How to help improve SEO ranking for your business

If you want help reaching customers online, it’s important to understand how search engines operate. When looking for products and services, customers will often use search engines to find what they need. 

So, we know that customers are looking for businesses like yours online using search engines. But what if your business website isn’t appearing in search engine results?

If you manage your own website, you should make sure it can be found by customers who may be looking for you online. Keep reading to find out if your website is appearing in search results, what to do if it’s not, and for some bonus search engine optimisation tips.

Firstly, check if your website is listed on search engines

Before your website can be found by customers searching online, it must first be listed on search engines. To check if your business website has been indexed by a particular search engine, follow these steps:

1. Visit your search engine of choice.
2. Turn off “safe search”
3. Enter the URL of your domain with the word “site:” before it. E.g. “site:telstra.com”
4. If you can see your website ranked in the search engine results, that means your website is listed.

Secondly, if your website isn’t listed on search engines, try to find out why

If your website does not appear in search engine results, it helps to find out why. In the vastness of the online landscape, search engines use their own web crawlers to discover and access web pages. So, simply put, to be listed on a search engine you must be found by its crawlers.

According to industry leading SEO company Moz, here are some reasons why your website may not yet be appearing in search engine results:

• Your site is brand new and hasn't been crawled yet.
• Your site isn't linked to from any external websites.
• Your site's navigation makes it hard for a robot to crawl it effectively.
• Your site contains some basic code called crawler directives that is blocking search engines.
• Your site has been penalised by search engines for spammy tactics.

To learn more, visit How Search Engines Work: Crawling, Indexing, and Ranking

Finally, use search engine optimisation tools to help boost your website’s ranking

To make sure your website appears in search results, you can take advantage of free online tools to get your website verified.

Google is by far the most used search engine in Australia, with 94% market share, followed by Bing (around 4%), DuckDuckGo and Yahoo (both less than 1%). So, if you’re short on time, concentrating your efforts on Google may deliver a strong return on investment. You can verify your website by submitting its details using Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools. Yahoo uses the same indexing tool as Bing, so if you’ve submitted your site to Bing, you’ve automatically submitted it to Yahoo as well.

If certain pages aren’t being listed in search results, consider publishing a sitemap on your website. You can also submit sitemaps to search engines to help web crawlers navigate your business website.

Why is search engine optimisation so important?

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a key strategy for boosting the visibility of your online presence in search engines. 

Learn more about the benefits of of SEO for small business 

Explore 7 tips to boost SEO

Originally published October 2021, last modified March 2025. 

This article does not necessarily reflect the views of Telstra or its staff.