Why your new site doesn’t show up in search results
Welcome to our new series, Tell Me Why… where we take some of our most commonly asked questions and dive into the answers for you!
We would love to hear your feedback about this series and this post, so drop us a comment and let us know what you think.
“I searched for ‘xyz near me’ and my site didn’t show up.”
“My mom searched ‘abc’ plus my name and my business site didn’t show up.”
These are totally valid questions and often super frustrating for a new website owner! Let’s dive in:
TL; DR - Site search results on the internet are driven by Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which is a complex beast.
Read on for the full answer…
Search engines like Google and Bing have their own proprietary algorithms and scoring criteria to determine who shows up where for what search terms. Their criterion often fall into on-page and off-page topics.
If Dream Launch Soar built your site, rest assured we have configured all the on-page SEO, including optimized titles, meta descriptions, page load speed, image file size, H1 headers, alt text on all images, mobile-friendly design, and connected sitemap. We’ve also manually submitted your sitemap directly to both Bing and Google for indexing.
But search engines consider a multitude of other factors when determining the rank and sequence of search results, and that list of factors is changing constantly.
Some of the most common factors search engines consider are things like time (site age and visits), authority (the quality of your content), backlinks (getting established, trusted sites to link to you), providing consistent and fresh content updates (blogging would be good for this), and additional off-page optimizations like having a Google Business profile with reviews.
And that’s just on the organic search side. Organic meaning “free”.
Paid ads - the listing that show “sponsored” in the results list - will always rank above organic search results.
Plus…the robots!
With the recent surge in AI-focused SEO, you’re likely to get an AI-generated summary as the top result, rather than just a link to a specific website. To generate these summaries, more content is being pulled from crowd-sourced sites like Reddit and Quora, so there’s a school of thought that getting your name and company mentioned consistently on those platforms might help your search performance.
Some search terms are incredibly competitive, and you’re going up against sites that have already spent a lot of time and money to rank highly. Think “art” or “coaching” or “med spa”, for example.
Where does that leave us?
Right now, you’ll likely show up if someone searches your exact business name or specific keywords, but broader searches like “best [service] near me” will take time and ongoing activity (blog posts, backlinks, reviews, etc.) to climb the results.
There are rumors out there that some site hosting platforms like Squarespace are “bad” for SEO. This isn’t the case. Squarespace supports all the key on-page indicators we noted above; other factors like securing backlinks and the quality of the actual content on your site are really up to you.
At the end of the day, it’s incredibly difficult to get free organic traffic from a search engine with popular keywords…although not impossible!
The real question is:
Will Search Engine Optimization investment pay off for me? Or are there better ways to acquire customers?
At Dream Launch Soar, we partner with you to help grow your business in an effective and efficient manner, so let’s connect and see what makes sense for you!
