10 Surprising Reasons Your Optimized Page Isn’t Ranking (And How to Fix Them)

Key insights

Even with an optimized page, your website might not be ranking as expected. It’s a fact that you should know. Some factors like user experience, content quality, and technical issues play significant roles in search engine rankings.

Identifying and addressing these surprises can dramatically improve your online visibility.

The fact remains that in this complex world of SEO, it is annoying when your perfectly optimized page does not perform as expected. You have done everything right: from keyword research, and on-page SEO to backlinks. But then, your page is not included in the search engine indexes. What is going wrong? Some of the top web design and development company have shortlisted ten surprising causes of your ranking problems and how to resolve them.

If you’re struggling with this, consider revisiting On-Page SEO Essentials: Boost Your Web Pages to the Top to ensure you’re covering the foundational aspects correctly.

1. Poor User Experience

Business people often find it hard to grasp the fact that user experience or user-engaging interfaces (engagement) directly affect their rank. If the visitors are confused and end up closing the page without going through the different sections within the page, then the bounce rate is bound to rise.

Make sure your site is fast-loading. Experience (UX) directly impacts your rankings. If visitors find your page difficult to navigate, they are likely to leave quickly, increasing your bounce rate.

Simplify your navigation.

Ensure your site loads quickly.

Use clear calls to action.

2. Ignoring Mobile Optimization

Because more and more users go online using their mobile devices, Google tends to favour those sites that are mobile-friendly. This tells us that if your page is not responsive, it could be a big struggle to rank on the search engine results.

Reduce image sizes to improve their loading time. If your page is not responsive, it may struggle to rank.

Use responsive design.

Test your website with the help of Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool.

Optimize images for faster loading.

3. Lack of Fresh Content

Search engines reward activity and nothing draws their attention more than updated and new content. If the page has not been updated for some time; it may be old and therefore not seen as statistically significant.

Update Content on the site regularly

Add new information or insights.

Add fresh material with new blogs

4. Over-Optimization

Even as optimization is important one should not go overboard as it will attract penalties. It is important not to go overboard with keyword usage, and avoid using unnatural keywords and links as it can lead to a decline in your rankings.

Focus on natural language.

Use keywords thoughtfully.

Build links organically.

5. Technical SEO Issues

People often do not go through the content or read the information even if it is brilliant if there are some technical problems. 404 errors, slow loading time, and improper usage of redirects will have negative effects and your ranking.

Conduct a technical SEO audit.

Fix broken links and redirects.

Optimize your site’s speed.

6. Poor Quality Backlinks

There are differences between one link and another. Links coming from low-quality sites will lead to bad domain authority and ranking. The emphasis should be made on the quality of the backlinks.

Audit your backlinks.

Deny any harmful links.

Focus on acquiring high-quality backlinks.

7. Missing Local SEO Elements

To local businesses, it is especially a big loss if they fail to invest in local SEO. If you do not use local keywords or Google My Business you are missing out on potential traffic to your site.

Optimize for local keywords.

Update Google My Business listing

Encourage customer reviews.

8. Ignoring Meta Tags

Meta titles and descriptions are very important for SEO because. They are helpful in helping search engines crawl your content and can have an impact on the rate at which people click the links.

Write meta descriptions and titles that are unique for each page.

Include relevant keywords.

Keep them concise and engaging.

9. Not Utilizing Social Signals

Although social media is not an actual part of the algorithm, visibility is impacted by social media. So, if your content is not sharing it may not get the engagement required to rank in the higher positions.

Share your content on other social media sites.

Encourage followers to share.

Engage with your audience for increasing visibility.

10. Competition

At other times, it is just competition between one company and another. Your competitors also have better domain authority or content, and they will overpower your efforts.

Conduct competitor analysis.

Identify gaps in their strategies.

Provide more value in your content.

Conclusion

Search engine ranking is not only dependent on your page since achieving high results is the dream of most sites. Mobile SEO at the same time is one of the most effective and flexible methods that needs an integrated combination of UX, technical aspects, content, and social activity updates. If you tackle the following ten surprising issues, you can give your SEO approach the lift it needs to achieve better results.

If you need help on how to approach these issues, then you need to employ the services of a technical SEO expert or the services of a link-building agency.

Whether you want a complete solution or individual services, an experienced web design and development firm will allow you to further your online branding.

To explore a broader range of approaches to improve your strategy, check out our insights in What Are the Top 10 Types of Digital Marketing Solutions?

Are you ready to upscale your SEO game? Contact us now at Digital SEO Pros!