If your website isn't showing up on Google, it's almost always one of a handful of fixable problems: your site isn't indexed yet, it's too new to rank, or it's missing the basics Google needs to understand and trust it. Here are the 10 we see most often when we audit local business sites - and how to check each.
A new domain rarely ranks in its first few weeks. Google needs time to crawl it, index it, and build enough trust to show it. This isn't a penalty - it's a waiting period. The fix is patience plus everything below, so that when the trust arrives, your site is ready to rank.
If a page isn't indexed, it literally cannot appear in search. Check by typing site:yourdomain.com into Google - if few or no pages show up, indexing is your problem. Submit a sitemap in Google Search Console and request indexing on your key pages. A free SEO audit will also flag pages that are blocked from crawling.
Run a free SEO audit and get a plain-English list of exactly what is holding your site back - with the fix for each.
Run My Free SEO AuditFor local searches ("plumber near me"), the map pack - not the regular results - is where most clicks go, and it's powered by your Google Business Profile, not your website. If you haven't claimed and verified yours, you're invisible for exactly the searches that matter most. Claim it, verify it, and fill it out completely. For local businesses this is the single highest-leverage step.
Your title tag is the biggest on-page signal of what a page is about. When pages have no title, or every page shares the same one, Google can't tell them apart - we've watched it rewrite identical titles on its own. Give every page a unique, descriptive title. You can check your title and meta tags in under a minute.
On most sites we audit, the inner service pages have no clear H1 - so Google can't tell that your "Services" page is about, say, emergency drain cleaning in your city. Every page should have one H1 that states its topic in plain words. This is a quick fix with an outsized effect on what you rank for.
The meta description is the snippet under your link. When it's missing, Google writes its own from whatever text it finds - often something that doesn't make anyone want to click. Most sites we check are missing descriptions on many pages; one had 98 pages with none at all. Write a clear, benefit-led description for each important page.
This one is nearly universal: a business has 20+ five-star Google reviews, but its website has no review schema (AggregateRating) - so Google never shows the star rating in search. Stars make your result stand out and pull clicks. Adding the markup is one of the highest-ROI fixes there is. Every single local site in our recent audits was missing it.
If your pages are a paragraph each, or every city page is the same text with the town name swapped, Google has little reason to rank you over a competitor with real, specific content. The March 2026 core update hit templated, swap-the-city pages especially hard. Write genuinely useful pages with local specifics - neighborhoods, real questions, real answers.
Some modern site builders render everything with JavaScript. They look beautiful, but search crawlers (and AI engines) can see almost nothing. If your gorgeous new site is invisible on Google, this may be why. Check by viewing the page source - if your headlines and text aren't in the raw HTML, that's the problem.
If a page has no internal links pointing to it, Google may never find it and visitors can't reach it. Make sure every important page is linked from somewhere - your navigation, your content, or a relevant article. Good internal linking also tells Google which pages matter most.
If working through all ten of these sounds like more than you want to take on, you can have me fix them for you.
Run a free SEO audit and get a plain-English list of exactly what is holding your site back - with the fix for each.
Run My Free SEO Audit