Picture this there are two scenarios: you have just spent a sizable amount of money getting a new website. You are expecting the phone to ring and the leads to start pouring through the door. You wait one month, two months, even six months and nothing happens.
Scenario number two (2): You have a website that has consistent traffic. Everything seems to be going fine but then, you wake up one day and experience a sudden drop in website traffic. You are devastated at the loss because it will majorly affect your business.
Regardless of which one of the two scenarios you fall into we hate to break it to you but a website without traffic means absolutely nothing.
In this article by the Cindtoro team we are here to uncover the reasons behind both scenarios and give you some tips on how to fix it so you can get more traffic for your website and get your business back on track.
Unsecure Website
An unsecured website is a very bad thing not only for SEO but also for cybersecurity. This can lead to attackers stealing your information and placing users in potential harms way. Google is not fond of websites that fail to take steps to protect their users.
In the eyes of Google they would rather promote a website that is secure over a website that is un-secure. There are a number of reasons why you could have an un-secure website however the most common is due to having an incorrectly configured SSL certificate.
How to fix
If you get lucky and you just have an SSL certificate issue that needs to be fixed you should be able to fix it relatively quickly. You may however face additional difficulty getting your website traffic back in order.
As a general recommendation for server related issues, the technical team at Cindtoro would rather you air on the side of caution and hire a company to help fix any SSL issues so you do not waste your valuable time or take your site down unexpectedly. Cindtoro monthly website maintenance can help ward off any security issues you may experience.
You don’t use keywords
Keywords are a “key” part of a quality SEO strategy. If you don’t use keywords you will never be found on any search engine. Chances are you don’t have any website traffic because you have not used any at all.
Worse if you had website traffic and received a major drop you may have used them incorrectly. There is a fine line between websites that work well and those that do not, all of which involves the proper use of keywords.
There are numerous types of keywords that you should know about; short and long tail keywords are commonly thrown around in the digital marketing community. They should be paced in strategic places throughout your website as some places are more important than others.
How to fix
If you want to get traffic to your website you will need to use keywords. Especially topically relevant words that help describe the challenges a user is facing and how your product or service can help them overcome their issues.
Once a user makes it onto your website you should not bury the call to action where nobody will read it. Attempting to convert your website traffic as fast as possible is optimal for the best results long term.
Here is an example of a great call to action:
Not Mobile Friendly
A website’s mobile friendliness is extremely important to ranking well on Google. So much so that they adjusted their systems to go with “mobile first” indexing. What does it actually mean to have a mobile friendly website? Well, this mainly has to do with the size of your text and how close other elements are to each other.
How to Fix
Google used to have a mobile friendly checker however the tool has been retired and replaced via Google page speed insights. If your website does not score well on the test or you want to make it better you should hire a web development company like Cindtoro to help you fix it.
You have a poor user experience
Something that goes hand and hand with a mobile friendly website is your overall user experience. If you just got a new website this is likely not a problem but if you have an old one it may be time for a website redesign.
A bad user experience can lead to problems such as low engagement time, a high bounce rate ( the number of pages viewed resulting in a user leaving) or lack of page views.
When this happens you are failing to display to Google that you have a website that users enjoy visiting. This results in a search engine demoting your website in their search engine rankings resulting in low to no traffic over time.
How to Fix
The fix here is quite obvious. Find what is wrong with your website’s user experience then fix it. If you do not have the experience to take care of it yourself let our team help reorganize or rebuild your website.
A fix could include items such as a complete restructuring of your internal linking, on page elements or an entire rebuild of your website.
The bottom line here is to improve your users’ experience with the intent to also improve your user experience signals ( time on page, number of pages visited, and other factors. When you do this you help show Google that you have a high quality website and should be presented with more opportunities to gain valuable website traffic. Helping you get found better in the search results.
Impacted by Google Algorithm Update
This section will apply to those with existing website visitors that experience a sudden drop in organic traffic. By SEO standards you can be impacted by Google algorithm update in two different ways: manual action or an automated penalty.
Both of which can cause you to quickly lose traffic to your website. This happens because you are failing to follow Google’s guidelines to create high quality people first (and friendly) content that will help users reach whatever goal they were looking to achieve.
How to Fix
You can fix manual actions or other Google penalties by fixing what got you there in the first place. So as an example if you write low quality content and you are trying to manipulate search rankings with your website. Stop doing that, make a course correction.
It will take a significant amount of time and resources to recover your website’s lost traffic from a Google algorithm update or manual penalty So, we would recommend that you consider hiring a qualified SEO agency or use a Google penalty recovery service if you want to see the fastest results to regain lost website traffic.
Lack of content production
When you start a brand new website you have no content. Content is one of the most important driving factors behind increasing website traffic. Without it search engines like Google cannot tell where they should place your website in their index.
