5 Reasons Why Your Blog Gets No (or Low) Traffic

blog gets no traffic

Do you know the most sensational word in online marketing?

It’s traffic.

You must have heard a lot of gurus and pundits telling you various tricks and hacks for how to generate traffic to your blog.

But the problem occurs when none of those hacks work for you. There are no shortcuts!  And your frustration goes up when you don’t know the reason why your blog isn’t generating traffic.

So in this post, I’ll tell you 5 common reasons why your blog gets no (or low) traffic.

Let’s see…

#1. You have just started

How many times have you seen a blog eventually come up and become popular everywhere?

Not even once. Right?

All the big blogs you religiously follow have taken years to reach the point where they are today.

Like all great things in life, your blog also needs time to grow. If you have just started a few weeks – or even months – ago, you can’t expect big spikes in your Google Analytics account. Not yet anyway.

 

Solution: Be consistent. Publish high-quality content regularly, and up your blogging game by implementing legit and proven growth techniques.

#2. You have no promotion strategy

Let me tell you the bitter truth.

Writing great articles won’t get you traffic. You also have to promote your content.

Even if you write the greatest article in history, it’ll go unread if you don’t put it in front of people.

Recall the last post you read and tell me how you found it?

You probably found it on your social media timeline, or you got an email, or maybe your friend sent you a link.

Now imagine if that writer would not have promoted his content. Would you have ever found it?

 

Solution: Create a blog post promotion checklist and do everything possible to get your article in front of as many people as possible.  I used LinkedIn Groups to kick start my traffic.

#3. You’re writing for a small audience

Maybe you have been writing for a long time and you still don’t get any significant traffic. You’re publishing high-quality articles and extensively promoting them, but no one reads them (except your mom and a few unemployed friends).

Well if that’s the case, there’s a possibility that you have chosen the wrong niche. The people you are promoting to don’t want to read about the topic you’re writing about.

It’s not a coincidence that you wouldn’t see a popular blog about retirement or weddings, but a lot of famous blogs about marketing and social media.

 

Solution: Switch your topic. Or at least expand your niche coverage. For instance, if your blog is about weddings, write about topics like “relationships after marriage,” “family planning,” and more.

#4. You’re not building an email list

You must have noticed this. Every time a popular blog publishes a new post, it gets shared hundreds (or even thousands) of times on the internet in just a few hours.

So how does it happen? Do they have a magic wand?

Luckily not.

They shoot an email to all their subscribers about the new post. And since many of their subscribers read and share their articles, they get the initial traction easily.

If you have an email list, you don’t have to search for an audience for your new post every time from scratch.  I recommend installing the app from Sumo.  It’s free and works wonders.

 

Solution: Build up your email list. How do you build an email list? Offer something valuable to your readers for free in exchange for their email address.  Install Sumo.

#5. You ignore SEO

Let me ask you a question.

What do you do when you need to find something on the Internet? You open a search engine – most probably Google – and type your query. You get results, you click a few of them and read.

Right?

Well, millions of others do the same thing every single day.

Now imagine if you could rank for a term that has a search volume of 1,000 per month and you stay there for a month.

That’s around 30,000 new visitors for you.

Most bloggers do not optimize their blog for search engines. They think it’s highly complicated and isn’t worth the effort. That’s a huge mistake.

 

Solution: Optimize your pages for search engines and earn quality back links as well.  Check out SEO for beginners.

What Next?

If you’re not able to generate traffic to your blog, now is the time to investigate. Figure out what you’re doing wrong.

Are you not promoting your articles? Or have you chosen the wrong niche? Or maybe some other reason.

Whatever it is, let me know in the comment box.

On Page SEO

What is On Page SEO and Off Page SEO?

Businesses can no longer rely on simply putting up a website. Rather, they have to put in the work to build a real web presence. This web presence depends on SEO and various measures in order to attract visitors and outrank competitors. That’s why both on page SEO and off page SEO are becoming a bigger and bigger deal each day for companies large and small.

 

What’s The Difference between On Page SEO and Off Page SEO?

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, utilizes multiple different tactics to help search engines like Google index a website and show it in relevant search engine result pages (SERPs).

 

Organic traffic is what results from good SEO. This is traffic that comes from visitors finding your website in a search result and end up clicking through to it. Both on-page and off-page SEO are important to garner organic traffic.

