If your website is not getting enough traffic, there can be many reasons.
Daily there are hundreds of searches, on Google, with the keyword “Why isn’t my website getting traffic? ” and if you are reading this article it is likely that you have also asked yourself this question.
Giving an unambiguous answer is impossible as there can be many causes but let’s try to give some pointers.
- Domain age: a newly born site has a low reputation for Google, due to the thousands of sites that are born and die in a short time with the aim of producing low quality content, or worse, spam. A regular and consistent presence and production of quality content raises the site’s reputation in the eyes of the search engine.
- The reputation of the author: If the writer and signer of the article is not known on the web, they receive little attention from Google as opposed to other authors with an established web presence behind them and many articles in their meatpack.
From WIkipedia: BACKLINK: An incoming link or backlink (English backlink, abbreviated as BL) is a hyperlink pointing to a particular web page.
- Backlinks: The older the site, the more years the domain has behind it, the better known the authors, the higher the quality of content on the site, and the more backlinks the site will receive inbound.
- Social media presence: Italians, and others, spend a lot of time on social media. Creating and managing a business page on major social media is a must for any business.
Yes, it takes time and resources to get organic traffic, the traffic that comes from Google.
But let’s go into detail about the main problems common to many websites and how to solve them.
Your content is of low quality
Think about this: what is Google’s job?
In fact, it is only one: to show the user, for any search, a list with the best possible results. Simple.
Since its inception more than 20 years ago in 1998, Google has had this goal.
Over the years, Google has improved its algorithms and is very efficient in presenting the list of the best sites for every search query made.
It used to be that you could “trick” the search engine into ranking well, but that is no longer the case.
If your content is not of high quality for your target niche, you will have little chance of ranking on the first pages of Google and getting traffic from organic search.
Let’s not forget the indirect influence that social media plays in this process.
It is difficult to think of low-quality content being mentioned, or rather, shared on social.
What is quality content
The question at this point in the narrative is “what is quality content that can increase visits to my website?”
Quality content must have the following characteristics:
- On-site SEO optimization: Make sure your website is SEO optimized on site. Google has dictated quality rules on web page code. You can read this article on on-page SEO if you want to learn more.
- Credibility of a website: the website must have a certain number of quality pages indexed. If your website is newly created, it will be difficult to rank it on the first page, especially if there are sites with more pages and of greater “seniority” on the same topic.
- Well researched and impartial: If you always write to praise the same product or service with the company’s point of view, if you don’t try to see the issue from the user’s point of view, you are wasting your time.
- Current: Users, as well as search engines, always want to read up-to-date content.
Level of keyword competition
One of the basic steps an SEO consultant takes when trying to position a website is to analyze the competition.
Who are your competitors? What are they doing? And specifically, what keywords are they trying to rank for?
Many people do not do this thinking and try to rank for keywords with solid competition and that in some cases, has invested a lot of resources to rank for that particular keyword.
Think about these 2 factors:
- There are ten places available on the first page of Google for each keyword.
As we mentioned earlier, search engines want to display the ten websites that meet their criteria for reliability and quality.
If you aim to rank your website for a keyword where the competition is very high, your page will not be shown, even more so for newly created or mature sites but with low quality content.
- The higher the search volume for a keyword, the more websites will want to rank on the first page for that keyword.
Competition increases as the popularity (search volumes) of a keyword increases.
If you are using only the most “popular” keys in your industry, it will be very difficult to rank well.
And yes, visibility on the Internet comes at a cost.
How to get traffic not using the most popular keywords?
The answer is: by using long-tail keywords.
When you use Google’s keyword tool to do keyword research, you should target low-competition, long-tail keywords.
For example:
Suppose you are writing an article on search engine ranking.
The most popular keyword is “how to position a website.”
If you write an article with this title, you probably won’t get much organic traffic from search engines.
It is a search query that gets due attention from your competition.
If, on the other hand, you try to search for a low-competition, long-tail keyword such as “how to rank a website on Google” or better yet, “how to rank a website at the top” your chances of ranking on the first page increase significantly,
By using within the article, synonyms or similar alternatives to the keyword you can position the article for various low-competition keywords.
Unity is strength.
Also, spend time to write an effective headline.
This is critical to your goals.
Speed of loading website pages.
The speed at which a website’s pages load and display is one of the main ranking factors for Google.
The faster pages load, the more likely users are to stay on the site and return, once they leave.
If your site does not load the page in a few seconds, say 4 or 5 at most, users will return to Google and what is worse, they will click on the next result, visiting the site of one of your competitors.
We know for a fact that page speed is a ranking factor, and various studies have shown that users are more likely to make repeat visits to Web sites that load quickly.
What are the benefits of better page loading speed?
From personal experience, I can say that improving page load speed improves, over time, ranking.
Since site loading speed is one of the main ranking factors for Google, improving this aspect gives immediate benefits.
You can see how fast your web pages load, using Google’s free tool that you can find at this link:
You have been penalized by Google’s algorithm
If you do not know about Google’s algorithms and penalties, such as Panda, and how these algorithmic changes affect the traffic a website might receive from Google, you will fail to understand the dynamics of ranking and being penalized by the engine
In terms of traffic, if you do not meet the guidelines of Panda or Penguin or from any other algorithmic change, you will see your traffic drop dramatically overnight.
You can compare on Google Analytics the date your traffic with this page from Moz that shows all the dates Google has changed its ranking algorithm.
If there is a corresponding date and based on the changes, you may need to take several actions to get your traffic back.
At that point, you will need to put actions in place to resolve the Google penalty.
I was not penalized but traffic is low, why?
If your website has not been penalized by Google but is not getting traffic and you have complied with all the above suggestions, the reasons could be:
- It is still a young site (6 or 8 months old).
- You have little content.
- You have few indexed pages.
- You are not running business pages on social.
- The site is not optimized for SEO.
- There is negative SEO activity going on.
You hired the wrong SEO consultant.
Unfortunately, it also happens very often.
The web is full of “SEO companies and consultants” who promise first-page rankings in no time but actually destroy any opportunity your site has to get organic traffic with their strategies.
Conclusion
The goal of every business, big or small, is to have a well-known website that has a lot of traffic from search engines, social media, other sites etc…
If this does not happen, the impression that the entrepreneur who spends time and money on the website has is one of distrust and disillusionment in the Internet.
In reality, there are billions of users out there on search engines and social media, and even in these moments, there are thousands of users looking for information about the same products and services your business offers.
If very few are frequenting your site, you are probably doing something wrong.
You need to have a presence on the Web; the market is asking for it.
I hope reading this article will help you get a clearer picture of why your website is not getting enough traffic and how to turn it around.
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