This makes it difficult to attract your ideal target audience and build your website’s value over the long term. Think about it this way. Every new content piece you “invest” in creates additional value for your overall SEO and website visitors.
The more you “invest” means you can expect to drive more traffic over time. This is also important for established websites because without a steady flow of high quality content you cannot expect to grow effectively.
How to fix
This is actually one of the easiest SEO issues to take care of. All you have to do is create high quality people friendly content. Google loves high quality content. As referenced in their helpful content update back in 2022.
The two best ways to boost your SEO is with a blog and pair it with an SEO content calendar. Using these two things together will ensure that you stay on track and you are able drive more traffic to your site and hit your company goals over time.
Little to no backlinks
This issue can happen for new and existing websites alike and can affect things such as a sudden drop in website traffic ( if you lose valuable backlinks.)
If you are just starting your website will not be able to generate any new “hits” because it fails to show Google that your website is worth giving traffic to.
You may be wondering what a “backlink” is? – A backlink can be thought of as a vote of confidence that other people find your website useful and as a result it should be shown more in the search engine.
In the eyes of Google a backlink helps to pass valuable page experience signals to their ranking algorithm. As a general rule of thumb a website with more backlinks will rank better than a website with little to no links.
It is also important to note that in SEO links to and from other websites are one of the most important Google ranking factors. Without them you will likely never rank at all.
How to fix
To fix your website not showing up on Google you will need to gain more backlinks.. These links will need to come from high quality relevant websites that Google would expect you to get links from.
We would highly recommend that you consider using a link building agency or service provider to assist with the process of gaining new links because link building is what gets most websites penalized from Google.
Most people either hire the wrong SEO professional or they build links incorrectly which then leads to your website losing all your traffic or not having any in the first place.
You don’t promote your content
If you are just getting started and you need traffic for your website and or you have experienced a drop in traffic. Do you promote your site outside of Google? We would be willing to say that the answer is likely no.
Here is the deal: you can write the most amazing content, but if you fail to promote it using other digital marketing channels, how can you expect to get the traction needed to get started ranking on Google? There is not a website in the world that would not benefit from increasing the amount of external promotion.
How to Fix
The name of the game here is to be targeted with your approach and go where your target audience is. Why waste time creating content for other marketing channels when all you need is one or two.
Promoting your content can be as simple as creating a post on social media OR using other things such as reels, shorts or incorporating more video.
Of course the more places you can be the better but you should always look to do this in a thoughtful manner so you don’t burn yourself out.
Never worked on your SEO
Perhaps you don’t get any traffic to your website or you experienced a sudden drop because you have never worked on your SEO. Optimizing your website is the job of SEO.
This helps to ensure that you show up for relevant keywords on a consistent basis. Search engine optimization is a very broad topic that encompasses a lot of moving parts to work. It can take a long time to start working, at least a minimum of 3 to 6 months.
How to Fix
Since SEO is such a long process you are likely better off getting a company to do it for you but if you decide that you want to do it yourself you will need to keep in mind your title tags, meta descriptions, use and understanding of keywords You should also consider your backlink profile and even the types of images that you use on your website all of these things can have a major impact on your visibility in search.
Your Website is Broken
Did you know your website can be broken and you may not even know it? This is more likely the case with older websites rather than new ones. Many websites suffer from a lot of the same problems. The effects of these issues can harm your SEO and traffic generation efforts. Luckily there are ways to discover if you have website issues using an SEO audit service.
How to fix
To fix your website you will need to uncover the issues that your site is experiencing. This is the job of technical SEO. Technical SEO will help you find what you need to fix. Since most websites almost always suffer the same issues these will be things such as broken links, unminified Javascript and CSS files ( causes slow website ) or other items such as no title tags, lacking H1s etc etc.
You Used Too Much AI
There is no easy way to improve website traffic. If you employed the help of artificial intelligence to write your content, create your website or images you may have significantly harmed the success of your website and your traffic.
Google is flooded with low quality content from websites that do not deserve any traffic regardless of how they were created using AI means you may be getting a copy of them without even knowing it.
Google systems are equipped with AI detection designed to weed out anyone who is looking to game the system. Even if your website is okay in the short term you will likely be penalized in the long run.
How to Fix
If you used at or ChatGPT for your SEO you likely have harmed your website. The best way to fix this is to remove all your AI generated content and write it on your own. There are numerous benefits to using AI to assist with SEO and traffic generation but creating every asset on your website is a big no no.
Conclusion
Understanding why your website isn’t getting traffic or why it suddenly dropped is a critical part to getting your business back on track. The process for improving the performance of your website is not always easy and will require numerous steps to see improvement.
The fastest way to do this is with help of a high impact digital marketing agency like Cindtoro. Want to learn more about how we can help you recover lost website traffic or make your website work? Explore our SEO services or reach out to us for a custom quote.