Wondering why your blog is not getting traffic?
This article is going to cover the top 3 reasons that so many blogs don’t ever get the traffic they want. And if you can fix one (or ideally, all) of these problems, your blog traffic will start increasing before you know it.
I’m going to show you how, so hang in there with me!
IS BLOG TRAFFIC IMPORTANT?
First things first: is there really any reason to be concerned about blog traffic?
Yes and no.
Blog traffic in itself is not a TRUE indicator of blogging success. You can have a lot of blog traffic and still have…
Zero income.
Zero loyal followers.
Zero positive impact.
I’m not saying this to be negative, but it’s important to recognize that blog traffic (in itself) isn’t everything.
The only thing that truly matters is quality, targeted, blog traffic.
Drawing in people that actually want and need what you’re offering or recommending through your blog.
That’s how you convert meaningless blog ‘traffic’ into meaningful impact and income.
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WHY YOUR BLOG IS NOT GETTING TRAFFIC
Now we know: all blog traffic is not created equal. But, getting the right kind of traffic to your blog does have immense value!
So, let’s talk about why your blog is not getting the traffic you want, and what you can do to change that.
REASON ONE: YOU AREN’T WRITING CONTENT PEOPLE ARE ACTUALLY SEARCHING FOR
This is one of the biggest problems that I see in the blogging world, and it’s one of the hardest realities to accept.
Someone starts a blog.
They write about their life, family, cats, and all sorts of broad topics that are interesting to them, but not necessarily helpful to their audience.
They eventually get discouraged because their traffic isn’t growing, their audience isn’t growing, and they aren’t making any money.
If this sounds like you, then I’ve got some tough love coming your way: Your blog isn’t going to gain any traction or traffic.
And here’s why. You are writing for yourself and not for your well-defined target reader.
If you don’t have a targeted audience and a niche focus for your blog, then you are facing major roadblocks in traffic growth.
And if you DO have a targeted audience, but you aren’t writing about things they are actively looking for online, then they aren’t going to have any reason to visit your site.
In fact, they probably won’t even know your site exists. And that’s exactly what we need to change!
WHAT BRINGS PEOPLE TO A BLOG ANYWAY?
A person is looking for something online. They have a question, an interest, a goal in mind. They type something into a search engine or go browsing on Pinterest looking for their solution.
When they type their query into a search engine, the most relevant and authoritative results are going to pop up first.
This is how people find your website and this is how you grow your traffic. In order to make this happen, you need to do these three things:
1. Write about things people are actively looking for.
2. Optimize your content so people can find you.
3. Build up your authority in search engines/online platforms.
We’ll touch on all of these important topics in this article, so keep them in mind!
Key point: If your blog is not getting traffic, it might be because you are not publishing content that your target audience is actively searching for.
How can you figure out what your audience is actively searching for online? Here are a couple ideas!
USE GOOGLE TRENDS
Google Trends is a free tool that shows you trending search results over time. You can type any keyword or keywords phrase into the search bar and it’ll show you if (and when) people are searching for that term the most.
The screenshot below shows the search trend for the term ‘clean beauty’ between 2004 and 2020. You’ll notice a very steady incline over a period of time.
If the keyword phrase has an upward trend overtime, your audience is probably searching for information around this topic.
USE KEYSEARCH
Keysearch is an affordable keyword research tool that provides a ton of valuable data for bloggers that are trying to write helpful content for their readers.
Type any keyword into the search bar in Keysearch and it shows you:
– The search volume
– The Cost-Per-Click
– How competitive the keywords are …. And more
If your keyword phrase has some monthly searches, that means your target audience is searching for this topic (yay).
And if it has low competition, there is a good chance that you can write about this topic and your blog post will appear in search results – which means more exposure for you!
>> Sign up for Keysearch right here <<
PAY ATTENTION TO COMMENTS
Your audience is already spending time online.
They are searching for answers to their questions and solutions to their problems.
They are asking questions in forums. And they are commenting on existing content requesting more information or assistance.
Put your investigator cap on and find the bread crumbs that your audience is leaving behind for you.
How?
– Read the comments on Instagram posts and Lives
– Pay attention to questions being asked in Facebook groups
– Browse through Quora or Answer the Public
What are people asking for help with in your niche?
If you’re seeing a trend of the same kinds of questions being asked, you might be onto a topic that people are interested in and searching for online!
Start making that list of blog post ideas, blogger! You have all of the research tools you need to figure out what your readers want from you.
REASON TWO: YOU AREN’T OPTIMIZING YOUR CONTENT FOR SEARCH ENGINES
Now, for an extension on our first point.
Maybe you did all of that research, picked the right keywords, and wrote a bunch of content that you thought was helpful to your target audience.
That’s a HUGE part of the puzzle, but what if your blog STILL is not seeing the traffic growth you want?
It might be because you aren’t properly optimizing your content for search engines.
Actually, it PROBABLY IS because you aren’t properly optimizing your content for search engines.
