13 Reasons Why Your Website Is Not Getting Traffic

In case you have been trying to get traffic to your new site or blog, and haven’t succeeded, it might be time to take a step back and analyze every element of your web marketing strategy. There are several reasons why your brand is not getting the traction it deserves in search engines. Your ultimate goal, however, should not be traffic, but targeted visitors. There is a huge difference between the two. With traffic visiting for just a few seconds at a time, you will never make money. However, if you can get people who are willing to buy what you have to offer, less traffic will bring in more money. To find out why your website is not getting the love from search engines, check out the below list of the most common reasons.

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1-Wrong Keywords

Chances are that you are focusing on the wrong keywords. When you are trying to sell plant pots, simply using the main product name as your keyword will not work, as you are facing a huge competition. Likewise, if you are in the United Kingdom, you will have to include this in your geolocation targeting, as well as your keywords and content, or you will get traffic from all over the world and no qualified buyers who are able to buy from you. Make use of great keyword planning tools, or enroll to a training at Google Digital Garage to master the art of using keywords in your content, description, and social media posts.

2-Banned from Google

In case you have been approached by bad SEO companies to build your traffic, they might have used black hat or unethical software that damaged your rankings, or even got you banned from search engines. Software and robots that send out mass links to sites and generate traces of your site everywhere in a short period of time will never get you the results you are looking for. Even if it seems like an easy way of getting 100,000 people visit your site, chances are that you will make no sales and do more damage than good. You should always focus on the quality of visitors, instead of the quantity.

3-No Title Tags and Descriptions

When you set up your website, you should choose your title tags and meta tags carefully. Other important elements to focus on are descriptions and snippets. In case you are wondering, snippets are short descriptive items that appear in search engines when your site comes up. If these crucial elements of your site are not optimized and not using your main keywords, you will have a problem. Even if your site appears on page one, people will not think it is relevant to their search term, based on the intro. Always check how your site appears in search results and tweak your keywords.

4-Lack of Quality Content

Unfortunately, even in 2018, many website owners believe that setting up a few static pages and not having a blog will get them to page one on search engines. The truth is that search engine algorithms have evolved in the past few years. If your site is not regularly updated, it will rank lower and receive less traffic. It might be a good idea to get in touch with a content management service to help you connect with your audience and improve your rankings at the same time. You don’t necessarily have to write a long blog post every day; simply posting a presentation, video, infographic, or update will do, provided that you include your main keywords.

5-No Social Media Integration

No business can survive the online competition without social media integration in the 21st century. You will need to create consistent brand messages on multiple platforms, so you can strengthen your brand and build meaningful relationships with customers at the same time. You should add sharing buttons to your site, and every piece of content you are publishing online and encourage your audience to interact with your brand.

6-Boring Content

Image via Julien-Pier Belanger

Sometimes, your content is informative, and you publish often, but you keep on going on about the same thing, and fail to make the topic interesting. Remember that you don’t have to publish the technical details, and focus on what your audience is interested in. Whether you would like to add a personal touch, emphasize your unique selling proposition, or create interactive games and tests to engage with your audience, you can improve your search engine ranking and site popularity.

7-Lack of Relevant Backlinks

While the content you create on your site and pages matters, it is worthless if you are not making a use of other traffic sources. Building backlinks that are relevant to your content manually (forget about software that will get you banned) is a great way of getting other sites to send you visitors who are interested what you have to say and offer. You should, however, make sure that you are using the right keywords when linking to your most relevant pages. Guest posting and reciprocal linking are great ways of tapping into other sites’ relevant visitor traffic.

8-Bad Landing Page

Chances are that your traffic statistics might be down because your landing page looks awful. People will turn back straight away, increasing your bounce rate. Search engines will lower your ranking if you have a high bounce rate, believing that your content is not relevant to the search terms. A bad landing page that doesn’t provide enough information or doesn’t grab the visitor’s attention can do a lot of harm when it comes to traffic generation and visitor engagement.

9-Boring Web Design

Chances are that your web design is hard to navigate, or is simply not attractive. In case you are still using the generic free themes, and have nothing unique to offer, you are not likely to impress people enough to stay. Your web design can also be a ranking factor, as the older it is, the less search engine optimization tools you will have available. Make sure that your design is easy to navigate, represents your brand and your unique selling proposition.

10-Focusing on One Traffic Source

While you cannot master every online marketing strategy, you can combine a few, so you don’t have to rely on one source. Having search engine referrals is fine, but you might also want to register on local business directories, create guest posts, and engage with people through social media, so you can drive traffic to your site and offers naturally. Without this feature, you will never get enough traffic to make sales. If you are unsure which type of content your audience are looking for, get in touch with a seo agency to get a full report. Make use of forum posting, video marketing, share your content and presentation on other sites, and encourage your visitors to sign up for updates, so they can return at a later date to check out your new content.

11-Irrelevant Content

If you have a dog grooming business, blogging about dog food and breeds is acceptable. Even writing about the best parks to visit with dogs is good. However, if you often go off topic, search engines will think that your business is not really about dogs, so they will not rank you high for the relevant keywords. Focus on the content that is relevant to your business and the queries your potential customers are submitting to search engines, instead of going with the flow and riding on current trends. If you would like to tell people about your daily personal life unrelated to your business, you can set up a personal blog instead.

12-Your Content Is Not Sharable

One of the worst things that can happen is that you create a high quality content that has the potential to go viral, but you don’t provide your visitors the opportunity to share it and comment on it. Most website themes now come with ready-to-use plugins that allow you to add a sharing button to all your posts, pages, and images. You should use social media integration on every page and social media account to link your content to multiple communities and groups.

13-Your Site Is Not Mobile Friendly

Image via Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center

You might simply be losing visitors because you failed to implement a responsive web design. It is a standard these days, and you should change with the times. Check how your site appears on various devices, including tablets and mobile phones, so you can optimize your content to different displays. Chances are that you are losing traffic or are increasing your site’s bounce rate, simply by not accommodating the needs of mobile visitors, continuously growing in number every year.

Getting traffic online is hard work. Getting targeted visitors that can be turned into customers is even harder. The above tips are going to help you find the reasons behind your low traffic and conversion and create an action plan to turn your poor performance around. Focus on the quality and not the quantity, create engaging content, and implement social media in your future web marketing.