If you’re a plumber, food blogger, or any business owner, you may be wondering – why is my website not getting any traffic?
It is an honest concern. Your website is your digital destination for business. Knowing that there is a healthy and growing amount of people visiting your website can guarantee long-term business for your company. This goes whether you’re trying to earn more loyal customers, generate ad traffic, or both!
We are diving into exactly what you need to know about web traffic. With this guide, you can discover reasons why you are not getting traffic to your website the way you should (and how to solve major problems before it’s too late!)
What does website traffic mean?
Simply put – web traffic is the number of people who visit your site.
Think of your website as a storefront, but online. The number of people who enter your business and shop correlates with how many sales your business potentially makes. The same goes for your website, except these potential customers are visiting your website.
Each time a person clicks on your website counts as a visit. These visits – whether on a daily, monthly, or quarterly basis – tell you how much web traffic you are receiving.
There are a few other metrics that measure web traffic. Two strategic ones to keep an eye out for are page views and user sessions. Pageviews indicate how many views each of your pages receive and sessions highlight how long visitors spend on your site. The longer, the more interested!
So, how do you track these website metrics? The simplest way is through Google Analytics. This tool is free and provides you with a comprehensive dashboard of your website metrics.
Relationship between web content and traffic
Knowing the relationship between web content and traffic can help you discover why your website is not getting traffic.
There is a strong relationship between web content and traffic. That’s because your web traffic relies heavily on value. What does that exactly mean?
A valuable website provides users with the information they need in a clear and informative way. This value is – of course – unique to your business. That’s why it is vital you do competitor research. Nonetheless, there are a few key approaches to web content that can help you create a traffic-heavy site.
Content Strategy Matters
Having a concrete content strategy is an important aspect of driving more traffic to your website. A website content strategy is a concrete plan that identifies your goals for your site and how to successfully reach your target audience. Ask yourself – what is it you specifically want to achieve with your website?
Clearly defining your goals and executing them can help create a site with the most value for the customers you are looking for. This will require creating ideal target personas, doing in-depth research on your competition, and mapping out where you want content to exist on your website.
As a business owner, doing this legwork can sound demanding. Fortunately, there are professional branding and marketing agencies that can help you create a potent content strategy that helps you go from no traffic to all the traffic.
Create a User-Centric Site Map
Another important aspect of valuable web content is navigation. To get straight to the point – no user wants to work too hard to find something on your site. If they have to, then they’re most likely to leave.
Making your website intuitive to explore all starts with your site map. This starts with your landing page, which is the first place most visitors will see first. Ensuring that it is easy for users to find what they’re looking for is the priority. This, of course, varies from site to site.
To give a simple example – if you’re a restaurant, then your menus, hours, and location should be easy to find. Or, if you’re an e-commerce store, your lookbook, top-selling items, and shopping cart should be clear in your menu.
Fresh Content Attracts More Site Traffic
Old or out-of-date information isn’t useful to anyone. That’s why you want to keep your website content fresh! This means regularly updating your site with new and relevant content.
This can be done in a variety of ways, from updating images to conducting site audits often to ensure site efficiency. Some websites also maintain a blog, so that new relevant content is added to their site regularly.
5 Key Ways to Generate More Site Traffic
One way to answer “why is my website not getting any traffic?” is to consider key content marketing strategies at the core of fostering web traffic. By implementing these 5 effective strategies, you can grow your web traffic substantially.
Organic SEO
A strong pillar of a healthy website, an SEO strategy is essential for driving web traffic across the board. Organic SEO – in particular – is arguably the best (free) asset to your website. This strategy helps your site rank on Google and other search engines’ results. Therefore, a strong organic SEO strategy makes your site more visible to users.
Currently, organic search drives 53.3% of web traffic. In other words, over 50% of your audience will be guided by their inquiries on search engines.
Implementing the best organic SEO practices will help keep you from missing out on 50% of your potential website visitors. With a well-planned organic SEO strategy, search engines will have what they need to identify, index, and rank your site, allowing it to show up in users’ relevant searches.
Lastly, if you’re looking to attract local customers, don’t overlook having an organic local SEO strategy. As you may notice, Google often organizes search results by location. By implementing a local SEO strategy, you can focus on ranking in search results of those in your area.
PPC (Pay-Per-Click Marketing)
This online advertising avenue works just as it sounds. Pay-per-click marketing (PPC) is a paid advertising option that search engines offer to websites. They will promote your site by placing it at the top of the search results in return for a fee for each click a user makes on your site.
Now, this may seem like it can get costly. Yet, the bonus of PPC is its lead conversion value. The $2 you may pay per click could result in a $200 purchase through your site.
