Why Don’t I Rank? 5 Main Reasons Why Pages Rank (or don’t) in Google

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It’s really not a mystery. Every page ranks (or doesn’t) for specific reasons.

Most of the time, the reasons behind the lack of rankings are pretty straightforward. They’re easy to understand if you shift your thinking a bit.

Think of it this way: Google is software and your page is the data file. The searcher runs the software by entering a query. The software instantly compares all the files on the public web, yours included, and ranks them.

Not ranking? Don’t feel bad. Most pages don’t rank for anything. One famous study by Ahrefs found that more than 90% of URLs don’t get any traffic from search engines. You are definitely not alone.

There are plenty of things you can do about it, but you first need to understand why your page doesn’t rank and find the specific reasons. If you don’t know the reasons, you won’t know what to do. Or you’ll do something that doesn’t help.

These are the five most common reasons that a URL doesn’t appear high in search results. Each section names a reason you don’t rank, first in plain English and then using fancy SEO jargon.

Note: I’m setting aside technical SEO considerations, which are mostly about code, not content. Yes, you might have an issue with “noindex” meta tags, the robots.txt file, pagespeed and connonicalization …but in my experience, most pages don’t have technical SEO problems.

1. You’re not actually targeting the phrase

Your website lacks a keyphrase-focused URL on the topic.

Step one is to confirm that you have a relevant page. If you don’t have a page that is focused on the topic and the phrase, you’ve found your problem.

Here’s a fundamental way to understand search:

Google doesn’t rank websites. Google ranks web pages.

So you need a URL that is focused on the phrase. There might be some relevant content on your website, but if you don’t have a keyphrase-focused page, you should have no expectations of rankings. You might be thinking something like this:

“I don’t have a page, but…

…part of one of my pages (it’s in a tab or section)”

…the keyphrase is one of my blog categories”

…I mention the phrase on several pages”

…my entire site is about that topic”

None of these answers is sufficient. You have a URL or you don’t. The battle for search is fought page by page. Every keyphrase is a competition. And every page is a potential competitor.

The fix

Confirm you have a search optimized page for every phrase you’re targeting. Confirm each page is detailed and indicates its relevance. We’ll show specifically what that looks like in a minute.

A well-optimized website has many pages targeting many phrases. The sitemap and navigation are structured around SEO, keywords and search-optimized content. Not every page is optimized because not every page is a keyphrase opportunity, but many pages are.

This diagram shows how a sitemap maps to keyword strategy. Notice how keyword targeting doesn’t necessarily impact the navigation and UX. Some pages are “off-nav” and don’t appear in the main menus. In the end, the homepage is just one of many landing pages.

The “kp”s in the diagram are the target keyphrases. To see what the little red numbers refer to, check out our guide on how to make a sitemap.

The next three reasons the page doesn’t rank align with the three big search ranking factors: authority, relevance and user interaction signals.

2. The phrase is too competitive

Your webpage lacks sufficient authority.

Competition. It’s the next most common reason a page doesn’t rank for a given phrase. The page simply has no chance of ranking, because it is not in the same range of authority as the other pages that rank. In other words, the “keyword difficulty” is too high for you to target.

To check your levels of authority and the keyword difficulty, you’ll need a bit of SEO software, such as Moz, SEMrush or Ahrefs. They estimate authority and difficulty on a 1-100 scale.

• If the authority of your page is in the same range as the other pages that rank for the phrase, then this isn’t the reason your page doesn’t rank.
• If the authority of your page is lower than the authority of the other pages that rank, then this is probably the reason your page doesn’t rank.

This is why SEOs always check the competition before targeting a keyphrase. They compare the keyword difficulty to the authority of their page or the authority of their domain if the page doesn’t exist yet. Too competitive? Try another phrase.

This explains why only very famous websites rank for very competitive keywords.

When one of those more powerful domains outranks you, it may be impossible to pass them. Sometimes there are two or three digital giants ranking at the top. When this is the case, your best hope is to rank right below them.

If there’s a fortress in front of you, your best hope is to live just outside the fortress.

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