Sometimes when you enter a domain into SpyFu, it returns with zero domain results. This video explains why that might be, and what you can do to remedy it.

A question we sometimes get at SpyFu is, “I typed in my domain, but I’m not showing up on your site!” Sometimes with an additional, “I know I’m ranking on this set of keywords, and I’m still not showing up, what gives yo?”

I’m going to spend the next 2 minutes explaining exactly what’s going on, and how to fix it, so you can use SpyFu to your best advantage.

SpyFu sees websites through their keywords. So if you’re a new domain and are not ranking yet organically, and you’re not buying ads… and you never haaaave… there’s no way for us to know of your existence. Fortunately, once we see you rank on a keyword, any keyword, you’re in our database forever.

For you new domains, never fear, you’re the ones SpyFu is meant to help the most. Go to the domains of your competitors; domains who are a little more visible in the space. Find their top keywords, and start buying them and/or writing content based on them. This is how you build your online presence. SpyFu provides a ton of tools to help you with this research, or you can always print of an Adwords Advisor or Recon Files report to get a detailed spread of what your competitors are up to. Then get a jump on them.

Okay, for those of you who know that you ARE ranking on keywords and your domain still isn’t showing up on our site, 9 times out of 10 it’s because your keywords aren’t in our database yet.

SpyFu tracks millions of keywords across the internet, and have been since 2007, but sometimes it’s tough to catch them all. Fortunately we allow subscribers to add thousands of keywords to our database on a daily basis. You can do this through the add keywords section of your account. You can add them one by one, or literally copy and paste a big ol list of keywords, and we’ll start tracking them the next month. We also automatically add any keyword searched for in our website that we don’t currently have in the database.

Usually one of the biggest keywords you’re ranking on is your brand name, make sure to add that one, as well as different variations and misspellings. If your site is ranking on ‘highly targeted’, or niche keywords we might not have those either.

For the last small group, that isn’t showing up on SpyFu, but is ranking on keywords that you know are in our database. This is because the searches your showing up on are probably localized. If you’re advertising in Shooks, Minnesota and you see that you’re ranking on certain keywords that are indeed in our database, you are probably seeing results exclusively showing up on your local-ish IPs.

Make sense?

Currently SpyFu is set up to take data from google from the most neutral place, so our data won’t be highly affected by localized results. Fortunately you can also add location specific keywords such as, “Shooks Bait and Tackle” “Bait and Tackle Northern Minnesota” “Shooks, Minnesota premiere fishing.” And this will start to get you on our radar.

If you can’t see yourself on our website. Don’t worry. Add your keywords to our database and you’ll be there next month. In the mean time, spy on your competitors! That’s what we’re here for afterall! Use their techniques and strategies to become the very best, in your niche.