Written by mallorywhitfield Questions about SEO? Here are the answers to some of the most common questions we get asked about search engine optimization:
- What do all these words mean?
- How long does it take to see SEO results?
- How can I increase my search rankings?
- Does my URL matter for SEO?
- What should I do about drops or fluctuations in rankings?
- How do I get Google to index my site?
- Can I hire you to do SEO for me?
SEO, Evergreen Marketing, keywords… What do all these words mean?
If you’re new to digital marketing, some of these terms may seem unfamiliar to you.
SEO is short for search engine optimization. This is the practice of making improvements both on your website and off-site to increase the visibility of your website in search engines like Google.
Evergreen Marketing is a type of marketing and content that has a long lifespan, providing value and generating leads for months and years in the future.
SEO keywords (also known keyword phrases or search queries) are words or phrases that are searched online.
Check out Carrot’s Glossary of Common Terms for a full list of the most common terms we use to talk about our website platform and what they mean.
How long does it take to see SEO results?
SEO is a long-term strategy, and it can typically take 4-12 months to see significant results from SEO improvements. But once you get going, SEO and evergreen marketing can help you attract and convert high quality prospects 24/7, for months and years in the future. Learn more.
What are the best ways to improve SEO on my site? How can I increase my search rankings?
To get started with SEO, we recommend focusing on creating helpful content that is relevant to your ideal clients or customers and following on-page SEO best practices. You’ll also want to spend some time on off-page SEO and building backlinks to your website.
To learn more about generating leads through SEO, check out our guide to improving your Google rankings or join the conversation in Carrot’s official Evergreen Marketing community to stay informed.
Does my URL matter for SEO?
Your domain name isn’t a direct Google ranking factor. However, it’s important to follow a SEO-friendly URL structure for the part of your page’s URL that comes after your main domain name.
Your domain name is the main part of your website address, for example:
realestatewebsite.com
hvacwebsite.com
The part that comes after that for every page on your website except for your home page is your URL slug (permalink). This is where you’ll want to create SEO-friendly URLs by including the main keyword you’re trying to rank the page for.
Your URL slugs should be short and accurately describe the content on the page. For example:
realestatewebsite.com/sell-my-house-fast-ventura-ca
hvacwebsite.com/new-orleans-air-conditioning-repair
Learn more in our guide to On-Page SEO Basics or check out Google’s recommended URL structure best practices.
Help! My SEO rankings have been fluctuating. And some of my keyword rankings have dropped! What should I do?
First, there’s a lot of different reasons that your organic search traffic could fluctuate or a keyword you’re tracking could drop in rankings.
Fluctuations in rankings and search results are pretty normal because Google is always adjusting their algorithms to try to serve up the most relevant results for people searching. There’s often a lot of volatility in the search results leading up to one of Google’s core algorithm updates, but there are other reasons you may see fluctuations or minor drops in rankings.
It could be because of changing trends or search intent around the keyword or topic. For example, if Google sees that for a certain keyword phrase where they’re currently serving up mostly blog posts or informational pages, most of the people clicking on the search results are choosing to watch the YouTube videos shown in the results, they may start prioritizing showing more videos in the search results.
New competitors entering the market can also be a common cause of changes to your search rankings.
Remember: SEO and evergreen marketing is an ongoing process. We recommend looking at trends over longer time periods, like month over month and quarter over quarter, rather than focusing on changes in traffic or keyword rankings on a daily or weekly basis.
If you’re concerned about dips in your rankings or search traffic, you’ll want to analyze your website data and try to determine the cause of the changes. Once you’ve determined the cause, then you can take action.
Check out this guide to learn more about what to do:
How do I get Google to index my site? I’m seeing a ‘Crawled – Currently not indexed’ notice in my Google Search Console!
After setting up, personalizing and optimizing the content on your site, you should submit your sitemap to Google for indexing. Here’s a tutorial on how to do that.
Once you’ve submitted your sitemap to Google Search Console, you’ll have access to Indexing reports.
The ‘Crawled – Currently not indexed’ notice indicates that Google has discovered those pages but has not yet indexed them. Pages that are indexed can be shown in Google search results.
For many websites, this is common and will resolve automatically once Google has processed the URLs and added them to their index.
However, if you continue to see this notice, there are a few common reasons why your pages may not be getting indexed by Google:
- Poor Quality or Duplicate Content – If the content on the page is low-quality or very similar to other pages (whether on your site or someone else’s), the page may not get indexed by Google. This is why it’s so important to write unique content and make sure to add more value than other competing websites and pages about the same topic. Examine what other pages are ranking on the first page for the given keyword or topic, and try to improve your page’s content to be at least as good as those pages.
- Poor Internal Linking – Linking internally between related pages and posts on your website helps Google crawl your website more easily. It also helps Google understand what content is related to other content on your site, and it’s a big part of our recommended blog content SEO strategy. To boost the visibility of key pages, strategically add more internal links to them, particularly from top-level pages that are included in your website’s main navigation.
- Low Domain Authority – If you’ve confirmed that the steps mentioned above aren’t the issue, you may need to improve your domain authority before creating more content. You’ll want to focus on off-site SEO efforts like building backlinks and citations for your business. You can use Carrot’s Backlink Analysis tool to monitor your progress.
You can also try sharing your blog posts or pages on social media or sending traffic to them by other methods. Google Search documentation leaked in May 2024 suggests that Google uses Chrome data about traffic and visitor interactions to help it rank pages. There’s reason to believe that by sending real traffic to a new post or page, you may be able to help it get indexed faster.
With more and more content being published every day, Google simply doesn’t have the resources to index everything that’s published on the Internet. So it’s important to focus on quality and relevance to your ideal customer or client rather than just pumping out a ton of content.
What if I don’t want to learn how to do SEO myself? Can I hire you to do SEO for me?
If you need some help to accelerate your organic search results, head over to our Marketplace of in-house Carrot services and trusted vendors. The SEO providers in our Marketplace can help optimize your website and climb the ranks to generate more organic leads!