If you’re scratching your head in confusion over why your website isn’t getting traffic, then you’re not the first, and you certainly won’t be the last to do so.

You’ve installed a plugin like Yoast, you’ve picked out keywords, and you’re blogging weekly, but when it comes to your Google Analytics, it’s flatlining. Sound familiar?

Most business owners or those responsible for building a presence online will think that building traffic is all about SEO. In reality, search engine optimization is merely the plumbing.

Traffic is a byproduct of achieving great value, distribution and user experience. When you’re missing these, you’re not going to get anywhere by backlinking. That’s not going to save the business or help it drive more traffic to your digital doors.

The Value Gap – Content Without a Soul

Content without a soul is the type of content that will go nowhere fast in garnering your website traffic.

If you’re writing a ‘what is [topic]?’ style of post that already has millions of results, then you’re already facing some stiff competition. The same goes for not adding a unique form of information, whether that’s personal experience, hot takes and new data.

Google will have no reason to rank you if you’re not providing value to the content you’re creating or if you’re being too broad with the topics you’re covering.

When you’re running a company, it’s important to promote yourself at any opportunity given. However, if your content is all about the company and various announcements specific to just the business, then customers aren’t likely to connect with you.

Customers aren’t searching for your news, they’re searching for solutions for their problems or information that they’re interested in from word-of-mouth or individuals’ curiosity. Promoting yourself too often or making it your whole reason for content is not going to drive the traffic you’re after.

Search intent is useful to get right to. You might be ranking for keywords, but are they the right ones? Ranking for ‘free tools’ when you’re actually selling a premium service is not the right type of marketing and advertising you need.

Your Website Isn’t Getting Traffic e – The ‘Invisible Brand’

When it comes to improving your digital PR and marketing efforts, your brand needs to exist and be present. At the same time, you can’t expect that just because it exists, users will find you. Great content doesn’t get found; it gets promoted, and therefore, you mustn’t be an invisible brand, especially when spending so much effort on creating said content.

The 80/20 Rule of Marketing

You should be spending around 20% of your time creating and then 80% of it distributing that content in order for it to get seen. Despite it only being 20%, that small amount spent on creating content should be detailed and high-quality, every single time.

As you begin to grow, you might find yourself having a bit more time to spend on creating content as the organic traffic starts to flow in.

Dark Social and Community

It’s useful to explore other areas of the internet, like the subreddits or LinkedIn groups, where your audience may be hanging out. The internet is, of course, a vast place digitally, so it’s helpful to explore where your brand is being mentioned and to engage with those socials and the community within them.

Email as a Traffic Driver

Your existing audience remains the best source of recurring traffic when you have their email information available to you. It should be the one you rely on to help signal to Google that your site is worth visiting.

The Technical Barriers, aka The Friction Factor

There are a number of technical barriers that cause friction with your users. Some may be obvious, while others might not be so if you’re not as proficient online as other businesses may be.

For example, if your site is taking longer than three seconds to load, nearly half of your traffic is going to bounce. If your site is hard to navigate and isn’t mobile-friendly, that can also bury your business before it’s even given the chance to thrive.

Pop-ups are also something to be conscious about, especially when it comes to how aggressively you use them. Lead magnets and cookie consent banners are what are killing your ‘time on page’ metrics and increasing those bounce rates too.

The Trust Problem

When it comes to authority, if you don’t have trust, then that authority won’t exist. You want a website that is authentic in its experience for the customer and the expertise you provide. If the site looks like it was created by AI, then it’s not going to have the same impact as writing it through human experience.

 

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The lack of social proof can also hinder your business, especially if you don’t have any reviews or provide ‘as seen in’ logos. A lack of bio for the author or any information about the company’s background will mean users switching off. 

It’s important to have mentions from sites that people actually read. So while link building is effective, the use of digital PR is equally, if not more important to have as a business strategy.

The Traffic Recovery Roadmap

To help improve your efforts in getting your website traffic, there’s a traffic recovery roadmap that is useful to follow.

Firstly, audit your content. Take away any content that might be dragging your site down, or look to improve upon it to make it more applicable. Adding a personal case study or unique data to your top five posts.

Pick one platform and commit to sharing your best hits daily for a month, and be sure to compress your images and switch to a faster host to fix speed problems.

Generating Traffic is a Social Game

You want to stop treating your website like a library and start treating it like a conversation. If you want more traffic to your website this year, then stop looking at your dashboard and begin looking at where your audience is already talking, especially about you.

What additional thoughts would you add?

Featured image by Unsplash.