your website’s content has nothing to do with your lack of rankings.

Technical issues frequently prevent Google from properly understanding, crawling, or indexing websites. Duplicate pages, broken links, slow-loading pages, poor site structure, mobile usability problems, missing metadata, and indexing errors can all end up interfering with search performance. 

Websites can even look perfectly functional from a visitor’s standpoint, while having all sorts of technical issues on the back end. This is exactly why SEO audits are so valuable, because they uncover problems that aren’t immediately obvious—which could be affecting your rankings. 

You Could Not Have Enough Helpful Content 

Google needs an ample amount of information to thoroughly understand what exactly your business does, because this is how it determines which searches you’re relevant for. 

If your website only has a few basic service pages, you’re likely missing out on all sorts of opportunities to demonstrate your industry expertise. Helpful landing pages, blog articles, FAQs, location-specific content, and educational resources can give your website the extra boost it needs to connect with customers.

However, it’s important to understand that more content doesn’t automatically mean better rankings. The overall goal of your content strategy needs to be creating useful content by people and for real people—and not pages written solely for keyword targets!

Your Competitors Might Have Stronger Search Authority 

There are also other instances in which your content is relevant and your website is technically sound, yet your competitors are more established online.

Search engines like Google strongly consider signals that help them determine which websites truly deserve prominent online real estate. High-quality backlinks, positive reviews, strong local citations, useful content, and an established online presence are what helps build a site’s long-term authority. 

This is especially important when you’re competing in an industry with valuable commercial keywords, but this doesn’t necessarily mean you need thousands of backlinks or years of industry history to compete. 

However, what your company inevitably needs is a strategy for building credibility and showing exactly why your business deserves to rank!

You Could Be Targeting The Wrong Keywords 

Keyword selection often makes or breaks SEO strategies, because some businesses will spend months trying to rank for very competitive terms when there are more specific searches that are easier (and potentially more valuable) wins.

Long-tail keywords often showcase stronger purchase intent, because an online user searching for specific services is typically much closer to converting into a customer than someone searching broader industry terms. 

This is why a good SEO strategy identifies the searches that align with your locations, services, customers and business goals. 

SEO Requires Consistent Improvements 

Another common misconception about SEO is it’s something businesses do once, but the reality is that search results are constantly changing and digital marketing in general never falls under set it and forget it.

Your competitors will be constantly publishing new content, search behavior evolves, websites gain authority, and Google is updating how it displays and evaluates information. 

This subsequently means that maintaining online visibility throughout the foreseeable future requires ongoing attention. Regularly updating valuable content, reviewing search performance, monitoring competitors, addressing technical problems, and identifying new opportunities will help ensure your website’s long-term competitiveness. 

Turn Online Visibility Into Real Business Growth With The Big Fish Local Experts 

If your business isn’t currently showing up on Google, the right solution isn’t necessarily to add more keywords or publish more blogs—because the first real step is to genuinely understand why you’re not being found.

Your website structure, Google Business Profile, technical SEO, content strategy, backlinks, reviews, and keyword targeting all deserve thorough consideration when auditing visibility struggles. And most importantly, your company needs a real strategy built around the people you want to reach online (and not just impressing Google).

Big Fish Local has supported hundreds of Ohio businesses toward building stronger online visibility through our website design, SEO, content marketing, Google advertising, and other digital marketing strategies. 

If your business isn’t getting found by your target audience, reach out to us online or give us a call at 855-935-4999 to schedule a consultation appointment and discuss what may be currently holding your online presence back from its full potential!