If your pages aren't ranking high in Google, it's not because Google hates your website. It's most likely because your page doesn't deserve a top-ranking result. There's lots of reasons why that might be the case. And it'll usually come down to an eligibility, content, or links issue. Or sometimes it'll be a combination of two or three of these things.

So, let’s discuss how to figure out why your pages aren't ranking higher in Google and the steps you should take to fix that.

Check Eligibility of Your Pages

Well, when it comes to "eligibility," there are several reasons why it may be impossible for your page to achieve a higher ranking. For instance, if you've set your page's meta robots tag as noindex, then you're asking Google not to index your page and therefore, you won't be eligible to rank.

The same principles apply if you were to block the page in your robots.txt file. Another eligibility factor is if you've had a manual action or some other penalty. Moreover, another eligibility may not be so obvious is time. While it's possible to rank new pages at the top of Google quickly, the majority of pages are going to take quite a while to make its way up to the first page.

Study shows that only 22% of pages that ranked in the top 10 were created within one year. So if you've published a page and it's not ranking in the top 10 in a month or even up to 6 months. We advise you to be patient before you start overanalyzing and making significant changes.

So, other factors that can come into play when it comes to eligibility, but they tend to overlap with the second reason why your page isn't ranking higher in Google. And that's having a content-related issue.

Content Related Issues

When it comes to content issues, they are typically the most challenging to troubleshoot because quality in and of itself is subjective. As we all know search engines strive to provide the best information and solutions to any given query.

To meet the criteria, we can start asking ourselves some questions that should help us figure out if our content is deserving of a top-ranking position. The first question to ask yourself is, does my page match the dominant search intent. Search intent simply represents the reason behind a searcher's query. For ranking, it's critical that your page matches the searcher's intent.

Yes, we can uncover intent to see what the top ranking pages for our target query are about. For instance, when you search for "best gaming laptops", almost all of the top-ranking results are list posts comparing gaming laptops from various makes and models. We know that searchers are researching products and we'd want to follow suit for our best chance at ranking for this query.

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When you search for just "gaming laptops," you'll see that all of the top results are ecommerce category pages, which means people that search for this are likely in buying mode. And if you don't have an ecommerce store selling a variety of gaming laptops, you probably struggle to rank high because you can't serve the dominant intent of searchers.

Now, for a query like "gaming laptops for home office", intent is slightly mixed. You'll see some category pages from ecommerce stores and you'll also see listicles from blogs. This is called mixed intent and in general, you'll  want to try and match the dominant one.

The bottom line is: if your page isn't matching search intent, you have a content issue and you'll need to update it.

The next question you should ask yourself is: are searchers looking for fresh information and results? Freshness is important for some queries. For example, if you search for "best smartphones," then you'll see that all of the top-ranking pages have the current year in the titles because no one wants to know about the best headphones from previous years.

If you're trying to serve freshness-dependent queries with old and outdated content, then you have a content issue and you should definitely update it. Indeed, the content is what's responsible for serving the intent of the searchers so that's where the majority of your time should be spent.

There are two questions we can ask ourselves to improve content quality. The first is "does my content provide the most thorough information or solution to the topic." Remember, thoroughness shouldn't be confused with content length.

You should write about everything you know on the topic. By thoroughness, we believe covering all of the vital points to serve the intent of the searcher.

Examine Your Link Authority

No matter how good your content is, poor rankings may be because you have a link authority issue. Backlinks have been and still remain one of Google's most prominent ranking signals. You should ask "Am I playing within a similar playing field as my competitors?"

Think about it like this. Choosing your competitors in SEO is not a bad practice. If your competitors are miles and miles ahead of you in terms of brand, link authority, and budget, your time and money will be better spent challenging people in a similar playing field.

By "a similar playing field", we consider three different categories: so there's page-level link authority, topical authority, and reputation. 

There isn't an exact science in the real world of SEO. 

You have to weigh out things like your skills in SEO, your budget, your timeline, and probably like 15 other things too. If you want to rank in less time, you'll choose to compete against competitors you have a chance at beating. 

To summarise this, while many ranking issues can be categorised into content and/or links issues, there are still a ton of other reasons why your page may not be ranking. Sometimes improving site structure or user experience signals or adding internal links can help. Keep in mind that most SEO optimizations rely on informed speculation. When troubleshooting ranking problems, analyse the data, empathise with your target audience, make educated assumptions, implement necessary optimizations, monitor progress using a rank tracker, and adjust as required.