My text does not show up in Google

[csrinpractice]

Hi there. I've got an urgent question I hope someone can help me with.

I've made a website (www.tonyharrismakingcents.com.au) with a few content pages. I don't get a lot of traffic. All my pages are scrawled and I don't see any errors.

However, when I copy an entire paragraph and Google it, it does not show up in the search results. This makes me believe that the pages are not scrawled correctly. Only when I search for the exact paragraph by putting it between "", the website shows up on the results page.

What can be the reason for this?

Thanks for your help..It's much appreciated.

[RyanKent]

If you search for a page on your site by using a phrase enclosed in quotes, and Google returns the page as a result, then your page has clearly been crawled and indexed.

Your issue is you expect to rank higher for the paragraph / phrase. To do such involves optimization. The question Google asks is, based on 200+ factors which indexed page is most likely to satisfy a user who uses the keyword phrase as a search query.

Your page having the exact matching text offers a strong relevancy boost, but there are other factors.

[matbennett]

I think that your problem is that you have no links pointing to your site.  Literally - None.

Links are one of the main means that search engines like Google use to determine the importance of a website.  The logic goes that a site that has authority sites linking to it must in itself be useful.

Your site is in a competitive niche and needs to demonstrate that it is worthy of appearing above the other sites in that niche.  Having other sites link to you is a vital part of that.

Read this chapter of the seomoz beginners guide http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links  - this explains what you need to do fairly well.  I'd also suggest reading the rest of that guide whilst you are there as it will really help you out.

Good luck.

[csrinpractice]

Thanks Ryan for taking the time to respond.

It's just that the paragraph text I'm testing this with is very long and specific. So when it doesn't show up than it makes me worried that the website gets penalized or that there is something wrong.

I guess I just have to be patient (the website is quite new) and focus more on getting the optimization rights. Any feedback on how to improve the SEO for this website is much appreciated!

Thanks again!

[csrinpractice]

Thanks Mat. I will do that. And you are right, I don't have any links yet. I need to work on that!!

[RyanKent]

I searched for the following sentence in Google.com.au: Tony Harris loves to share his finance and property knowledge and therefore he has given birth to the Tony Harris MakingCents website building on his belief that people need a trusted source of information.

Your site ranks #2. It is outranked by your Facebook page which has the same text. The rankings make sense.

Please provide the text phrase you used previously along with the target page URL.

[csrinpractice]

Hi Ryan

Here it is..

You should never give up purchasing property. You have every right to start living your own Australian dream. Just like the older generation has done before you. But you’ll need to know how to do it the right way. The more knowledge you have about the mortgage process, the better.

And this is the page URL: http://tonyharrismakingcents.com.au/first-home-buyers/

[RyanKent]

After examining your web page, there are too many issues to list in a Q&A. A few examples:

1. Your page has an H1 tag "First home buyers" which is great, but the H1 tag is not visible on the page. This is a serious issue as you are presenting different content to users then search engines, which is often the cause of a penalty.

2. Your page title is "First home buyers" but the text is not used a single time in content. It is used in the URL and bread crumbs, but not once in content.

3. Your header image shows words. Search engines cannot "read" images. Yes, OCR is a valid technology but it is not used to index web content. Text should almost always be presented as html text. Doing such provides a better user experience, easier site maintenance and is better for search crawlers as well. The only time I would ever choose to present text in an image is if a very specific font was required.

There are numerous other issues as well. You have a very basic WordPress site. WP is a great platform to build a site upon, but the site is not professionally developed and you will have issues attempting to compete in search rankings against better designed sites.

Also, please forgive the harshness here but, your content is exceptionally poor. I can see the content is unique which means you likely wrote it, but ask yourself this question: If someone searches for "first home buyers" on Google.com.au and finds your article, will that user think "wow! This is exactly what I wanted!" or are they more likely to think "this is crap" and hit the back button on their browser and look for another site.

You offer a total of 161 words which are not even focused in any manner of what is supposed to be the primary topic of the page. This page is a perfect example of what search engines wish to filter out of search results. Other then an exact text match in quotes, this page should simply not rank.

[csrinpractice]

Hi Ryan

Thanks for your honest feedback. It's a good reality check and I completely agree with what you are saying. I guess I know the basic theory but fail to implement it. The SEOMoz beginners guide will be a good start...