The usual causes, in the order worth checking, from not being indexed at all to ranking on page four.
There are two very different versions of this problem. Either Google does not know your site exists, or it knows and ranks you low. The fixes are completely different, so establish which one you have first.
Step one: is it indexed at all?
Search Google for site:yourdomain.co.nz. If nothing comes back, you have an indexing problem, not a ranking problem.
- Check for a noindex tag. Sites launched from a staging environment sometimes carry it over, and it is invisible unless you look.
- Check robots.txt is not blocking everything. A line reading Disallow: / blocks the whole site.
- Verify the site in Google Search Console and submit a sitemap.
- Confirm your pages are actually linked from somewhere. Orphan pages with no links in are hard to discover.
Step two: indexed but not ranking
If the site appears but not for the terms you want, the honest answer is usually one of three things.
- The page does not actually target that term. If you want to rank for 'plumber Hamilton', a page must be about being a plumber in Hamilton, in its title, heading and body.
- Competitors have more authority. This is real and takes time to change.
- The search term is more competitive than it appears. Check what actually ranks. If the first page is all national directories, that is a hard fight.
Realistic timelines
| Situation | Time to see movement |
|---|---|
| New site, low competition long tail terms | Four to twelve weeks |
| New site, competitive local terms | Six months and up |
| Existing site, fixing a technical problem | Days to weeks |
| Existing site, new content on a new topic | One to three months |
Anyone promising first page in a fortnight for a competitive term is either targeting terms nobody searches, or not being straight with you.