SEO (short for search engine optimization) has many different parts that will affect your place in search results and your incoming traffic. There are 3 main parts to optimization:
1. Technical SEO
2. On-page SEO
3. Off-page SEO
Your technical SEO is essentially all of the stuff that makes your site function at the optimal level and ‘speak’ to search engines so they can understand your site.
This includes your site speed, quality of your site code, your navigation menu, categories, and all of the technical parts of your website.
Key point: if your technical SEO and site speed are on point, you have a much better chance of getting blog traffic from search engines!
If you are completely non-tech-savvy (like me), don’t despair! They are plenty of Facebook groups, courses, and experts that can help you with the tech side of blogging.
Recommendations for Technical SEO support:
Your on-page SEO is all of the optimization work that you do on your pages and posts to make the content user-friendly and easy for humans and search engines to understand. Some parts of your Technical SEO will fall under this umbrella as well.
But generally speaking, I like to think of on-page SEO as optimizing my BLOG POSTS so that Google can crawl them, understand them, and show them to the right people.
Optimizing your blog posts includes choosing the right keywords, using them properly throughout your posts, using proper headers, using easy-to-read fonts, an optimized slug and meta description, sizing and labeling your photos properly, and so much more!
Recommendations for On-page SEO tools and resources:
– Free SEO Masterclass from Stupid Simple SEO
– On-page SEO e-book from Debbie Gartner
And lastly, your Off-page SEO is the authority that you gain from other sites that link back to you. Your off-page SEO can essentially be summarized by the number of quality backlinks that point to your website.
These backlinks tell search engines that your site is valuable, relevant, and user-friendly, which contributes to your site optimization.
Recommendations for Off-page SEO:
– Easy Backlinks for SEO e-book by Debbie Gartner
YOUR SEO TANK
I like to think of all of these parts as FUEL in our SEO tank. Our site speed, our optimized images, our backlinks, our keywords….
We always want to keep filling that SEO tank with this quality fuel so that we can keep our website in forward motion!
REASON THREE: YOU AREN’T MARKETING YOUR CONTENT IN THE RIGHT PLACE
At this point, I’m sure you’re putting the pieces of this puzzle together and recognizing why your blog is not getting traffic and what you need to do to change that.
But, if you’re putting in the work, creating the great content and learning SEO and you’re STILL struggling with growing your blog traffic, this third issue might be the cause.
The online world is a huge sea of information! We have to be proactive if we want to stand out from the crowd, and that includes actively marketing your blog content.
Where should you market/promote your content?
Wherever your target audience is spending time AND looking for answers to their questions or solutions to their problems.
If you want to know if your targeted demographic is spending time on a certain platform, just type ‘Demographics of XYZ users’ into Google and study the first few results. Note: the ‘XYZ’ can be any platform that you’re wanting to research: Pinterest, Instagram etc.
Key Takeaway: Be proactive, meet your audience where they are, and show them what solutions you have for them.
IMPORTANT TRAFFIC CONSIDERATIONS
If you’re going above and beyond in all three categories above and your blog is still not getting any traffic, then these considerations are for you.
SEASONAL TRAFFIC
Some audiences are only looking for certain things at certain times of year. If your website is more season-focused, traffic will obviously drop during other times of year. Keep this in mind when choosing your niche.
TIME TO AGE
Your website needs time to mature in the eyes of search engines. Google doesn’t give too much attention to brand new sites: they haven’t proven themselves as relevant and authoritative yet.
Don’t let this discourage you!
Just keep putting in that work in the 3 categories listed above and push through for a few more months! The traffic will come in time.
NICHE FOCUS
Similar to seasonal traffic, some niches are not very traffic heavy. This might be because the readers don’t spend much time online, or it might be because the niche is so narrow that people aren’t searching for these topics much.
On the flip side of that, if your focus is too broad, your site will miss out on traffic because search engines don’t view your site as relevant or authoritative in a specific category.
Keep this in mind when choosing your niche too.
HOW TO GET BLOG TRAFFIC
Simply put, blog traffic comes from creating great content that people are searching for online and then getting that content in front of them through optimization and marketing.
The more great, helpful, highly optimized content you publish, the more traffic you’re going to get!
Remember that we don’t want vanity traffic (meaningless page views). We want quality traffic from people that genuinely want or need what we’re offering.
Keep working on the points above and be sure to pin this one for later!
Related reads: One Simple Facebook Trick to Help You Increase Your Blog Traffic
Very awesome and useful post! I am definitely bookmarking it for future references 🙂
So much great advice in this article – I’m bookmarking it to come back to every once and a while for a refresher!
Debbie’s SEO books are definitely a game changer!
Love this post! It was so easy to read and understand I hate when I read blog posts about blogging and just feel confused at the end of it haha 😆 this was not that at all! I’m a new health and wellness blogger and only been at it for a few months so this was very motivating for me to keep pushing because I love doing it ❤️ Thanks again for a great read!
This makes me so happy to hear, I never want my readers to leave my website feeling confused, I appreciate your feedback! Keep pushing on, you got this!
Those SEO books are the best! Thanks for reading, I hope it was helpful. Looking forward to seeing your progress and blog traffic growth!
Thanks for reading!