The cost will depend on the PPC campaign you create, which will be unique to your needs. Luckily, search engine advertising simplifies this into a budget-friendly process. Google Ads, the most popular PPC marketing platform, allows you to structure your campaign with your budget, something you can adjust and play with over time.
Social Media Marketing
Boosting traffic for your website relies a lot on exposure. And, what better way to lead people to your site than with social media.
Now more than ever, social media is driving commerce. Users can explore and even shop for anything through their social profiles. This means you have only opportunities to showcase your brand and drive users to explore more by visiting your website.
Creating a comprehensive social media marketing strategy, with a focus on driving traffic to your site, can reap immense rewards. No matter what your social media approach is, always make sure that your website is easily accessible from all your social platforms. Just like your website, your social profiles need to be easy to navigate too.
Email Marketing
If you’re looking for a secret web traffic weapon, then email marketing is it. This form of marketing may have been around for a while. But, it has not lost its potency whatsoever. Email marketing has only become a larger powerhouse for web traffic and lead conversion.
Now, you don’t have to be a whiz at email marketing to capitalize on it (although hiring a professional agency is never a terrible idea.)
The first step is to focus on your audience. Building a list takes time, but as long as you keep your audience organized, you can make sure you’re sending the right emails to the right users.
Next, create an attractive email design with links to your website that can attract subscribers to click through your site. Each click means more traffic! Even better, email marketing is very mobile-friendly. With users accessing content mostly on their mobile devices, a successful email marketing strategy can get your site more visits from users on the go.
Public Relations
PR has been around since the dawn of time (or so it seems.) And, it’s not going anywhere. Getting the positive word out about your business through press releases and publications can garner lots of interest, especially if it’s online. With everyone operating digitally, positive articles, press releases, and other publications can easily bring more attention to your website.
To gain more interest in your site, consider reaching out to journalists with story pitches. By researching industry publications and local magazines, you can find journalists who may be eager to share your story.
6 Main Reasons You’re Not Getting Any Website Traffic
Your Website Has Technical Issues
Let’s make it clear – no one likes a glitchy site. If your website has technical issues, you need to fix them fast. There are a few types of technical issues, from slow page speeds to broken links.
A website with slow page speeds is bound to see less traffic. Roughly 70% of consumers say that page load time affects their willingness to buy from an online retailer. This means that – if your site has slow load speeds – you’re risking over ⅔ of your traffic..
Another technical problem that slows web traffic is if your pages are not crawled or indexed by Google (and other search engines.) This prohibits your site from being ranked accordingly on search results, meaning that your site is not reaching even those who search explicitly for it.
One of the most common tech issues with ranking websites is the “Indexed, though blocked by Robots.txt” notice. Your robots.txt file provides instructions to Google on how to recognize your website. If you face an “Indexed, though blocked by Robots.txt” notice about one of your pages, your file may be blocking Google from indexing a page for your site.
To fix and prevent this notice, be sure you proactively check your web pages. This is the only way to tackle any issues before they go too long and keep traffic from your site.
Your Website Is Offering Low-Quality Content
A great website offers value to customers. This value shines through your content.
That said, your content should be up-to-date, attractive, and reflective of your business. This means having original content, high-resolution images, and site map organization. If you’re missing any or all of this, Google will take note. How? Your visitors’ response will tell them.
Google tracks visitor behavior. If they notice that the page users clicked in their search wasn’t helpful, Google takes note. This is how your site can be labeled as ‘low quality.’
This, of course, needs to be avoided at all costs. So, do preventative maintenance for your site, aka making sure that your content is new, relevant, and not slowing your site down.
You Are Not Incorporating SEO
As mentioned earlier, SEO is a significant part of website traffic. It is what helps Google and other search engines identify what your website offers so that they can adequately align it with relevant searches.
To check your site’s search performance, simply look up your site on Google. If your site is nowhere to be found (or on the 10th page,) then you know there’s work to be done.
SEO is very critical because search engines are responsible for over half of organic website traffic. If your website does not have an organic SEO strategy, you’re more likely to miss out on more than half of your traffic potential.
Lack of Keyword Targeting
Keywords are a big part of SEO, both paid and organic. They act as golden nuggets for your site – each keyword helps Google concisely identify your pages’ content and present it in the right search results.
Oftentimes, businesses do not conduct detailed keyword research and/or use too many keywords (something called ‘keyword stuffing.’) This can result in using general keywords that are not targeted enough for search engines to understand your content. This means your content will not reach your target audience.
Remember, don’t go for keywords with the most volume – aim for keywords that correspond with your content the most. It’s your keywords that will tell Google and search engines how to rank your website and match it with the proper search inquiries.
