7 Reasons Why You're Not Getting Blog Readers
So your website is not getting any traffic?
And you're wondering; what might be the major cause?
I got you!
In this article, l will quickly go through some of the major reasons why your website is failing to get some traffic.
It might be due to some few issues discussed in this post – thus, you need to analyse each of them to see which one applies to your blog.
The reasons includes:
Let me quickly discuss each of these in more depth.
1. Your Website Is Still Brand New
I always hear a lot of beginners saying staff like; ‘I’m doing everything right but still, lm not getting any traffic'.
Then l look at the website, only to find that the site is only 3 months old.
Look man; SEO takes time especially if your website is still brand new.
If you create a brand new website, Google isn't going to rank it right away.
Rather, the website is put into the sandbox i.e. to see if it confines with Google's terms of service.
The sandbox period can take anywhere from 6 to 12 months (8 months for most websites).
During this phase, you won't be getting any traffic to your site – thus, you should not panic if you experience this.
Rather, you should focus on producing as much content as possible – so that by the time your site gets out of the sandbox, all those articles will be matured – and they will start ranking in the near future.
2. Your Content Is Not Optimised For SEO
Another reason why your site might not be getting traffic is that, your content is not optimised for SEO.
If you're not using the right meta tags for your titles & sub-headings, your content might fail to rank – since Google uses these metrics to better understand content on the web.
Thus, you must utilise H1 tags (for titles), H2 tags (for headings), and H3 tags (for sub-headings).
That way, Google can easily understand your content and rank it accordingly.
3. Your Content Is ‘Thin'
Another reason why you might be failing to get traffic is that, your content is ‘thin'.
By this, l mean you're writing short form content – which is viewed as ‘thin' in the eyes of Google.
Rather, you should try by all means to produce long form content – since this is viewed as detailed content by Google.
Of course l don't mean writing a bunch of useless staff just to get more word count.
But l mean writing valuable content – which is helpful to your readers i.e. relevant content.
Now here's the biggest question;
How many words should l write in order to rank?
This question really depends on the type of keyword that you're trying to rank for.
For some keywords, you can write a 2000 word (or less) article – and still manage to rank for that keyword.
Whereas for some topics, you need to write giant pillar posts of 3500+ words in order to rank.
This is determined by how much your competitors have written.
And to get an idea, simply look at the top 5 articles that are currently ranking for your target keyword.
Copy and paste their articles into Word Counter – so as to check how many words each of them wrote.
This will give you a rough idea on how much you should write – since your competitors already set the pace for you.
NB: Try to write longer-detailed articles than your competitors
4. You're Targeting Highly Competitive Keywords
This is another major reason why most people fail to get traffic – since it's difficult to rank your articles for highly competitive keywords.
For example, if you try to rank for a keyword like ‘money' – you wont rank for that kw no matter how good your content is.
The reason being that, you will be competing with huge sites that have more authority on the web.
Thus, Google wont rank your small blog for that huge keyword – whilst leaving authoritative sites (it's impossible).
But if you want to rank on Google, you should try to focus on low competition keywords – which has a score of 30 or less (<15 is safe).
Also, long tail keywords works better – since there's only few sites going after those type of keywords.
For example, if you go for a long tail keyword like; ‘How to make money online as a retired granny', you can easily rank for that type of keyword – since there's very few people going after those type of keywords.
The key take away here is:
Try to go after low competition keywords since these are easier to rank for.
5. You’re Targeting Keywords Without Any Search Volume
This is one of the main reasons why most beginners fail to get traffic to their sites.
They spend time writing about staff that they're interested in, rather than producing content based on what people are searching for.
For example, if you spend time writing about your life, no body will find your content (unless if you have an existing audience on other platforms).
If you write topics like; ‘My trip to my friend's place', no body will find your content – because no one knows who you are – and it's rare for people to search for that kind of staff.
Even if you rank for that kind of keyword, you might struggle to get any traffic.
Thus, before writing anything, you should ensure that your target keyword has some decent search volume – so that you wont waste time on unworthy topics.
6. Your Site Has Poor Load Speed
As we all know, speed is one of the ranking factors used by Google to determine SERP positions.
Sites with great speeds tends to rank higher than those with poor load speeds.
The reason being that, if a site takes longer to load, visitors will click away – thus, indicating that your site has some bad user experience.
And if your site receives a lot of bounce backs, Google will notice that your site has bad UE – thus, it will lower your rankings.
Thus, you should ensure that your site has good load speeds i.e. less than 3s for mobile is great (although it's difficult lol)
And just to give you a quick tip; images are the ones which constitutes a bigger % on the total file size of your pages.
Thus, try by all means to compress them with a tool like Short Pixels before you upload them.
Also, you should avoid installing unnecessary plugins on your site – since these also makes your site heavy.
NB: Use tools like GT Metrix or WebPageTest to measure the speed of your site.
7. No Internal Linking
Last but not least, we have the issue of interlinking.
The reason why this is crucial is because it helps to pass the link juice amongst all of your pages.
It also helps to boost Page Authority – which is also another ranking metric used by Google.
You should try to interlink related articles where possible – since this helps a lot in terms of rankings.
It shows Google which pages are more important on your site – thus, allowing Google to rank those pages higher.
Wrapping Up
In a nutshell, these are some of the main reasons why you might be failing to get traffic to your blog.
Of course, there's many other factors that may cause your site to lose traffic, but l feel like these are the major ones.
It's now your turn to analyse each of these factors in relation to your site – to see which ones applies to your site – and hopefully, take corrective measures where possible.
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