If you type your business name into Google and your own website does not appear, it is a horrible feeling. The good news is that the cause is usually one of a short list of things, and most of them take minutes to check once you know where to look.
Here are seven checks, in the order I would run them. You do not need to be technical for the first four.
1. Is the site telling Google to stay away?
WordPress has a single tickbox that asks search engines not to list your site. You will find it under Settings, then Reading, labelled "Discourage search engines from indexing this site". Developers switch it on while a site is being built, which is sensible, and now and then it is never switched off at launch. If it is ticked, untick it and save. It is the most common reason a new site is invisible, and the fix takes ten seconds.
SEO plugins also have a noindex switch for each individual page. If only one page is missing, check that page's settings before anything else.
2. Is the site in Google's index yet?
Type site:yourdomain.co.uk into Google, using your real address and no spaces. It lists the pages Google has stored. Nothing at all means Google has not indexed you. A few pages, but not the one you wanted, points to a problem with that page. Treat the result as a rough guide and not an exact count.
A brand new site can also just be too new. Google can take days or a few weeks to find and trust a fresh domain, so if you launched last week, nothing is necessarily broken.
3. Does Google know the site exists?
Search Console is Google's free tool for site owners. Add your site, then submit your sitemap, which is simply a list of your pages. Most WordPress SEO plugins create one at /sitemap.xml or /sitemap_index.xml. Search Console also has an inspection box at the top: paste in a page address and it tells you whether the page is indexed and, if not, the reason. That plain reason is worth more than any guess made from outside. If you are not sure you control that account, my piece on who owns your website explains how to check.
4. Did a redesign break the old addresses?
If you rebuilt your site and the page addresses changed, Google is still holding the old ones. Visitors who click an old result land on an error page, and the new pages start from zero. The cure is a redirect from each old address to its new equivalent. I covered the full process in moving off a website builder without losing SEO, and the same logic applies to any rebuild.
5. Is it showing up, just not where you are looking?
Appearing and ranking well are different problems. If site: lists your pages but you are nowhere for a phrase like "plumber Hull", the site is indexed and the question is relevance and competition. Your own business name should return your site within a few weeks of launch. A general service phrase takes much longer and depends on what competitors have published.
Test in a private browser window, because Google personalises results by location and history. For a local business, your Google Business Profile matters as much as the website, and I looked at how far to go with area pages in do you need a page for every town.
6. Is the page too thin or too slow to be worth listing?
Google does not index everything it finds. In Search Console you may see the statuses "Crawled, currently not indexed" or "Discovered, currently not indexed". They usually mean Google saw the page and decided it was not worth storing yet. Pages with two lines of text, near copies of each other, or a slow load on a phone are typical candidates. Adding real, specific content to a page is the fix. A slow site is worth looking at too, and how many WordPress plugins is too many is a good place to start.
7. Is something technical in the way?
A file at yourdomain.co.uk/robots.txt can tell Google not to crawl parts of a site. A single line reading Disallow: / on its own blocks everything. A page can also carry a noindex tag, a cache or security plugin can misbehave, and a staging copy of the site can be mistaken for the real one. None of these are visible to a visitor, which is why they go unnoticed for months.
This is the point where a proper technical SEO check earns its keep, because the clues sit in settings and server responses rather than on the page. I described what that involves in what a technical SEO audit in Hull actually looks like.
If you only have ten minutes
Untick the WordPress search engine visibility box under Settings, then Reading.
Run site:yourdomain.co.uk and note which pages appear.
Paste your most important page into the Search Console inspection box and read the reason it gives.
Open yourdomain.co.uk/robots.txt and look for a line that says Disallow: / on its own.
Those four checks catch most cases I would expect a small business to meet. If the answers do not make sense, or you would rather not poke around in your own settings, I am happy to look with you. I offer a free 30 minute surgery where we go through your site and Search Console together, and I will tell you plainly what is wrong and whether it needs fixing at all. You can book one through the contact page.
Free 30-min surgery
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