Why Isn't Your Website Showing Up When You've Done SEO? Ep. 140

If you've done SEO on your website but you're still not showing up high on Google or in AI Search like AI Overviews, AI Mode, or on ChatGPT, then not only is it frustrating, it means something's wrong. 

If you're going to take the time to work on SEO, you want to make sure it pays off. Find out why your SEO might not be working and what to change so that you start showing up more often in AI results and get traffic to your website. 

We need to work on both today to be visible online. 

Transcript

0:33

Hi, and welcome back to the podcast. Today I want to address a question that I got from a new student before they joined Simple SEO content. And that was why is my website not showing up, even though I've done SEO. And that is such a great question because it's also a really frustrating situation, but it's something that I see so many small business owners struggle with that I thought this is an amazing podcast topic and it should help you to really learn and understand why the work that you might be putting in may not be paying off. And if it's. If you're in this situation, you've written content, you've got your blog posts, you've got your website, you've chosen keywords, you've written meta descriptions and title tags, and you've, you're doing everything, but you're still not showing up. There are probably a couple of reasons why that's happened. So what we wanna talk about is why does that happen? Now, we're not talking about your site can't be indexed at all, meaning it's not in Google's index, it can't be crawled. There's a technical issue blocking it, something like that. We're talking about you are there. But you're like on page two or five or 10, or you are not showing up in the new AI overviews AI mode. Now we have to worry about showing up on chat, GPT in addition to Google. Like there's a lot we've gotta think about if we wanna stay visible. So if you are doing the work, you are optimizing your website, you are choosing keywords, you are creating content, all of that, and you are not. Seeing results, then you're making one of these mistakes. So let's talk about'em real quick so you know what you need to adjust. So the first thing that I see. People make mistakes with is choosing the wrong keywords. This is one of the most common mistakes that I see, and I'll be completely honest. Choosing the right keywords is one of the harder parts for my students to kind of wrap their minds around and understand how to pick those keywords and what the process is, and I go through it very. Very in depth in the course, and I give screen shares, but I answer more questions in our student group about this than anything else. So I know that choosing the right keywords is difficult and it is confusing, but I also know it's one of the number one mistakes that I see people make, and it's why so often your SEO is not working. So either. We choose a key word that's just too big and too competitive, and our website's not gonna really have a good chance of ranking in Google for it. Or we maybe choose one. Where we actually have a pretty good chance of ranking. However, it's not the word that our customer uses. So if we were to rank for it, it's great, but we're not getting traffic because nobody's searching for that. So if you're on my email list, you re you may remember an email that I sent out about a month ago, even though in real time, it was about an hour ago, because I'm batching my July content right now while Christopher's at a play date and the house is quiet.'cause you know, I'm, I'm juggling everything this summer. So I sent that email. About a month ago in real time, as you're listening to this podcast, asking you to tell me which word you used out of a choice of two for three different things. One was to determine online visibility versus website traffic. One was online sales versus website sales. One was digital marketing versus online marketing. Because I'm making some changes to the business, I'm probably going to rename this. Podcast in the next month or two. And so I'm trying to really determine what I want to do. So I've looked at the search volume and I know how many searches come in for each of these terms each month, but I want to make sure not only am I taking search volume into consideration. I'm taking real world. What do my students and my listeners and my readers think, and what words do they use to make sure that I'm connecting with you with the right words? You need to be doing the same thing. Now, you don't necessarily have to. Email 10,000 people to ask them what word you should use, and I did email about 10,000 people. So thank you so much for responding. It was so helpful. But what I want you to do is make sure not only are you. Thinking about keywords, you're looking at the search volume, you're looking at the competition. You're looking at who's showing up on page one for those keywords, all of that to really make sure that you're choosing the right keyword. Now, I have one of my students who. She had this situation. She was ranking, she was getting traffic, but it wasn't converting. And what she realized when she came into the course and learned my way of doing SEO keyword research, which I've been revising and teaching my. Staff for 15 years that she was targeting keywords that weren't driving the right people to her website. So yes, she was getting traffic, but they weren't converting because we weren't getting people who were actually interested in what she had to offer. So we had to adjust our keyword strategy so that she could start targeting keywords that would bring in potential customers versus looky-loo, because you don't make money with looky-loos. I mean, they're fun and all, but you don't make money with them. The only way you make money and build a profitable business is if we bring the right people into your world. The second mistake that I'm seeing is that you're creating content, but it's not good enough. Now, this is especially applicable if you're using AI tools to help you create content, or goodness gracious, if you're using AI tools to create content. For you because as they are, they are not going to create content that is unique enough, different enough, helpful enough, provides value to really have Google want to rank you. Google's actually updated their ranking criteria, and they really do want to see that the content brings value, it provides something new, something different, all