If your site is slow, not showing up in search, broken on mobile, or just not performing the way you expected, this page will help you find out why. Most website problems fall into a small number of categories and the fixes are more straightforward than they look. Start with the issue that matches what you are seeing.
My site is not showing up on Google
This is usually one of three things. Either Google has not crawled your site yet, a page is accidentally blocked from being indexed, or your site is too new and thin for Google to have ranked it for anything yet.
The first step is to open Google Search Console and check whether your pages are indexed. If they are not, submit your sitemap from inside Search Console and request indexing for your most important pages. If they are indexed but not ranking, the issue is more likely content and competition than a technical problem. Read the get found on Google guide for what to do next.
My site loads slowly
Page speed affects both your visitors and your search rankings. Google measures loading performance through Core Web Vitals and a slow site signals a poor user experience.
The most common causes on smaller sites are large uncompressed images, too many third-party scripts loading on every page, and cheap or overloaded hosting. Start by running your URL through Google PageSpeed Insights, which is free and shows you exactly what is slowing the page down. Fix the image sizes first as that alone resolves the majority of speed issues on most sites.
My site does not work properly on mobile
Google ranks the mobile version of your site. If your layout breaks, text overlaps, or buttons are hard to tap on a phone, that directly affects your rankings.
Open your site on a real phone rather than a browser preview. Check every page you care about. Most modern website builders handle mobile layouts automatically but custom CSS or third-party widgets can break things. If your builder has a mobile preview mode, use it every time you make layout changes.
My site has broken links
Broken links frustrate visitors and waste the crawl budget Google spends on your site. A link that goes nowhere signals poor maintenance.
You can find broken links for free using Google Search Console under the Coverage or Pages report, or run a free crawl using a tool like Screaming Frog’s free tier. Once you have the list, either update the links to the correct URL or set up 301 redirects from the old URLs to the right destination.
My images are not loading
Missing images are almost always caused by one of three things: the image file was deleted or moved, the file path in the page code is wrong, or the image hosting service has changed. Check whether the image file still exists at the URL it is being called from. If you recently migrated your site or changed platforms, image paths often break in the process and need to be updated manually.
My site was penalised by Google
If your traffic dropped sharply after a Google algorithm update, it does not necessarily mean a penalty. Most drops after updates are algorithmic adjustments, not manual penalties. A manual penalty is rarer and will show up as a notification inside Google Search Console.
For algorithmic drops, the most common causes are thin content, over-optimised pages that read as written for search engines rather than people, or a sudden influx of low-quality backlinks. Read the off-page SEO guide for more on backlinks, and the on-page SEO guide for content quality signals.
My site has a security warning
If visitors are seeing a “not secure” warning or a browser alert when they visit your site, the most likely cause is an expired or missing SSL certificate. Your site should be served over HTTPS. Most website builders and hosting providers include SSL certificates for free. Check your hosting dashboard and renew or reactivate the certificate. If the warning says your site may be harmful, check Search Console for a manual action and run a malware scan through your hosting provider.
I made changes and nothing improved
SEO changes take time to show results. Google does not reindex and rerank pages instantly after you make changes. Small sites can wait several weeks before seeing any movement. If you made on-page changes, check that the page has been recrawled by requesting indexing in Google Search Console. If you made technical changes, verify they are actually live on the published site and not just in a draft or preview.
Go deeper
These guides cover the specific areas in more detail: