I built a free useful website, wrote lots of content, but Google barely indexes or ranks anything. What am I doing wrong?
I’m feeling really stuck and honestly a bit discouraged.
I built a website with real functionality that anyone can use for free. I’m not even charging users. I’ve also written a lot of blog content around the site, trying to make it genuinely useful.
But the problem is: almost nothing seems to work for SEO.
I created backlinks and profiles on platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Crunchbase, and other company/profile listing sites. But Google doesn’t even seem to index most of these backlinks. I spent a lot of time creating content and external profiles, but they don’t appear to help at all.
Even worse, my own domain name barely ranks. When I search for my exact website/domain keyword, my site can show up as low as page 7. For normal keywords, I basically get no impressions and no traffic.
So now I’m wondering: what is the point of building a useful free website if nobody can find it?
I know SEO takes time, but this feels like I’m missing something fundamental. Is this normal for a new site? Is there something wrong with my indexing, technical SEO, backlink strategy, or content strategy?
What should I check first? And what would you do if you were in this situation?