Why is our new website not at the top of Google search results?

Why is our new website not at the top of Google search results?

There are many reasons why this may be the case. There's no single action that will make the new site go to the top, and it's not something Parish Online can affect (beyond our normal site configuration and SEO setup).

This applies to other search engines as well as Google.

Here are some things you can do:

Reduce Competition

If your old website is still publicly available then you're competing with yourself! Your old site has been around longer so Google sees it as a more reputable source.

Actions:
  1. Tell your current provider to decommission your old website
  2. Transfer your old domain to Parish Online and we'll set up auto-forwarding to your new site.
If you do this, Google will quickly learn that the new site is the one to put higher.

Tell other websites

You'll want other websites that reference your website to be pointing to the right one.

Actions:
  1. Inform your higher tier Local Authority of the site change so they can update their public records.
This will create a new authoritative link to your new site and help you rise up the rankings.

Add content

If your new site has up-to-date content then Google will find more reasons to put it on the search results. And it's not just the homepage, it's your pages within your site that contain the useful things that people want to find.

Actions:
  1. Make sure they have good page content, good summaries and a nice picture.

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