The most common reasons are that the site is not indexed yet, it is blocking Google in robots.txt or a noindex tag, the Google Business Profile is unverified, the pages do not mention what customers actually search for, or the business is simply too new. Check indexing first, because nothing else matters until that is fixed.
Search for your exact business name. If you appear, you are indexed and the problem is ranking, not visibility, which is a completely different fix.
Search site:yourdomain.com.au in Google. No results means the site is not indexed at all. That is usually a noindex tag left over from when the site was being built, and it is the single most common cause I find on new sites.
Check whether your Google Business Profile is verified. An unverified listing does not appear in the map pack no matter how good the website is.
Read your own homepage and count how many times it says what you do and where. If a page never says plumber and never says Ringwood, it will not appear for plumber in Ringwood, however obvious that is to you.
A brand new site takes weeks to months to establish. If everything above checks out and the site is under three months old, the honest answer is to wait and keep publishing. Anyone selling you a fix at that point is selling you something.
Most often it is not indexed, usually because of a leftover noindex tag from the build. Search site:yourdomain.com.au to check. If nothing comes back, that is your problem and everything else is irrelevant until it is fixed.
A few days to a few weeks to be indexed, and a few months to rank for anything competitive. Submitting a sitemap in Search Console speeds up the first part but not the second.
Because your pages do not say what customers search for. Ranking for your own business name is easy since nothing else competes for it. Ranking for your service and suburb needs a page about that service in that suburb.
No. Organic results and the map pack are free. Google Ads buys the paid slots at the top and has no effect at all on your organic ranking, whatever anyone tells you.
I build websites for Melbourne businesses and do the search work as part of it. $225 per month, no build fee.
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