Why isn’t your site #1 on Google? 2 reasons

As the awareness and importance of No. 1 rankings grow, these types of questions have become more frequent. Here are two core search engine optimization (SEO) principles and a little insight into why a website might rank poorly:

1. Your site isn’t relevant to what people search.

If you want to rank for “blue widgets,” the term “blue widgets” needs to be on your website.

This relevancy factor is the first element Google looks for to determine where a website should rank on its results page. Google essentially looks for a match between the term the person typed into the search engine (keyword) and what’s on a website. If that keyword doesn’t exist on your site, you will not rank for that term. Google will favor a site that contains the queried keyword.

This is one of the first things I look for when I conduct an SEO audit. Based on what our client wants to rank for, I compare the search terms to what’s currently on their website. If I can’t find any matches between the search terms and website’s content, I stop this phase of the audit.

But what if those search terms exist on your website? To be as relevant to the search term as possible, it’s important that the keywords reside in the right places on your site.