Q and A: Why doesn’t my site appear if I type my business name into Yahoo search?

Posted on by

QuestionHi Kalena,

For the past 3 months my site would appear on page 1 of Yahoo when my “girly party” or “girly party” was typed into the search engine. Recently I’ve noticed that I don’t even appear in the top 10 pages. How could this have happened within 1 week? Something seems a little weird. Please advise. Why wouldn’t my company appear if I type in my entire business name in Yahoo search?

Tonya

Hello Tonya

I can’t believe your site was ever ranking for your business name. Or anything else for that matter.

Here’s why:

  • You’ve used Homestead SiteBuilder to create your site. This is a CMS notorious for being search engine unfriendly.
  • I’m not entirely sure, but I suspect that this is a free-hosted site with content pulled from the main Homestead site and just displayed on your web site. If you want search engines and potential customers to take your business seriously, you need to take it seriously and get a professional web site designed and properly hosted by a real host on your domain.
  • Your META tags are identical on every page and appear to be automatically generated by the Homestead CMS.
  • Your site isn’t optimized for keywords at all. Your page content doesn’t appear to have logical search keywords integrated within the visible text.
  • The Title tag for your home page just says “Home”! Search engines consider the content of the Title tag to be one of the most important aspects of your page in determining whether it is a relevant match for search queries. Your title tag says didley squat about your business.

I could go on but it’s too depressing. Sorry to be so blunt, but it always pains me to see businesses using Homestead or Geocities or similar types of piggy-back, unprofessional, free-hosted or cheap-ass accounts online. It only takes a small effort and very little financial investment to get a professional-looking site built, hosted and optimized for search engines.

An easy way to regain a ranking in Yahoo and Google for “My Girly Party” is to include this phrase at the beginning of the Title Tag of every page on your site.

In the meantime, may I suggest you download our free SEO101 lesson? Implementing the techniques mentioned should help you gain some rankings fairly quickly.

Spread the joy!