SEO advice

[agoodfriendofthethree]

I fairly recently (September) launched a new website for my business, using Wix. Unfortunately, so far, Google has only indexed the homepage and nothing else, so I am still not really coming up on any search results. I have requested via Google Search Console for each page to be indexed, and I've also submitted a site map, however I'm still waiting and getting concerned as it's been like this since October. I've had websites before for previous businesses and never had this issue, and I always ranked really well for my keywords. I've put loads of effort into my SEO, but until I'm indexed on Google it's meaningless. I can see my website ranks top on Bing and Yahoo and all my pages show on their search results but of course no one uses those!

This week I hired a local SEO guy to look into it for me and check there aren't any issues I'm unaware of that are preventing indexing, but all he has done is submit another indexing request through Google Search Console, and assured me it should work in a few days (despite me having done this several times since October and still waiting). He also got my name wrong in his email to me, which didn't inspire confidence as my name is also my business name, which he'd been working on all afternoon!

So, so far, I'm £100 down but feel like he's done nothing I haven't already done myself. But, as this is the first time I've hired an SEO professional, I'm not sure what I should have expected/asked for?

Are there any SEO experts out there who would be kind enough to let me know what I should be asking for so that I finally make some progress? Or is it literally just a waiting game and I should be more patient? Thank you in advance for anyone who has any advice!

what did you expect him to do? very limited what he can do surely?

If that's the case, I'd just have liked him to be honest with me and tell me that he couldn't do anything I hadn't already done myself? Rather than saying yes he'd be happy to get it sorted for me but then just repeating what I told him I'd already done several times myself and assuring me it will work in a few days? I'm not an SEO expert so I have no idea what's possible, that's what I'm asking here? And if nothing else is possible, that's fine, I will just wait - I just wanted to know!

it was on you to clarify before you engaged his services - what exactly he’d be doing

Yes I accept that and I have learnt a valuable lesson! But do you have any advice for me going forwards for what I should be asking for/expecting?

I don’t i’m afraid!

I've put loads of effort into my SEO
What have you done?

Google is constantly changing the ranking algorithm, and since adding AI everything has changed. But it consistently scores activity and relevance very highly. Frequently adding new relevant material (e.g. via a blog, new posts) helps.

But SEO is just a tool within an overall marketing strategy. Ranking highly on Google doesn't always translate into sales. It depends on your product and your target market.

Google also likes links from other sites, which is why so many businesses use influencers - clicks from their page onto yours. Per pp that doesn’t necessarily covert into sales depending on what you are selling.

@DogInATent I've done the usual keyword analysis, incorporated my chosen keywords into my website copy, URLs, page descriptions, alt text, regularly posting useful content on my blog with a focus on keywords, built up a lot of back links through liaising with other relevant local businesses etc. I've made sure my website is mobile friendly and loads quickly etc.

I'm certain that what I have done won't be perfect, but to be honest at the moment my sole concern is getting Google to actually index my pages, as until it does I can't get a baseline to improve upon. Which is really what I'm asking here - does anyone have any advice on how to actually get Google to finally index all my pages, or do I just need to wait?

I am aware that a website is only one part of a marketing strategy, and I am lucky enough to have a lot of previous clients and contacts so I am still very busy in the meantime - I just wanted to get indexed too as I'm concerned it's taking so long.

@agoodfriendofthethree what are you selling and to whom are you selling it?

I'm part of a collaborative group that sells our professional services. We put a lot of effort into SEO and Google-ranking, before we realised that 99% of our business doesn't come via Google searches. Most of our website traffic is either just confirming we exist, or being directed to specific pages from links we've posted on other high traffic websites (e.g. LinkedIn).

The problem with spending too much time on SEO is that the first page of Google for most high value search terms is either the AI search summary or sponsored links. Targeting the AI summary is a different optimisation to targeting the search algorithm. And unless your specific market is well over the 50% rule, optimising for AI is now starting to look the better option. That means lots of high value, linked content.

Unfortunately i think it's a waiting game ... but perhaps you could work on your off page SEO in the meantime

I would create as many back links as possible. Directories like Yell, 118 etc - there's tons of them.

Approach related businesses see if they'll add you to their 'friends' page and mutually add them back.

Basically get your url out there as much as you can.

Google business listing -make sure you have one!

Social media backlinks in bios too!

Not an SEO expert - but I do build website and know the basics of SEO. So 1) SEO takes time to rank, 2) it depends on how popular the keywords are whether you'll rank. For example, in my industry Branding is really hard to rank for because every branding person in the world uses it - and the websites that get the most traffic will get a higher spot on google.

