Pages listed in Google but not ranking

I have seen in Google Webmaster Tools my pages are indexed in google (the site maps have successfully been indexed).

However the pages are not ranking for any keywords/search terms. Other websites with less SEO than my website are ranking well.

It has only been 1 week since adding the site map/pages on the site.

Do I just need to wait? Or am I missing something?

Is it possible you have too much “SEO”? :thinking:

Exactly what type of SEO are we talking about here?

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A website that ranks well has about 1 backlink.

I have about 40 backlinks.

Also I have more content. The competitor ranking well has only basic content.

They do have a .io domain name. Maybe Google likes .io domain names?

You have asked about TLDs many times. Google doesn’t care about them.

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“io” is Indian Ocean

So I imagine if that is important in terms of what’s being searched for that Google might give “io” sites a higher position in the SERPs.

You posted “40 links” and you are apparently considering them as SEO.
So I’m guessing these are not links that were earned but links you placed yourself.
If so, they are of little to no value in terms of SEO and indeed may have negative impact.

This must be a reasonably established site then to have gained a few natural back-links. From your first post I assumed it was a brand new site.

Is your target audience geographic area The British Indian Ocean Territory?

it is a brand new site.

about 10 backlinks are decent.
about 5 are mainly redirects.
about 25 are good but are in directories, forums, etc.

If Google does not like some of my backlinks, it should like others.

I am using .net but competitor is using .io. .io can be used worldwide (like .me).

If these are reputable sites, they will mark user-submitted links as no follow in accordance with Google’s guidelines, so they will have no effect on SEO. Even if this is not the case, links such as these which you place yourself are regarded as virtually worthless by search engines.

As @Gandalf has already said, we’ve explained repeatedly that Google does not favour one domain extension over another. It may use a country-specific domain to determine geographic targeting, but it will not give preference in search results to one extension over others.

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In what sense do you consider them “good”? The likelihood is these will be worthless in terms of SEO.

Again, in what sense are they “decent”? Since you consider forum and directory links to be “good”.
The fact they have apparently sprung up overnight for a new site that is currently hard for people to find looks suspicious to me.

Some info on 301s and Page rank:-

It doesn’t make any sense at all to favour one region specific tld over another, except perhaps in the context of a search for local services within that particular region. Hence the question:-

Hint: If the answer is “no”, the .io tld is not relevant.

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I was aware that too many backlinks too soon can be bad for SEO but I do not think 40 is that many to get within 3 months of launching a new website!?

I think I will just have to wait for Google to recognise the SEO efforts over time.

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