Below are some of the most frequent questions I get asked about SEO. Most of the questions stem from a lack of knowledge on the subject (this is simply not the client’s field of expertise) and the client typically isn’t aware that this is an SEO issue. My aim is to post the most frequent questions to help others who don’t know much about SEO and who may have the same questions about their website’s ranking.

These questions relate to Internet Marketing as a whole, and affect most or all search engines. However, most people focus on google due to their market share in the search engine industry, so I will post the questions as they are posed to me. You can substitute the word ‘google’ for ‘search engine’ if you like.

Q. Why doesn’t my website show up in google?
A. Have you told google about the existence of your website? Are you actively marketing your website? Is your website optimised? How well optimised is it? Are you consistently getting high quality backlinks pointing back to your website? In other words, are you actively promoting your website on the Internet using SEO services? If not… then google (or any other search engine) is not going to know about your website at all.

You may find this article of interest: I want to be number 1 in google

Q. Why has my website dropped positions in google?
A. If your website improved in ranking, would you ask why has your website gone up in google’s estimation? If not, maybe you should: this is a legitimate question, and lets you know what you’re doing right. If your website climbs up the ranking results, then you will probably find that the pages are better optimised than they were (are you adding new content?) and perhaps other websites are beginning to point links at your website. Less likely is the possibility that all your competition are doing bad SEO and getting their knuckles wrapped by search engines, although this is also a common occurrence.

Apply the reverse logic: if you’re website is loosing positions, then:

- read the above question (Why doesn’t my website show up in google?) Are you actively marketing your website? If not, you can be sure that your competitors are marketing their own websites!

Realise also that search engine results fluctuate. Google and other search engines update their algorithms on a regular basis. Sometimes things go wrong, temporarily, other times results simply fluctuate. A page 1 website may drop to page 2 all overnight. The site in question may be engaged in good ethical SEO practices, but still drop.

Search engines don’t make their algorithms public – this means that ONLY THEY KNOW the real reason why your website dropped. SEOs and Internet Marketers can only measure results and act accordingly. Having said this, results do fluctuate always, so you can’t be too reactive – a site that looses 10 positions overnight may bounce back in a week or 2. making drastic changes to the site’s optimisation may actaully affect its rankings negatively in the long term.