As some others have said, create backlinks to your business - this is good for authority and will help you move up the ranks. But ultimately, SEO is a long game.

I've only just come across this so sorry to be late to the game.

I've been in ecommerce since the late 90s and occasionally contract for ecommerce and SEO work for various companies when I've some downtime and get bored.

May I ask what is your website for, is it shop window - information on your business services or are you selling products directly online?

What pages do you have on the site? Portfolio, testemonials, about us, contact?

What is the aim of the website? Create new leads, provide information on sevices/products, create interest?

What is your marketing plan (roughly, not asking for details) and other activites?

There is a lot of guff spoken about SEO, it's almost all nonsense, most SEO and marketing specialists, website gurus etc are anything but.. Your platform does matter and so does your other marketing/advertising activities.

I’m not sure if you’ve already sorted this, but if not, you’ll want to head into Google Search Console, set up an account if you haven’t already, and check each page individually. Some Wix pages—especially blogs—don’t always get crawled automatically, so you might need to manually request indexing.

Also, try adding your blog sitemap to Search Console:
yourdomain.com/blog-posts-sitemap.xml

Since you’ve already done a lot of the right SEO groundwork, this should help speed things up. It’s also worth submitting your site to Bing Webmaster Tools, as Bing is becoming more relevant (especially with ChatGPT pulling data from it).

If you’re still having trouble after that, just give me a shout—I’ve come across this issue before and can take a quick look for you.

@inkieink Thank you so much! You have understood the exact issue I'm having. I signed up to Google Search Console back in October and requested indexing for all the individual pages back then - it says they are crawled but not indexed for all but my homepage, which is indexed. I had also manually added the sitemap, but I haven't added the blog sitemap so I will try that - thanks for the tip. I will also do as you suggest with Bing. I've just done a quick search on Bing and I came up straight away for my keywords, so at least that is positive!

I will let you know how I get on - thank you!!

Hmmm, are there enough words on each page? Google needs at least 300 words on a page to ensure sufficient content for proper indexing - more is better.

You could also try https://rankmath.com/tools/seo-analyzer to make sure nothing odd is going on, perhaps with your Canonical Tag?

Thanks @inkieink that rankmath link is really helpful. I've just had a quick look at a couple of pages and one scores 85 and another 81. I don't know what is an ok score? There's a couple of things I can easily improve that it's told me about (page title and descriptions being a bit too long), though I'm confused that it thinks the html size is large (eg 163kb). All my pages definitely have more than 300 words like you said, but I didn't think they were huge! I'll look in more depth later this week when I have a bit of free time.

I've just signed up to Bing and that says everything is indexed with them already but again gives some useful pointers for my SEO - thanks.

I don't think there's anything odd going on with canonical tags as I've never messed with them, though I'm certainly no expert - how would I be able to tell if there was a problem?

Thank you again so much!

The HTML size is much larger than average, it will make the page slow to load. It depends on what you have on that page and whether you can optimise or compress it.

GTMetrix is good for analyzing page speeds and what might be slowing them down.

https://gtmetrix.com/

@MarkingBad Thank you for that link! I've just used it to analyse the page that rankmath was showing as being large, but it gave it an A rating and 100% for performance, so I'm a bit confused!

A rating is excellent, you've done well to get that.

GTMetrix is basically measuring issues that might crop up with page speeds, RankMath is picking up problems for SEO, page size can be part of that if it is slowing down the opening of the page. If GTMetrix says there is nothing wrong with your page speed, you can discount that as an issue for anyone viewing your website.

Thanks @MarkingBad, that is good to hear!

I've just done some googling, and it seems the large html thing is a common issue with Wix and apparently not something that I can do anything about, so it's good to know that it's not affecting my page speed at least - phew!

This is the thing with building a website, you can get away with a lot more than the "experts" will tell you if you can get good page speeds, and relevant engaging copy written for the audience it is intended for the rest becomes less relevant. Content always has been king.

One thing I'm not sure about on Wix is accessibility, this is becoming increasingly relevant to search engines. Might be worth checking into that as well.

I tried doing it all myself at first but got overwhelmed, especially with link building and content planning. I found this guide super helpful: crowdo.net/blog/seo-outsourcing — it breaks down what tasks you can easily hand off and how to choose someone who knows what they’re doing. It saved me loads of time and made it easier to focus on other parts of my business.

Some great advice on this thread!

as owner of a new law firm this a very live issue for me.

my specific dilemma is that my SEO person is very good but I think optimising for AI from the start would be a smarter thing to do nowadays -OR just go back to old fashioned networking and use the site for validation, reassurance and recruitment.