 

To put it simply, on page SEO includes manipulations made directly to your site’s web pages. That might mean producing quality content, structuring it in a specific way, and optimizing the site’s HTML code.

 

Off page SEO, on the other hand, includes backlink building, social signals, and link relevancy among countless other methods.

 

The main difference is that a business has full control over their on page SEO, but little control over their off page SEO. Off page SEO generally relies on the behavior of others. What blogs are choosing to link to your website? How many people are liking and sharing your business’ posts?

 

At the end of the day, influencing both on-page and off page SEO is critical to rank your website properly.

 

What is On Page SEO?

 

A search engine will consider multiple characteristics when ranking a web page.

 

Page Quality

Search engines will consider how users behave on a page when determining its ranking. Do they bounce (instantly click back)? Do they scroll? How long do they stay? Having engaging content will make search engines think of your content as being higher quality.

 

Keywords

Ultimately, a keyword is what’s going to help a search engine figure out what SERPs are appropriate to show your website in. Using keywords appropriately is therefore very important. However, “keyword stuffing” is no longer effective.

 

Relevant keywords should be incorporated very naturally into your content. It should also offer real value to readers (refer back to page quality).

 

Relevancy

You should always be monitoring your site for freshness and ensure that the content, pictures, and videos are still relevant and providing value. They should be relevant to the keywords you are looking to rank for and also the times. If it’s March and you’re still advertising a Christmas sale on your homepage, that’s bad news.

 

Page Structure

When it comes to on page SEO, HTML tags are the most frequently over-looked factor since they aren’t directly visible to a human who is viewing your website. However, search engines will detect them.

 

You’ll make the search engine crawler’s job easier if you include optimized HTML code on your pages that include keywords and information to indicate what the content is about. Alt text for images, title tags, and a meta description are among the most important. Header tags are also important.

 

Do bear in mind that your title tag and meta description will be seen by users on the search engine results page. So, keep it clear, concise, and compelling to rank well and get clicks.

 

URL Structure

It will be much easier for a search engine to crawl your website, moving from one page to another without skipping any, if you have an organized URL structure. On the other hand, a disorganized URL structure can cause the crawler to hit roadblocks or lead them in circles.

 

Your URLs should also be organized to make navigation more efficient for human visitors to your site. Your URLs should contain keywords and they should reflect what pages they lead to. URLs should be organized with human visitors in mind. These URLs that are clean and clear are also more inviting to visitors to click.

 

Internal Linking

Internal links are links going from one page on your site to another page on your site, and they do play a role in your on page SEO. It makes it easier for a crawler to navigate your site and index pages, and it also helps encourage human visitors to stick around and keep reading.

 

Page Performance

On top of paying close attention to the quality of the content you are producing, you also need to consider the performance of your web page.

 

Do your web pages take a long time to load? You probably need to optimize your images by shrinking files to the appropriate size. You should also be sure that your entire website is responsive because a slow website will lead to most visitors leaving quickly (bouncing). That’s a factor search engines will give a lot of weight to.

SEO Monitor

 

What is Off-Page SEO?

 

Several off-page SEO aspects will affect your site’s ranking.

 

Backlinks

Backlinks are, by far, the most important ranking factor when it comes to off page SEO. They have the biggest impact on your site’s ranking, and, luckily, they are somewhat under your control.

 

A backlink is what occurs where another website has linked to your website. When a trusted, top-ranking website links to your site, that gives your SEO a huge authority boost that search engines love. For instance, if you could get a Forbes article to link to your website, you’d see very positive results from that.

 

Basically, search engines see backlinks as a sort of endorsement of your website’s content. Oftentimes, smaller websites will end up backlinking your content organically (i.e., without you putting in any effort other than producing good content). Small, high-quality websites and blogs that link to your site can also have a good boost on your SEO.

 

However, you can also take backlinks into your own hands by:

●       Linking your social media profiles to your website

●       Writing guest blogs for industry-related websites

●       Joining review and directory platforms

●       Reaching out to bloggers and web influencers

 

Domain Authority

This off page SEO factor is less under your control, but it basically is how search engines decide how much to trust your site. The age of your domain name, the history of your domain name, and the amount of referring domains you have are big factors.

 

Summary

As you can see, there are many factors that affect on page SEO and the amount of organic traffic your website is receiving.  Don’t post it and forget it!  SEO requires constant monitoring of your traffic, rankings, competition, and keywords.