Why your website isn't getting traffic | Kanuka Digital (2024)

A website is nothing without its visitors. There are a number of reasons why you may be lacking in visitors to your website, whether that be the content, format or keywords. This post addresses nine reasons why your website isn’t getting any traffic.

Let’s kick things off with probably the biggest reason of all, Keywords.

1. Focus on the correct keywords

The primary focus of any SEO strategy is keyword research. Keywords help search engines understand what your website content is about so it can be indexed in search results accordingly.

If you’re targeting the wrong keywords, then you won’t rank well-meaning you will be less visible to your audience. This will, in turn, lead to less organic traffic heading to your website.

Other reasons your keywords aren’t performing for your site are:

• Being too niche with your keywords
• You’re in a highly competitive industry for the targeted keywords

There are a couple of things to consider if your keywords are underperforming:

• Do pages have a high bounce rate?
• Is organic visibility low?
• Do you have a high number of impressions but have low click-through rates?

Focussing content around the incorrect keywords can bring low-quality traffic to the website that won’t convert into sales or leads.

So what can you do to resolve poorly targeted keywords? Carry out in-depth keyword research using a powerful research tool such as Google Keyword Planner.

You should aim for long-tail keywords with low competition that you can add to your copy naturally. The key in this sentence is ‘low competition’. Low competition keywords will provide you with a better opportunity to rank well in search results as long as you promote your content correctly.

Low competition keywords do drive traffic to your website, but not as much as the high competition keywords. As a result of ranking for a number keywords with little competition, you can help to increase trust in your website.

2. Does your website have the right amount of content?

If you don’t have enough content on your website you may be hurting your search rankings. It also means that you have less to offer your visitors than your competitors.

This doesn’t mean you need to write hundreds of pages of copy. The mantra here is quality over quantity. Make sure you are writing copy that is of a high standard and provides the answers that your users are looking for.

Search engines have clever algorithms that know if you are spamming your content marketing.

When researching and writing the copy for your website consider the following. What stage of the buyer’s journey is the user at? Are they looking for an answer to a question, doing product research, or are they ready to purchase?

3. E-A-T (Expert, Authoritative, Trustworthy)

Google wants your website to be an authority in the area that you specialise in. They want you to be the expert in your field and they want you to be trustworthy with your content, otherwise Google isn’t likely to rank your website high.

These three qualities essentially evaluate your content quality.

When reviewing your sites content for E-A-T, Google looks at a few things including:

• Site structure – is it logical, easy for users to find information?
• Are all pages accessible?
• Is there an ‘About Us’ page?
• Is there a variety of ways that a user can contact you?
• Does your website have a privacy policy and terms of service?
• Who is the author of the content? Are they an expert in their field?
• What kind of reputation does your business have? Look to gain great business reviews.
• Is the website content relevant to the business?

E-A-T is important for every website. It has been emphasised strongly within Google’s content quality guidelines. It will help to increase your Google rankings and improve the overall user experience of your site.

4. Write for humans

Remember to write your copy for the user rather than bots. We can focus so much on optimisations that we can lose sight of the audience.

Below are some points to consider to make your content more appealing to users:

• Write in a conversational style
• Use visuals that catch the eye
• Break down large paragraphs into smaller chunks that are easier for the user to digest
• Break content up with headings, bullet points and are in numbered lists where necessary

By writing for humans you will keep the user engaged and more than likely to make a purchase or return visit to your website in the future.

Generally, you should audit your content to make sure it is up-to-date, remove any old content that is no longer needed such as past events and repurpose and update any older articles to make them current again.

5. What about your competitors?

Look at what your competitors are targeting and create copy that is better than theirs.

The best way to discover these insights is to carry out a competitor analysis. As a result, this will help you to develop a robust, effective content strategy that will drive website traffic.

The analysis should include:

• Competitors who rank for your target keywords
• A content audit of your competitors

6. Content promotion

It’s important to let people know that you have all this wonderful content on your website, so having a strategy that promotes this content is a must. Otherwise, your website isn’t likely to gain traffic.

Generally, a popular rule of thumb is to spend 20% creating the content and 80% promoting it.

The main thing is to promote where your audience is. This could be on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter or niche industry websites and networks amongst other channels.

The key here is to find what works for your target audience.

One other content promotion channel that you should spend some time and effort on is email marketing.

Usually, this section of your audience has already interacted with your business and are more likely to become a repeat customer. Growth software can be used to automate and unify sales and marketing features, providing the right attention at every stage of the customer journey.

7. Technical Issues

The rules and best practices that are set out by Google regarding their algorithms should be adhered to. The two big algorithms are Panda and Penguin. You can risk your website being penalised or marked down by Google if you don’t follow best practices.

There are updates to algorithms many times throughout the year, so it’s important that you keep up-to-date with them.

If you are hit by an update to either Penguin or Panda then you will know about it – there would be a drop in website traffic from one day to the next.

8. Optimised for mobile

Most search activity is taken out on mobile devices these days. As a result, you should make sure that you fully optimise your website for mobile usage. Google’s indexing system is now mobile-first – meaning it gives mobile priority over desktop.

Here are a few things to consider when it comes to mobile:

• Web pages should be easily read without pinching or zooming
• Replace links with easy to touch buttons
• Make online forms short, quick and easy to complete on a small screen
• Format and edit the content into more digestible pieces by using headings, bullet points, images and shorter paragraphs

In short, making sure that your site is fast loading and optimised for mobile will help your site to rank higher in search results.

9. Poor search engine optimisation

Many websites haven’t implemented any kind of SEO plan. Without any SEO activity, your website may not be visible in search engines and if they are ranking then it is down to pure luck.