Why is it difficult for a new website to gain significant search engine traffic (Google)?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) — Why is it Difficult for a New Website to Rank in Google?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a marketing technique that uses keywords to increase website visibility in search results, leading to greater website traffic and revenue for businesses. SEO should not be neglected if businesses want their websites to remain visible online and remain profitable in today’s competitive economy.

There are various components involved with SEO, such as keyword research, content creation, on-page SEO optimization, and link building; however, for new websites, it can be challenging to rank in Google with SEO alone.

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Expertise

Google remains the go-to search engine, and all businesses look forward to optimizing their content and website in order to rank higher in a Google search result page. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) refers to the practice of tweaking both website design and content to increase the chances of ranking higher on Google search result pages.

As visitors navigate a website, they see it as a collection of graphics, colors, text with formatting and links. Search engines see pages differently: they comprise words and phrases which are then scanned to assess relevance to user searches.

This process uses an algorithm that remains unknown to the general public, though there have been some general rules discovered by studying how search engines operate. Some of these rules, known as ranking factors, focus on improving E-A-T (Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness). Other factors focus on increasing visitors to your page or lengthening the time people spend there.

Time

Search engines such as Google are designed to quickly find pages that meet a user’s search intent by scanning billions of web pages. Google then delivers results within milliseconds for users based on this analysis of hundreds of billions of web pages indexed and added to its database. While each webpage appears different when browsed by human eyes, each search engine simply indexes words into its database for indexing purposes.

As search engines scour websites, they look for signals — links between sites known as “signals”. Sites receiving multiple signals tend to rank higher in organic search results — this is what SEO is about. Some may refer to SEM — search engine marketing which includes both SEO and PPC advertising as two sides of one coin where SEO represents unpaid efforts while PPC ads represent paid efforts — think of SEM like two sides of one coin with its unpaid side being SEO while PPC advertisements cover paid services such as PPC PPC advertisements being paid sides!

Competition

SEO competition is a critical factor; even with top-quality content and solid technical SEO practices in place, they may not be enough to rank in a highly-competitive niche.

Essentially, if your search for “cat behavior” yields only authoritative sites such as Forbes or Mayo Clinic on the first page, it could be difficult to break through and reach potential new visitors. In such an instance, to stay competitive you will need to build up links and social signals as fast as possible in order to stay afloat.

Google also gives priority to authoritative sites within a niche, which means if you’re competing against established players who have established their authority through producing engaging, helpful, and in-depth content and garnering high-quality backlinks, then more work needs to be put in to gain visibility in SERPs.

The Internet

As Internet use grew increasingly ubiquitous, developers such as Larry Page & Sergey Brin began creating search technology. They created an algorithm that allowed their computers to analyze websites and return the most pertinent results when responding to queries.

Google’s ranking process begins with web crawlers which index every webpage on the internet, before using an algorithm encompassing more than 200 variables to rank them higher or lower for particular queries.

Unfortunately, people have many ways of manipulating the system to gain a competitive edge. Due to this issue, Google periodically makes updates to their ranking algorithm — generally minor but sometimes larger — which may cause rankings to fluctuate or even disappear completely for periods of time. On a positive note, however, Google works continuously to support webmasters by offering guidance and best practices advice.