“My website is not getting traffic. What can I do?”
Business owners often ask me how to grow organic traffic, and it usually comes after they’ve tried and haven’t seen any results.
They have worked on their website for months, but the traffic is so small compared to their effort. The first thing I do is check the said website and write a short or long recommendation.
A short recommendation is free. The long and detailed recommendation isn’t, and it’s very detailed.
From experience and working with many clients, these are the things I noticed on most business websites. These are the reasons your website is not getting traffic.
I’ve added tips if you want to know how to drive traffic to your website.
1. Your website structure is difficult to understand and navigate
The website structure is quite disorganized.
Think about your site as a library. If someone should come in through the door, they need directions. You should NOT be putting adult books and children’s books in the same corner. If someone should come in with their toddler, they could just go to the children’s corner directly.
That’s the same thing with your site. If your business offers courses for marketers, your site structure could look like this: home page > Beginner marketers + Intermediate professionals + Guru. Let’s say someone clicks on Guru. They will be taken into deeper content or courses not meant for beginners. So they don’t need to waste time scrolling through materials meant for beginners.
This is to simplify it, but you get the whole logic. This structure should also continue to the way you link one page to another when you create a new page.
2. Your pages take too long to load
Your site loading Speed is almost like waiting for a delivery.
Don’t take it in a bad way.
See, I’m a patient person, but many people aren’t. So, if your site pages load at the same speed as rebooting a laptop, many people will bounce and check your competitor with faster-loading pages.
A website developer can improve load speed, making the code on the page faster to load on different devices. You can also reduce the size and quality of the images you add.
3. Your content is not WELL optimized for search (Learn On Page SEO)
Search engine optimization can be difficult, especially if you don’t know all the ins and outs. That’s why you should hire someone who understands it. There is so much to learn or remember.
Looking at your site, I notice your meta descriptions aren’t doing their jobs or aren’t there at all. Some of your blog posts would have been better if you had restructured the outline.
All over the website, the interlinking isn’t moving users to click.
These are important things you must do if you want to know how to increase traffic on website through SEO.
For the sake of SEO, people should spend time on your website. And clicking on your links is one of the things search engines will notice. It signifies that people find what they want and are even interested in more of your content.
You can start by installing tools like Yoast or Rankmath. They will guide you on what you should do before publishing. This doesn’t qualify as doing SEO professionally, but it’s definitely a good start. If you decide to hire someone in the future, they will improve on what you’re already doing.
You can check places like Fiverr or Upwork to find freelancers.
If you want assistance from someone who does SEO to improve the engagement and conversion on your website, you can reach out to me. Instead of mastering a lot of things and SEO tips to boost your organic rankings and traffic, you will save time. You get results faster.
3. Your content is not engaging
It’s one thing for your content to appear in search engines, but it’s another thing for people to enjoy reading it.
Search engines consider a hundred factors, and the major one, as I said, is that – are people spending time on your pages. If they are not, search engines will think the content is not serving its purpose. So, gradually, your pages won’t rank anymore. That means less and less traffic for your website.
This is the most important one of the ways to increase traffic to your website. This should be your goal, keep readers engaged for as long as possible.
Write for humans. Help them solve their problems and make your website the number one place to go when they have issues about certain topics.
For example, I read the content on your websites and noticed you’re not holding the conversation down in a friendly and simple manner. The sentences are like what I will get in a room filled with professors.
Modern technological advancement has proven that we can create exceptionally useful content in lesser time than it would take ages ago.
I have to read that again and…
Wait?
Is that like saying, “Artificial intelligence is making it easier to create content?”
Damn!
This is not one of the major reasons your website is not getting traffic, but it’s one of the reasons you’re losing traffic. Except you have a target audience who are scholars, keep things simple. Clarity and simplicity are some of the important characteristics of great content.
Write for humans. Write the way your readers want to read the content. The primary purpose of your content is for readers to understand what you have say without stress, because if they don’t get it, they will use that button on their device, which will take them back to the search engine result page.
If they like reading complex sentences, go for it.
This idea is to ensure they like reading your content even if the sentences look too simple.
4. Your keyword research evidently needs to improve
You can’t write about certain topics for years and not cover certain topics.
It’s like writing about content marketing without talking about content writing.
Or writing about search engine optimization for beginners, and you didn’t include the best practices.
These aren’t grievous mistakes. However, from a marketing point of view, it is bad. You have to attract new visitors and give them reasons to explore your content in a manner that follows their buyer’s journey.
For example, let’s say you start a business offering marketing courses. Your first topic is “marketing courses for beginners.” This isn’t really bad, but compare it with ‘7 things you should know about marketing.” Follow it with 10 reasons you should become a marketer in 2023.” Finally, write “A beginner-friendly guide to marketing.” You see that with this example, you can link the content properly and use words to encourage readers to check the next content on your website.
Bring them and give them a reason to stay.
Remember, when people keep spending time on your website, and some of them share your content or link back to you, it passes a sign to search engines that you’re the best place to study or learn about the topic.
5. You need more quality backlinks
When some business owners asked how to get traffic, and I checked for them, I noticed that are doing everything right. Good website architecture. Great content. Then, I check the backlinks profile, and… Well, not so good.
Links from other websites of authority are like endorsements that your page and websites are great.
But these quality backlinks are hard to get. You have to be strategic about it.
And here is a never-failed approach to getting more traffic, if you have written quality posts on a topic and you don’t get traffic, just get more backlinks. It works 90% of the time – provided your website is in good shape, and the content serves the audience.
Want to know how to get traffic to your website fast? Write quality content and build backlinks. That’s the advantage the bigger websites have over yours.
6. Your pages are not indexed
Your website is not getting traffic because many of your website pages are not indexed.
This is like saying Google and the other search engines do not have your page details in their store. They didn’t put them among the pages that they will show when people search for any queries. ‘Ignore’ is the right word here.
Why did this happen?
It could be a ton of reasons, such as one, you did not optimize the page, and Google isn’t sure where or what the page is about. Your page is hard to crawl or not optimized for mobile users. Google, for instance, won’t like to show a page that won’t load for its users.
You can check if your page is mobile-friendly using Google Search Console.
7. You need other strategies to get traffic
Aside from writing content, you need to do other things to bring in more traffic.
- You can distribute your content on social media.
- Host a competition.
- Set up a community on Reddit or Facebook group.
- Use paid ads.
- Collaborate with other blogs by writing guest posts or asking for backlinks.
- Start a YouTube channel.
- Give freebies (must be related to what your audience wants or consider valuable).
- Build an email list and remind your audience of new content
The idea is you have to be proactive when it comes to getting the right people to see your content. Your traffic will skyrocket if you combine all of the strategies. So, why not?
I forgot to include Google Update as one of the reasons. Many SEO professionals say Google ruin the progress of their strategies. However, if you follow best practices and write engaging content, you will always get traffic.
So, Why Is My Website Not Getting Traffic?
It all boils down to three things: your website, your content, and what you do after publishing.
I hope this post helps you in your next course of action. If you need more assistance, I will be glad to help, so use the contact form at the top.
By the way, I share tips about improving engagement on your website and converting your readers to buyers.
Tell a friend by using the buttons below.