Whether you’ve had a website representing your business for some time or you’ve recently started one, there are concerns over how much traffic it may generate, at one point or another. There can be many reasons for not getting traffic to your website; however, some problems prevent a site from attracting a sufficient number of visitors who visit more frequently than others. Fortunately, these problems can be prevented and/or fixed, either by using the help of professionals or by finding out more details about the steps you may need to take.
Why Is Your Organic Website Traffic Not Growing?
There could be thousands of causes why your organic traffic may not be growing. However, in most cases, such issues can be identified by assessing the following five points.
1. SEO issues
Search engine optimization refers to efforts that make it easier for people to access your website through search engines systematically. For example, does your website rank on the front page of Google when people search for words and keywords related to your business? Investing resources and time in a quality SEO strategy for your website will definitely improve your ranking, thus positively affecting your website traffic.
If it’s that simple – why do people make mistakes with SEO? The answer is also quite simple. Search engine optimization is time-consuming and complex. Furthermore, search engines like Google constantly change and evolve SEO terms and parameters, so maintaining them all can prove challenging.
But if you’re wondering why your website is not getting the traffic you think it justifies, SEO is one of the first things to do. It includes the optimization for relevant keywords and the content and backend components of your website.
2. Speed Issue
You can have the most attractive website globally, but visitors will run out instantly if it takes a long time to load. It is found that bounce rates can go up to 38% if a website takes more than 5 seconds to load!
Remember that Internet users want quick answers – if they have to wait to visit your website, they will look elsewhere. Moreover, the chances of them returning are very lank.
Slow page speeds not only affect bounce rates – it’s actually an important ranking factor as well. Since 2018, page speed has been the ranking factor for both desktop and mobile devices to enhance the user experience.
There are several ways to check your website’s page speed. First, you can go through page speed Insights. Then, enter your URL to get your page speed results. If a page is taking more than three seconds to load, consider assessing the following areas:
- Images: Are they optimized?
- Device: Is your website slow on both devices or mobile-only?
- Plugins: Do you have any unnecessary plugins or animations that take forever to load?
- Formatting: Does a page speed expert write your coding?
3. Targeting issues
It’s a prevalent mistake and one of the most important reasons a website is not getting enough traffic.
Consider these two factors:
#1- Only ten positions are available on the first page of SERPs for each keyword. Search engines are trying to display pages from trusted websites in places that meet their ranking criteria. If you have a new website or even a full-fledged website but is less trustworthy than others, your pages will not be rank in the front pages (if you are targeting the exact keywords).
#2 – Competition is very high for all popular keywords, so it will be challenging to achieve a good ranking if you target only popular keywords. So, how can you drive traffic?
The answer lies in the long tail. Therefore, while using the Google Keyword Tool to do your keyword research, you should aim for low-competition, long-tail keywords.
4. UX Issues:
Common glitches like slow loading speeds, error pages, and unresponsive features can lead to high bounce rates and, in turn, low rankings on search engine result pages (SERPs). Glitches leave a sour taste in visitors’ mouths and reduce their chances of returning to the website.
User Experience (UX) breaks or makes website traffic. It takes only 1/20th part of a second for a customer to decide whether or not they enjoy a website. Therefore, if customers experience a glitch, they may assume that the company does not care about providing quality service.
On the other hand, UX can improve your potential traffic. For example, roughly 23% of visitors who have a positive UX tell ten or more people about it.
To avoid errors, be sure to perform regular tests on your web pages and check for problems like HTML issues, 404 errors, and loading speed. Tools like Google Webmaster can be used to monitor the health of your website. Additionally, Google Analytics can be used to identify poorly performing pages that are indicating a glitch.
5. Promoting Issues
We all know that our blog posts cannot live without high-quality content. If you consistently create a blog post every week, there is a perfect chance that you’ll generate a good flow of organic traffic.
However, nothing is guaranteed in the blogging era. It means a blogger who has little or no authority, who publishes blog posts with little or no publicity in hopes of driving traffic from unknown sources.
It’s like you just hit the publish button and pray that someone will read it without knowing how to find your blog post.
But the point is, no matter how great your content is, if you don’t have any brand authority, no one will find it in search engines or newsfeeds. So you have to promote your content aggressively.
Have you ever heard about the 80/20 rule? Well, this applies to content marketing as well. Spend 80% on promotion, 20% on creation.
But how do you promote content? Well, there is more than 1 way to do it, and there’s more to it than just sharing it on social media.
The best way to promote your content is with a little bit of influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is where you leverage the reach or audience of an industry influencer to gain some exposure for yourself. That’s why this content is perfect for promotion.
Conclusion
There are no shortcuts to increase your website traffic. If you want to get more search engine visibility, you have to put in a lot of time and effort. Don’t take shortcuts through sketchy strategies, or you could suffer the negative consequences of poor search rankings and lost traffic.
Stay informed about the latest updates and best practices to increase your online visibility and grow your business. Make sure you have an SEO plan in place for your website to appear above in search results. If you haven’t, our specialized team at Zytal can help set you on the right track.