of that. If they're going to rank you high in their search results, because remember, Google's a business. Google wants to make sure that the websites that go on page one are the ones that are going to provide the best resource, the best information, the best value for the reader. Because Google has more competition today than they've had probably ever, and they have to work to keep people coming back and using Google. They've actually lost a little bit of market share in the last year. Now it's still like 88, 90% market share. So they still have a huge share of the market, but they don't have the same share that they did before. And now if you are blogging regularly, you're creating new content each week, but you're not getting traffic to that content, you really need to look at it and make sure, is this helpful? Is this really providing value? Have I optimized it the right way? Because we do see that 90% of the content out there on the web does not get traffic from Google. That does not get organic traffic according to a study from, I believe it was Ah, refs that did that particular study. So we really wanna make sure that our content is unique. It's helpful, it. Answers are EEAT. Our experience, expertise, authority, and trust that Google is looking for as signals to understand who to show up, who to show higher, who to include in AI overviews, who to include in AI mode. We've talked about all of that on here recently. I want you to make sure that if you're doing the work, you're getting the results. If your blog posts are short, they're generic, anything like that, you're probably not gonna get a lot of traction from them. There is not a specific keyword count. I just had a student ask in the group, I need to go back in a few minutes and answer that question, but she just asked. Off the top of your head, is there a specific. Word count for a blog post, and there's not. What Google's official guidance on it is, is that we want to make sure that we're being helpful, we're providing value. You're doing your EEAT and you're really answering the questions. You're anticipating the questions that your ideal customer, your reader would have. So that's really what you wanna focus on, is providing better quality content. Then you have a better chance of ranking if you have good quality content that is helpful. It's optimized using a keyword that your website deserves, you know, has a good chance of ranking for, but really deserves to rank for where you really, truly are one of the better results out there. Then you will have a chance of getting more traffic to the content that you're creating. The third issue that I see is that your site is not easy for Google or now AI search engines to understand if you want your website to rank higher on Google or to be included in AI search, meaning AI overviews on the top of the search page on Google AI mode. That's the secondary tab that we talked about last week. Chat, GPT, perplexity, what? Else pops up whatever other search AI search tool people are using, then you need to make it easy for Google and those other tools to understand the content on your website. Meaning you need to follow your core traditional SEO best practices because that is used by both traditional Google, SEO. And A-I-S-E-O. If you don't know what those are, get a copy of my beginner's guide to SEO because that will walk you through that. Now the difference is. With Google, it's all about the key word with ai, it's more about the questions and the phrases and the formatting. So AI is not looking for keyword matches in your content the way that Google is, you know, Google looks at each part of your content. For each of their SEO elements for the keyword to understand what that page is about. Your AI search engines work differently. They look for the phrases, especially in your header tags, those larger text tags in your blog post, they look for key phrases there. They look for the content match. They look for your content to be easy to skim and easy to read. Short paragraphs are important for ai. White space is important. If you look at. How my blog posts are formatted, especially the new ones. If you go straight to the website, go to etched marketing.com/blog, look at the new posts. Those are all formatted for Google and AI inclusion. The other thing that AI likes is if you include like a key takeaways or an FAQ section at the bottom, you'll see that I have that in. Some posts, not all. I'm still working on making some updates and changes, but that's something that we need to look at and think about and work on. Alexa, stop. Sorry guys. That's my timer to remind me to go pick up my kid. I had a bunch of work to get done. This is the first time in two weeks I've had the house to myself to get work done uninterrupted. So anyone else with kids home this summer probably, hopefully can relate. Alright, that's it for today's episode. If you've been doing SEO for a while and you've not been seeing results, there's a good chance that it's one of those three things impacting you. If you're tired of trying to figure this out on your own, join me in simple SEO content. If you go through and take the free class on the website, it's right there on the homepage, or just go straight in. If you know you wanna take the class, go straight into etched marketing.com/yes, that's going to get you the discount. That's going to get you the course at$500 off. So it's just 9 97. You pay once you learn what to do, you make money from your website for forever. You know, it's just a one-time investment. You learn what to do and then. Come in and ask me and I'm gonna help you with the questions and we're gonna figure it out. And yes, I am working, I'm working part-time this summer, but we're still having our student calls. We're still meeting, I'm still answering questions in the group, like I'm still here. I'm just not here as many hours as normal because we're doing camp about 50 50. He's doing four weeks of camp and six weeks at home. So I'm juggling things this summer, which is why the timer just went off. But that's life. Alright, you guys have a great day and I will see you back here next week. And I thought I was gonna record that episode right now, but I don't know that I have time before I have to go pick him up. So I will get that one recorded so that you have it ready to go. Don't worry, I batch my content. I will not miss a week. All right, I'll see you back here next week. Have a great one. Bye for now.