A call we get about once a month: the site went live three weeks ago, everything looks lovely, and nobody arrives from Google. Then comes the question of whether they should buy an SEO service.
Sometimes they should. But first it is worth ruling out seven things in order, because five of them are free and take about half an hour in total. We will walk them in exactly the order we actually find them.
First: does Google know about your site at all
Before fixing anything, it is worth knowing whether Google can see your site at all. Two free ways to find out, and neither asks you to open any code.
The first. Type site:yoursite.com into the search box, with no space after the colon. What comes back is a list of the pages of yours that Google actually holds. The number of results wobbles from day to day, so use it for a yes-or-no question rather than for measurement.
- An empty result: you are not in the index. There is no point worrying about rankings, because the cause is in points 1 to 3.
- A partial result, where the homepage is there and the service pages are not, is a different diagnosis: Google found you, but has not worked its way to the rest of the pages. Look at points 2, 5 and 6.
The second. The URL inspection tool in Google Search Console. You paste in an address and Google tells you directly whether it is in the index and when it last came by. It is the only place where Google itself answers you.
1. The "do not index" flag survived development
By far the most common cause. During development a tag goes on the site asking search engines to skip it, because nobody wants a half-finished site in the index. Launch day is busy, everyone is looking at the design, and the tag never comes off.
How to check: open the page source (Ctrl+U or Cmd+Option+U) and search for the word noindex. If it is there, you have found your cause.
A note for WordPress users: Settings, Reading, and there is a checkbox saying "Discourage search engines from indexing this site". We have found that forgotten tick more times than we would like to admit.
2. The sitemap is missing or was never submitted
A sitemap is a machine-readable list of your pages. Without one, Google has to discover each page by following links. On a new site that nobody links to yet, that can mean it never finds them at all.
How to check: open yoursite.com/sitemap.xml. An error or an empty page means this is your next fix. If there is a list, glance over it: are all your pages there, and is there anything on it you did not want public?
Then there is the second half people skip: the sitemap also has to be submitted in Google Search Console. The file on its own tells nobody anything.
3. robots.txt is blocking
Same story, different file. Open yoursite.com/robots.txt. If it contains the line Disallow: /, you have told search engines to go away yourself.
This usually happens when the site was built on a staging domain, where the block was correct, and then the content was moved across along with the file.
4. The site is simply too young
Not a fault, and the hardest one to tell a client, because the answer is "wait".
Indexing a new domain usually takes a couple of weeks. Real rankings, meaning actually being ahead of competitors, take months. If the first three points are clean and the site is two weeks old, the correct action is to rebuild nothing.
The worst thing you can do in this phase is change something big every week. Constantly rewriting headings, addresses and structure resets the little that has accumulated.
5. The content is too thin
This is where it gets uncomfortable, because it is the only item on the list whose fix genuinely costs time and money.
Three sentences about a service give a search engine nothing to rank you above anyone else with. If your competitor has two screens of text on the same service, with prices, examples and an FAQ, that is not a fair fight, regardless of who does the actual work better.
A practical suggestion that costs less than rewriting the whole site: pick the single service that brings you the most money and finish that one page properly. Not all of them at once. One page that genuinely answers everything a customer asks does more than eight thin ones.
What "properly" means: what it costs, how long it takes, who it suits, who it does not suit, what is included, what is not, and what happens when something goes wrong.
6. The same content sits at two addresses
A classic we see on almost every older site: the homepage answers both at / and at /home. The search engine sees two pages with one set of content, cannot tell which to show, and splits the strength between them.
The same happens when the site answers both with and without www, or on both http and https. The fix is not to keep both, but to redirect one to the other.
Check that all four variants of your homepage end up in the same place. If they do not, that is ten minutes of server configuration and a genuinely measurable win.
7. Without JavaScript there is nothing on the page to read
A new point on an old list. More and more sites are built so that the text is not in the HTML at all, but appears only once the browser has run the scripts. To the eye there is no difference. To a robot there is.
How to check: open the page source (Ctrl+U), not right-click and "Inspect". The difference between those two is the whole point here: the inspector shows the page after the scripts have done their work, the source shows what arrived from the server. Search the source with Ctrl+F for your own headline text. If you cannot find it, neither can a robot that does not run JavaScript.
The honest part: Google usually copes. It does run the scripts, just later and more slowly. Others do not. Social media preview bots and a good share of the readers behind AI assistants take whatever is in the HTML and move on.
That is why this point matters more now than it did five years ago: back then the only question was Google, and now ten other and simpler machines read your site too. Ask about it before you commission a new website.
What to expect, and when
The most common misunderstanding is not technical, it is about time. Here is how it usually goes in our experience. These are not promises, they are a pattern.
- Week one. The homepage appears in the index. Search for yourself by your company name. If you cannot find your own site, something is broken, and that is a matter for points 1 to 3.
