Why doesn't my series appear in Google search after months of publishing?

[DarkSena]

This one has been up on my mind for a long time... I created the series originally on Tapas in May 2022 last year and started regularly publishing ever since August that same year. It's been several months and still you're not able to see it on Google search at all? How is that possible? Once I published on Webtoon me as creator and the series appeared on Googgle search like the next day. This one is really confusing the hell outta me.

[darthmongoose]

I suspect that two factors here may be that Tapas has fewer users overall than Webtoon, and possibly that the way titles are displayed on Tapas maybe doesn't use an H1 html tag, making it overall weaker for SEO than Webtoon.

Another factor could be a lack of traffic linking to your comic. Do you regularly link to it on social media? Do you have a website that links to it? Have you linked to it on any interviews elsewhere, Kickstarters etc.? That said, this does seem to have limited effectiveness...

In a thread a month or so ago, I searched my name and comic title and it was visible, though lower down even than my webtoon (barely even a second mirror and I almost never link to it).

Okay, let's try "Errant Comic".... eeggghhhhhh....

The only surefire way to get the Tapas link for me is:

But that's with 3+ years of updates, a website, kickstarter and stuff all linking to it regularly and over 2500 subs. I think maybe better SEO is in order... Perhaps due to focusing more on the App, Tapas haven't really considered the SEO of their website? It's a little frustrating when I'm working hard on my end to try to bring new people to the site in order to boost my readership, but I can barely even search the site because I just get local tapas bars (and don't get me wrong, I love a bit of delicious tapas, but...).

[DarkSena]

@darthmongoose Might be that or the other factor then it seems. Different matches come up when I try to google the title with tapas but none of them is mine lol It's weird really I tried to wait, but nothing after several months is just plainly weird if a Webtoon comic with ten subs gets a Google entry right the next day. Makes the comic on Tapas really hardly available to be found if you tried to search for it only Webtoon would pop up...

[abigaillmartin]

This thread intrigued me to go and search google images! And look!

Are these like my most popular pages or what?

[darthmongoose]

It looks... and some experience I've had with searches in the past... like the Tapas forum seems to perform better on Google than the Tapas website itself.

So it might be most accurate to say that the image is from a post in a thread with the title of your comic in the thread title, that got a decent amount of traffic.

[abigaillmartin]

Ahh okay so technically my most popular because it’s on the forums. Still! I’m on google images!

[darthmongoose]

Yeah! You're appearing in searches in a place where, if people click the link, they'll find a link to your comic, so that's good!

Honestly I guess that's the main takeaway here... the Tapas SEO isn't great, so make sure you're posting around in other places, consider having a website etc.

[DarkSena]

Right it does If you link your comic in the forums it's more likely to be found on Google than the series itself or what... cry me a river

[harlan]

That's really strange.

Though your title is a common phrase which lends itself to many topics and seems to trigger everything from religious programs to chemical dependency programs to songs, movies, books, other comics to the nintendo switch, so maybe that's part of the problem?

It may be that if something appears on both sites, the Webtoon site gets precedence?

[DarkSena]

Well, I tried to google my name + title and webtoon always goes first, Tapas no where to be found. Then the title and Tapas and it shows some older series which do contain the term "Switch"

I don't know maybe later? In a few years or never lol

[thepenmonster]

Google only gives a fuck about things they can data-mine and use to send ads. Anything that doesn't make them cash gets shoved down the results in favor of the pages that do.

So fuck Google.

[artemlazarchuk2000]

There are various scenarios. First, you can check your robots.txt file and be sure that you did not close your site from indexing. Also, you can type in google site: "name of your site" to see pages that are indexed.

[DarkSena]

@thepenmonster lol but it's the most used search engine unfortunately and if they cannot find my comic from Tapas on Google then they cannot read it. A lot of people use keywords to put in search instead of going to this and that platform. Laziness? Being comfy? Maybe

[VersusVII]

I tried to look only the title of my webcomic and the tapas links it's the fifth to appear. So according to @darthmongoose, the fact I promote a lot the link works. If I look for my comic + my pen name nothing appears, but with my real name I get it right

[DarkSena]

Very funny update on this matter.

Thanks to April fools and me going crazy changing the title back and fourth... Google finally acknowledged my series and put the main links and several other links of the chapers in the search too. Sooo, success

PS: Maybe the solution is to change the title several times and then go back and suddenly you're visible. My Instagram account got acknowledged by Google after several years too for some weird reason.