Rankings and Traffic: Questions Answered
How Google ranks pages, how to check where you rank, what an SEO score does and does not mean, and what to look at when traffic drops or does not turn into sales.
Each answer below gives the short version first. Open the full article for the steps, the reasons and the official sources.
10 questions on Rankings and Traffic
| Question | Short answer |
|---|---|
| Track Your Keywords Without Paying Every Month | You can track your keywords without a monthly fee by using a pay-as-you-go rank tracker. It checks your Google and Bing positions daily, weekly or whenever you need, charging per keyword check, using credits that never expire. |
| Is 75 a good SEO score? | 75 is a reasonable score, but scores are not comparable between tools, because each tool weighs its own checks differently. What matters is which problems are behind the number. Fix the issues the tool flags that most affect visibility, rather than chasing the score itself. |
| What is the Google page ranking? | PageRank is Google's original way of measuring a page's importance from the links pointing to it, where each link counts as a vote and links from important pages count for more. Google stopped showing PageRank scores publicly in 2016, and today it is only one of many signals Google uses to rank pages. |
| How to check SEO ranking of a website? | There are two different checks. An SEO audit tool gives a technical score, usually out of 100, for things like speed, titles and mobile use. Keyword rankings show where your pages actually appear for specific searches, and the most reliable free source for those is Google Search Console. |
| How does Google search rank pages? | Google ranks pages on three main things: relevance (does the page cover what the person searched for), authority (do trusted sites link to it and is it a reliable source) and experience (does it load quickly, work on mobile and deliver what it promises). A page needs to be strong on all three to rank for competitive searches. |
| How do I check my Google page ranking? | Use Google Search Console, which is free and shows the searches your pages appear for and their average position, or a rank tracking tool for specific keywords. Searching for your own keywords in Google is unreliable, because results are personalised to your location and browsing history. |
| Why is a page indexed but not showing up on Google? | Being indexed only means Google has stored the page. It does not mean the page will rank. If it is indexed but not appearing, it is a ranking problem: other pages may answer the search better, the content may not match what people are looking for, or the page may lack links and authority. Results also vary by location and device. |
| Why does Google Search Console show clicks but Google Analytics shows none? | The two tools count different things. Search Console records a click on Google's own side the moment someone clicks your result. Google Analytics only records a visit if your page loads, its tag runs and the visitor allows tracking. If Search Console shows clicks and Analytics shows exactly zero, the Analytics tag is almost always not running at all. |
| Why has my website traffic suddenly dropped, and is AI killing website traffic? | Most sudden drops trace back to a Google ranking update, a crawling or indexing fault, a security issue, a manual action, a site move, or people simply searching less. Compare date ranges in Search Console's Performance report to find which pages and queries fell. On AI, Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode link to websites, and its documentation gives no figures on lost traffic. |
| Why is my website getting traffic but no sales? | Usually the visitors are not ready to buy, the pages they land on do not match what they searched for, or sales are not being recorded. Check where visitors come from in Google Analytics, confirm purchases are tracked as key events, and compare the search queries in Search Console with what each landing page actually offers. |