Fundamentals · The lead
Why isn't my site ranking? Five checks, in the right order
Most ranking problems come down to one of five things. Check them in this order and you'll usually find yours in under an hour.
When a page doesn't rank, people tend to reach for the exotic explanations first: a penalty, an algorithm update, a competitor doing something shady. In practice the cause is almost always boring, and it's usually one of the first two checks below. Go through them in order and stop when you find a problem. Search for site:yourdomain.com/your-page on Google. If nothing comes up, the page isn't indexed, and no amount of writing will make it rank. The quickest way to see why is Google Search Console. Paste the URL into the inspection bar at the top. It will tell you whether the page is indexed and, if not, the reason. The usual culprits: If it's not indexed, fix that first…
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