- Month one. Most pages are in the index. The first impressions start showing up in Search Console. Clicks are few, and they arrive under your own name.
- Month three. Long, specific searches start coming in. Not "website", but "how much does a website cost for a small company". This is the first real feedback about what your site is missing.
- Month six. If content has been added along the way, a direction becomes visible. If nothing has been added, the direction is usually a flat line.
And the honest part: a new domain that nobody links to is slow, however good the site is. Age and links are not things you can produce over a weekend.
What not to do when the waiting gets uncomfortable
Month four is usually where somebody does something silly. The four most common:
- Buying links. Bought links almost always come from the same handful of places, and search engines recognise those networks. At best nothing happens and the money is gone. At worst you end up attached to the pattern yourself.
- Rebuilding the site every fortnight. Every rebuild resets what had accumulated: addresses change, old content disappears, and measurement starts from zero again. A site that is looked after and added to beats a site that gets rebuilt every year.
- Stuffing the same phrase into every heading. That worked in 2009. Now it does damage twice over: the machine sees eight identical pages and cannot tell which to show, and the person reads the first sentence and leaves.
- Hiring anyone who guarantees position one. Nobody controls the rankings except Google itself. The only position one anyone can promise with confidence is on a search term nobody searches for. Ask instead what exactly they will do, and when you will see the result yourself.
The Estonian market is small, and that is your advantage
One thing international guides do not account for: search in Estonian is a small market. The competition for one specific, long question is often thin here. Very often there is no page at all that genuinely answers it.
An example. A page titled "Our services", with eight services and one sentence about each, competes with everyone and wins nowhere. A page titled "How much does a restaurant website with a menu and bookings cost", carrying a price range, what makes it more expensive and how long it takes, competes with almost nobody.
A large company writes in general terms because it has to suit everyone. You can afford to write narrowly. For a small company this is very nearly the only place where it can get ahead of a bigger one.
A test that takes five minutes: type into Google the question your customers ask you most often on the phone, in exactly their words. If what comes back is forum posts and one foreign article, that page has not been written yet. Write it yourself, or have it written for you, but do that one page properly.
What order to do all this in
Our suggestion:
- Points 1, 2, 3, 6 and 7 straight away. Free, fast, and there is no point going further without them.
- Connect Google Search Console if you have not. It is where Google tells you what it makes of your site, and it tells you for free.
- Wait two weeks and look again.
- Only then go near the content, and then one page at a time, starting with the question your customers ask you most often.
How to check all of it at once
If you would rather not walk the list by hand, our free search engine audit does it for you and hands back a list. It does not replace a person, but it tells you in half a minute whether your problem is in the first three points or in the fifth.
If the fixes add up to more than a day of work, an SEO service is where that gets done consistently. And if the site is already in order but you want to know what AI assistants make of it, that is a separate measurement, because the two look at different things.
And if the list stays confusing, ask us. We will also tell you when the answer is that there is nothing to do right now.
Frequently asked questions
Two free ways, and neither needs any code. Type site:yoursite.com into the search box, with no space after the colon, and back comes a list of the pages of yours that Google holds. The number of results wobbles day to day, so use it as a yes-or-no check, not a measurement. An empty result means you are not in the index, and rankings are not worth worrying about. The other way is the URL inspection tool in Google Search Console, where Google says whether an address is in the index and when it last came by.
By far the most common cause is a "do not index" tag that survived development. During the build a tag goes on the site asking search engines to skip it, launch day is busy, everyone is looking at the design, and the tag never comes off. To check, open the page source (Ctrl+U or Cmd+Option+U) and search for the word noindex. In WordPress the same thing sits under Settings, Reading, as a checkbox saying "Discourage search engines from indexing this site".
Indexing a new domain usually takes a couple of weeks, and real rankings, meaning actually being ahead of competitors, take months. In the first week the homepage appears in the index, within the first month most pages follow, and by the third month long, specific searches start coming in. These are not promises, they are the pattern we usually see. A new domain that nobody links to is slow however good the site is: age and links are not things you can produce over a weekend.
One cause is content that is too thin. Three sentences about a service give a search engine nothing to rank you above anyone else with, and if a competitor page carries two screens of text on the same service, with prices and an FAQ, that is not a fair fight, regardless of who does the actual work better. Cheaper than rewriting the whole site: pick the single service that brings you the most money and finish that one page properly - what it costs, how long it takes and who it suits.
No. Nobody controls the rankings except Google itself, and the only position one anyone can promise with confidence is on a search term nobody searches for. The timeline is a pattern, not a promise: real rankings take months, and a new domain that nobody links to is slow however good the site is. Ask the person or agency making that promise what exactly they will do, and when you will see the result yourself.
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You type your web address from memory; you have never typed your own company name into Google. Your customer does, and does it last of all, just before calling. What meets them there: your site under a heading you did not choose, the state figures, a competitor advert, an old Facebook page. Who put each row there, what you can change, and how to run that search as a stranger.