This matters as well for paid content marketing, where keyword targeting is central to your advertising campaign. As mentioned earlier, PPC advertising is a fantastic paid marketing avenue that bolsters website traffic. If you’re leveraging online ads, but not seeing much return on your dollars spent, the issue may lie in your keyword targeting.
Make sure that the keywords you are using are specific and niche to your business and the website page you are promoting. Opting for larger volume keywords may seem like they’ll allow you to reach a bigger audience. But, you’re more likely to get lost in the crowd. By identifying specific keywords to implement in your ads, you can reach precise groups of people who are looking for businesses like yours.
Lack of Content Optimization (On page)
Have you optimized your content pages on your site? If not, this could be a reason why your website is not getting traffic.
Content optimization has to do with two main factors: SEO and the User Experience (UX,) which go hand in hand.
On the organic SEO side of things, on-page SEO is essential for Google and other search engines to know what your site is about. This is the foremost way for them to promote your site to users making relevant searches.
If the pages on your site are not well-optimized, chances are that Google will not adequately grasp what your content is about. This can cause your site to miss numerous free leads. And, no one wants that!
So, how do you achieve effective content optimization? A few ways.
Quality Content Matters
First, the quality of your content matters. Making sure your content is well written and organized makes a solid impression on users. Plus, when users like your content, Google responds by pushing your website more.
While organizing your content, categorize your copy with clear headings that include your primary keywords. Also, remember to integrate internal links. This will influence users to explore more of your website, increasing your overall user sessions.
Quality content goes for your images, as well. This means adding alt tags with keywords to your images. This will tell Google what the image is about. In addition, you must ensure that your images are high-resolution and not too big of a file. Low-res images deter site visitors and images that are too large create slower page speeds (which can lead to a decrease in site traffic.)
Don’t Overlook Your Meta Descriptions and URLs
Optimizing your meta descriptions and URLs does make a difference. Your meta description is the short description of your page that users will see in their search results. Having an attractive meta-description fit with keywords, can attract more interest in your site pages and therefore more traffic to your site. URLs work similarly but are much briefer. You want to confirm that all your page URLs reflect the content they show, making them easy to recognize and remember.
Lack of Backlinks
Backlinks (or inbound links) are another key aspect of content optimization. These little tools can make a difference in getting traffic to your website. That’s because backlinks are part of Google’s website ranking protocol, just like keywords and internal links.
Backlinks are when a website links back to your site. That is why these links are pivotal for traffic – they allow users to travel from one site to another, without making a keyword-driven search.
Fortunately, there are convenient ways to check your website’s backlinks.
Tools like Google Search Console and SEMRush allow you to monitor your backlinks. This is very critical, as you will also want to remove any backlinks you may have from spam websites. Yes, these do exist.
If your website doesn’t have many or any backlinks at all, this could be a cause of why you are not getting traffic to your website. Thankfully, there are strategic ways to grow your backlinks.
One elementary way to do so is through your network. If your business is part of any associations, organizations, or committees, make sure their sites have links to your website. This could give you multiple healthy backlinks quickly. Also, leveraging a PR strategy can help as well. More positive articles on your company, the better!
Your Website Offers a Bad User Experience
First impressions are everything on a website. If your site is immediately confusing to users, they will abandon it in search of a more approachable site.
This is when User Experience (UX) design comes in, a design approach that focuses on the accessibility of your site to all users. One core element of UX design is making important information easy to find whether that info is your store hours or size guide. This is exceptionally critical for your website’s success.
The basics of UX design are easy to implement on your own. But, to harness this design approach, working with a UX designer or a branding agency can guarantee that your website is user-accessible (and stays that way.)
Your Website is Not Mobile Friendly
In this day and age, everyone is on their smartphones. It’s no wonder mobile devices count for over half of web traffic as of 2021.
If your website is not optimized for mobile, it could be a definite reason why you are not getting traffic to your site. A website that isn’t mobile-friendly is difficult to navigate. Content is hard to read or see and, above all, page loading times are much longer. These things discourage users to stay on a site, causing them to go elsewhere.
Your Website Does Not Have a Social Media Presence
One of the most potent ways for users to discover a business is through social media. It is a tool of brand authority and legitimacy. If you lack a social media presence, you lack a channel to millions of people. We aren’t joking – as of October 2021, 4.5 billion people use social media.
It is clear that we are in the age of social media, and we will be for a long time. Therefore, you should consider having a unique social media strategy. No matter your social media agenda, both your website and social media accounts should have a reflexive relationship – your social media directs to your website and your website highlights your social media platforms.
Time to Bring the Traffic
Your business may be spectacular. But, if you’re missing the core elements to attract web traffic, you will not see website success. Discovering precisely why your website gets no traffic is the start of turning the ship around. With the right website practices, you will be seeing your site visits skyrocket in no time.