Are you among those people who have given their best but are not getting enough traffic? Perhaps, we can do something about it as you might have missed some SEO best practices or need to start a few. In this article, we will try to understand the reasons behind meager visitors on your website or blog and see how to fix it. We will explore the probable causes and see how to solve them quickly to get more traffic with time tested methods. Dive in deeper to learn more.
Common Mistakes Made By Websites around the Globe
Getting traffic requires us to cope up with the fast-paced SEO world. However, there are two things that are the primary drivers of results: Common sense and serving Google’s clients. You need to understand that SEO works based on common sense. If someone recommends you, it signals the search engine that you are trustworthy. But, there is a difference between being approved by the president of the United States and a freshman at your university. That’s where domain authority (DA) kicks in.
Similarly, we aren’t the real customers of Google. Visitors are. Therefore, if your website has enough search value, and, if Google can analyze it easily, you will rank better. Below is a list of the common mistakes you need to avoid:
- You don’t have an XML site map.
- You are not targeting relevant keywords, or you are targeting very tough ones.
- Your website doesn’t have a blog.
- You aren’t optimizing your site through Google Search Console.
- Your site is lacking enough backlinks.
- You are gaining backlinks faster than you should.
- Your site structure is not friendly to crawlers.
- The categories and tags in your blog section are improperly used.
- Your loading speed is above the three-second bar.
- You lack mobile optimization.
- You haven’t entered meta descriptions and Alt tags.
- Your UX is not attractive enough or causes a higher rebound rate.
- Your promotion plan isn’t suitable or doesn’t exist.
- You are building spammy or, too many, low-quality backlinks.
- Your website is lacking enough images/videos.
- Your landing pages aren’t structured properly.
These are some of the most common mistakes made in the digital universe, and now we will learn how to fix them.
Refine your site structure:
First build a proper robots exclusion standard/protocol to make crawling easy for Google spiders. This will help the search engines in understanding which pages are meant to be publicly available and which aren’t. If your site has duplicate content on different pages, tweak them to make them 100% plagiarism-free. Under using or misusing keywords is a prominent reason behind low traffic. Try to include them in your page names, in the file names, and throughout your content. I recommend you use LSI keywords for better visibility.
Include powerful CTRs and focus on curating simple sitelinks for smooth navigation. Even URLs play a vital role in defining the ease of navigation for both visitors and search engines. A logical hierarchy with up to seven categories forms the foundation of a sound structure. Also, try to keep the number of subcategories equal in all sections for streamlining the UX. I have also read that CSS/HTML is better for creating site navigation as compared to other options. Internal linking is highly appreciable, while outbound links to non-existent pages are equally unwanted. Linking internally will boost your credibility as it acts as a signal of your grip over a particular subject.
Optimize Your Site’s Loading Speed and Make It Mobile-Friendly
Speed is one of the most influential factors in 2020. As per a survey, visitors expect a load time of less than 2 seconds, or else they will abandon a site. Load time is also a direct ranking factors, so you need to keep it in the ideal range. You can check out yours here to filter out and resolve issues. I also find that making websites mobile-friendly is a top priority because mobile traffic constitutes at least half of total web traffic right since 2017. You can check here to see if your web page is optimized for mobile devices and mobile-based visitors.
I think that both of these things require a little effort, but ignoring them is wasted opportunity. Optimization is one of the basic requirements of maintaining online presence, especially with the advances in internet connectivity.
Up Your Blogging Game
First of all, if you don’t have a blog on your website, add one quickly because a blog can increase ROI by a staggering 13 times. Also, you need to post at least eleven or more blogs every month to get a nice boost. One thing most people tend to overlook is title building. If you too struggle with the selection game, you can go to keywordin or soovle. They are among the best free resources for fresh ideas.
Publishing long-form posts (ideally above 1600+ words) should be on your target list along with adding share triggers in the content body. All of these tactics, when combined with high CTR, bring a significant improvement in your SERP standing. Many smart bloggers also syndicate their content on platforms like Medium to get extra juice without any additional effort. Link building through guest posting is another timeless SEO hack that provides reliable support to your website.
All in all, blogging is one of the best ways to build organic engagement that stays with you for a longer time. Go for it as early as possible to rank ahead of your competition.
Hit the Promotion Game
Are you investing enough time and resources in promoting your websites or just going for paid advertisements during a dry spell? If the answer is no, you definitely need to play the promotion game right away. There are many channels available on the internet apart from guest posting. Creating social media handles and adding content is an effective way of accessing diverse audiences. LinkedIn serves as one of the most important social networking sites to bring in business opportunities. Companies active in providing business solutions like payroll software, CRMs, or inventory management systems can access LinkedIn’s audience which is far more relevant as compared to other platforms.
On the other hand, Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Snapchat are also popular options to drive engagement. I suggest using automation software like HubSpot because scheduling, managing, and monitoring large scale promotion campaigns is difficult to do without automation.
Enrich Your UX
They don’t say “don’t judge a book by its cover” for no reason. People judge you based on first impression and the same logic applies to your website. User Experience (UX) is a product of overall appearance, graphics, loading speed, content, ease of navigation, and ability to display desired items. Try to make it user-centric by adding value propositions. Chatbots can also be useful. They can help your visitors find suitable products/services, fetch contact details, and even answer FAQs independently. Thus, enriching the UX is instrumental in engaging inbound traffic and failing to do will result in much wasted effort.
Pro Tip: Do you know that Niel Patel recommends publishing an ebook to get search traffic. He mentions that you can expect anywhere between 300 to 3700 visitors per month if you find a spot in the top 100 ebooks along with the right CTAs.
Use Your Email List in the Right Way
Are you one of those folks who don’t go along with email marketing?
Once someone visits your website after clicking on an article or advertisement, they are officially interested in whatever you are offering. After obtaining their contact information, which in most cases is their email address, don’t abandon them. They are real prospects and you have already invested in acquiring them. To not follow up is the biggest yet most common blunder committed online. Even if you don’t know what you are going to pitch your visitors in the future, make it a point to collect email ids. Email marketing tools like mailchimp can prove to be game-changers because email continues to outperform social media platforms. As far as customer acquisition is concerned, they are 40x more effective than Facebook and Twitter.
Go for podcasting, video marketing, and multilingual SEO
Podcasts are considered the reincarnation of the radio era and using them is a smart tactic. The growing audience of audio content listeners can fuel your online image with more respect and credibility.
Every marketer seems obsessed with video marketing and rightly so since 87% of video marketing professionals witnessed an increase in their web traffic. You might think of approaching video and audio separately, but I believe that combining them will compound your results. People want to consume the same information in different formats and expanding your presence for a few extra bucks is worth it.
One thing many businesses find difficult is using the right language for an international audience. Did you know that Baseball gloves used in the US are imported from India, a market where nobody fancies this American sport. If any business owner sitting in India wants to approach American clients, they will require multilingual SEO so that the search engines can show relevant results across geo-linguistic barriers.
Wrapping Up
This post has focused on the main reasons you may not be receiving more visitors. While a lot of these reasons are related to the technicalities of your site, the strategic portions are going to rule the latter phases of churning more viewership. You can fix most of the problems fairly quickly, but you will have to devise a long-term strategy for staying on the top of your game. I hope that you find this checklist handy for easily getting more traffic for your website.
