1. Google cannot index the pages
Start here, because everything downstream is irrelevant if this is broken. A page that is not indexed cannot rank at any position.
It happens more than you would expect: a `noindex` tag left over from staging, a `robots.txt` rule blocking a whole directory, a canonical tag on every page pointing at the homepage, or a site behind a login by accident.
The test: open Google and search `site:yourdomain.com`. If the count is far below your real page count, or key pages are missing, indexation is your problem. Then set up Google Search Console — free — and read the Pages report, which tells you exactly which URLs were excluded and why.
2. Several of your pages are competing with each other
Keyword cannibalisation is the most common structural fault we find, and it is invisible without looking for it. You have a services page, a blog post and a landing page all broadly about the same thing. Google cannot tell which one you want ranked, so it splits signals between them and ranks whichever it guesses, usually badly.
The fix is one page per intent. Pick the page that should own the term, make it genuinely the most complete answer, and either merge the others into it or redirect them. Then point your internal links at the survivor.
The test: search `site:yourdomain.com "your key phrase"` and see how many of your own pages come back covering the same ground.
3. The site architecture is flat or tangled
Search engines infer what a page is about partly from where it sits and what links to it. A site where every page hangs directly off the homepage with no grouping gives no signal about which pages matter. A site where important pages are four clicks deep behind a dropdown gives the wrong signal.
What works is boring: clear top-level sections, one topic per page, and each page linked from the pages that are contextually related to it — not just from the global navigation.
This is also the reason bundling seven services onto one URL fails. That page cannot be the best answer for seven different searches. Seven pages can.
4. You are targeting phrases you cannot win yet
A new site aiming at a national head term is competing against domains with a decade of authority and thousands of links. You can do everything right and stay on page six for two years.
The alternative is not aiming lower forever — it is aiming at the searches where you are already the better answer. That usually means specificity and geography: not 'web design' but 'website design company in Gujarat'; not 'lighting' but 'crystal chandelier for a dining room'. Lower volume, far higher intent, and reachable.
You build authority on the winnable terms first. Then the broader ones stop being impossible.
5. The page is slow, especially on a phone
Core Web Vitals are a ranking input, and more importantly they are a conversion input. A page that takes five seconds to become useful has lost a share of visitors before it has said anything, and that behaviour is itself a signal.
The usual culprits, in order of frequency: enormous uncompressed images, a stack of third-party scripts each blocking rendering, web fonts loading late and shifting the layout, and a page that requires JavaScript to execute before any content appears.
The test: run the page through PageSpeed Insights and read the mobile score, not the desktop one. Then run it again on an actual phone on mobile data rather than office WiFi.
6. The content answers a different question than the search
Someone searching 'website cost in India' wants a number and the reasons behind it. A page that responds with three paragraphs about your company's commitment to excellence and a contact form has not answered them, and Google can tell from how quickly they leave.
Match the format to the intent. A comparison search wants a comparison. A how-much search wants figures and the variables behind them. A how-to search wants steps. A 'best X near me' search wants a local business, which is a different page type entirely.
Depth matters, but length does not. Two thousand words that circle the question rank worse than six hundred that answer it.
7. Nothing tells Google what the business is
Structured data will not rank a bad page, but its absence leaves search engines inferring facts they could have been told. For a local service business that is a measurable loss.
At minimum: Organization and LocalBusiness schema with your real name, address, phone, service area and hours; Service schema on each service page; FAQPage schema where you genuinely answer questions; and BreadcrumbList so the hierarchy is explicit. Then a Google Business Profile that is actually filled in, and consistent name-address-phone details wherever your business is listed.
For local searches, that profile and those citations frequently matter more than anything on the website itself.
The order to fix them in
Indexation, then cannibalisation, then architecture, then speed, then targeting, then content, then schema. Roughly that order, because each one makes the next more effective and none of them make sense in reverse.
What is conspicuously not on this list is buying backlinks. Links matter, but a site with the seven problems above does not have a link problem — it has a foundation problem, and links pointed at a broken foundation are money spent to no effect.