Google Doesn't Owe You Shit.

There’s a particular moment that almost every business owner experiences after launching a new website.

The excitement has worn off. The champagne — if there was any — is long gone. You've sent the new link to your mates, your family and probably a few people who didn't ask for it. Everyone has told you how good it looks.

Then, one morning, you open Google.

You type in what you sell.

Nothing.

You add your location.

Still nothing.

You scroll past a couple of directories, an old Facebook page, a competitor you don't particularly like and a website that looks as though it hasn't been updated since the iPhone 4 was considered cutting edge.

Eventually you find yourself on page three, wondering what exactly you've done to deserve this.

The natural reaction is frustration. You've built a good business. You know you're good at what you do. Your customers tell you so. You've invested in a new website, perhaps paid someone to work on the SEO, and yet Google seems completely uninterested.

Here's the uncomfortable bit:

Google doesn't owe you a place on page one.

And once you understand that, SEO starts to make considerably more sense.

GOOGLE DOESN'T KNOW YOU'RE BRILLIANT

This is something businesses can struggle with because, quite reasonably, we judge businesses differently in the real world.

If you've been a brilliant builder for twenty years, people in your area might know your name. If you're a photographer with hundreds of happy couples behind you, your reputation speaks for itself. If you've built a successful company through word of mouth, you might have more genuine credibility than a business ten times your size.

Google doesn't have a particularly good way of sitting down with you and hearing that story.

It has to make decisions using the information available to it.

It looks at your website, the content you've created, the way your pages are structured, how relevant they appear to a particular search, how authoritative your site seems and a huge number of other signals. It then tries to work out which results are most likely to be useful to the person searching.

That means being good at what you do isn't, by itself, an SEO strategy.

You might genuinely be the best business in your area. If your website doesn't communicate that clearly, and if Google can't establish that you're a relevant and useful result, it has very little reason to put you above somebody else.

It's not personal.

Google doesn't know you well enough to have a grudge.

YOU CAN'T BUY YOUR WAY TO NUMBER ONE

This is where the SEO industry hasn't always helped itself.

There are still people promising businesses guaranteed first-page rankings, instant results and magical formulas that will supposedly send them flying to the top of Google.

It's a very attractive proposition, particularly when you're staring at page three and your competitor is sitting above you.

But nobody can simply buy a guaranteed position in Google's organic results.

A good SEO professional can improve your website. They can find technical problems, identify opportunities, improve content, structure your pages properly and build a strategy around the searches that matter to your business.

What they can't do is ring Google and say, “Right, we've done the work. Put them at number one by Friday.”

If only it worked that way.

SEO is competitive by nature. If ten businesses want to rank for the same search, Google still has to decide which ones deserve those positions. Improving your website improves your chances, but it doesn't create an entitlement.

That's an important distinction.

YOUR COMPETITOR MIGHT ACTUALLY DESERVE TO BE ABOVE YOU

This is probably the hardest part to accept.

You search for a service you offer and see a competitor sitting above you. Their website looks worse. Their branding is questionable. Their copy is painfully dull.

So you assume Google has got it wrong.

Maybe it has.

But perhaps they've been building their online presence for years. Maybe they have hundreds of relevant mentions and links pointing towards their website. Perhaps they've created dozens of genuinely useful pages. Maybe they're well established locally and have a strong reputation across the web.

Google doesn't rank websites based purely on how attractive they are.

And that's actually quite useful information.

Instead of looking at your competitor and thinking, “Why the hell are they above me?”, a better question is, “What evidence does Google have that they're a better result?”

That gives you something you can investigate.

Maybe they're targeting the search better. Maybe their service pages are stronger. Maybe their website is technically healthier. Maybe they're answering questions your website doesn't.

Or perhaps they simply have a stronger overall presence.

Whatever the reason, you've learned something.

SEO ISN'T ABOUT FOOLING GOOGLE

There's an old idea that SEO is essentially a game of finding loopholes.

Find the keyword. Repeat the keyword. Build some links. Add a few more words. Somehow trick Google into believing your website is more important than it really is.

That might have worked to some extent once upon a time.

It isn't a particularly sensible strategy now.

The better approach is much more straightforward: make your website genuinely useful to the person searching.

If someone searches for website design in Herefordshire, they should be able to find a page that clearly explains your website design service, what you offer, who it's for and why they might choose you.

If someone searches for a specific problem, your website should ideally contain something useful that addresses it.

The clearer that relationship becomes, the easier it is for Google to understand what you do and where your website belongs.

You're not trying to convince Google that you're something you're not.

You're making it easier for Google to understand what you already are.

THERE'S A REASON SEO TAKES TIME

One of the most frustrating things about SEO is that you can make sensible improvements and see very little happen immediately.

You fix the technical problems. You improve the service pages. You publish useful content. You sort out the internal links. You make the website considerably clearer.

Then you check Google.

Nothing.

You check again next week.

Still nothing.

It can feel as though you've spent all that time doing work that has disappeared into a black hole.

But search engines need time to discover changes, process them and decide what they mean. And even once Google understands your improvements, it still has to compare your website against everyone else competing for the same searches.

That's why SEO is much closer to building a reputation than flicking a switch.

You don't become the most trusted business in your town because you had a really productive Tuesday.

You build that reputation over time.

Online isn't much different.

AND THAT'S WHY SEO NEVER REALLY FINISHES

Even if you eventually reach the first page, you haven't won forever.

Your competitors are still working. New businesses appear. Existing businesses improve their websites. People change what they search for. Google changes the way it interprets those searches.

Your own business changes too.

You launch a new service. An old service becomes less important. You move into a new market. Your customers start asking different questions.

If the website stays exactly the same while the business moves forward, eventually the two stop matching.

That's why ongoing SEO isn't simply about producing another blog post every month and sending you a graph that mysteriously goes upwards.

It should involve looking at what is actually happening, finding opportunities, fixing problems, improving existing pages and responding to changes in the search landscape.

Sometimes the smartest SEO work is creating something new.

Sometimes it's improving something you've already got.

And sometimes it's discovering that the page you've been trying to rank for the last six months is targeting the wrong thing entirely.

SO WHAT CAN YOU ACTUALLY CONTROL?

Quite a lot, fortunately.

You can build a technically sound website. You can make your services clear. You can create useful content rather than filler. You can understand what your customers actually search for. You can structure your website so important pages are easy to find. You can improve your local presence and earn genuine mentions from relevant places.

You can also stop obsessing over rankings for the sake of rankings.

Because being number one isn't necessarily the objective.

Imagine ranking first for a search that brings thousands of visitors who have absolutely no interest in buying what you sell. You've got a lovely number at the top of a report, but it isn't necessarily doing anything for the business.

What matters is being visible when the right people are looking for what you offer, and then giving those people a good enough experience that they actually want to work with you.

That's a much better definition of success.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Google doesn't owe you a first-page ranking.

It doesn't care how much you spent on your website, how long you've been in business or how passionately you believe you're better than the competition. It has a job to do, and that job is to provide the most useful results it can for the person searching.

That's not something to be angry about.

It's actually quite liberating.

Because once you stop expecting Google to reward you simply for existing, you can start looking at what you can actually improve.

Build a better website. Make your services clearer. Create things people genuinely want to read. Fix the technical problems. Understand the searches that matter. Keep improving as the business changes.

And give it time.

You don't need to trick Google into thinking you're important.

You need to give it enough evidence to believe you are.

And if you do the work properly, maybe one day you'll type that search into Google and finally find yourself sitting where you wanted to be.

Not because Google owed you anything.

Because you earned it.