You’ve carefully planned and executed your website, and yet nobody is looking. Why? I’ve got a few ideas.
New to the web?
If your website is brand new, congratulations! First, understand that traffic takes time, but there are things you can be doing to help drive people to your new site.
Google has to find you.
No matter how good your site is, Google needs time to find it, understand it, and build trust in the quality of your content. Google doesn’t know your style, who would like your site, what keywords to rank you for, or where to place your site in search results. Be patient and do what you can to help.
Are you active on social media?
The good news is you don’t have to be on every social media platform out there. Pick two or three that make sense for you. Every business should have a presence on Facebook, but it’s up to your business type to define where else you need to be. B2B companies need to be active on LinkedIn. Creative businesses will find their niche on Instagram and Pinterest. Geared towards teens? Think Snapchat. “Active” is the crucial word here, though. Setting up a page doesn’t count. You’ll need to post and share at least three times per week and engage with your followers daily.
Are you blogging?
You need to be blogging, and you need to be doing it frequently enough see results. How often is that? Start with monthly then ramp up to weekly. Content should never be exclusively about your business, your products, your awesomeness, and your employees. Instead, write about subjects that are relevant to your industry and your readers. Blog posts also need visual elements such as pictures, graphs, charts, or videos. Otherwise, it’s lackluster. Read up on what Google views as quality content and what Bing views as quality content. The better your quality, the better your traffic.
Are you sharing?
Don’t forget to share your web content and blog posts on your social media. Ask your friends and family to do the same. Social shares help with your Google ranking and can help expose you to a whole new audience clamoring for your kind of services.
Is your site showing its age?
If your site has been around for a while and your traffic is slipping, it might be time to re-evaluate. Take an honest look at your site – or, better yet, ask an acquaintance to – and see what may be red lighting your traffic.
It’s slow.
40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Even a one-second delay decreases customer satisfaction by about 16%. Think of the last web page that you visited where you spent a few seconds, got frustrated, and hit the back button to return to Google.
They don’t know what to do when they get there.
If your home page is too complicated, visitors will wander off. You’ve heard the adage keep it simple, stupid? That’s not an insult to your visitors but rather a guide to keep things straightforward and easy to find. According to Steve Krug’s book Don’t Make Me Think, your website needs to get right to the point. It should never waste users’ time or test your credibility as an asset in their lives.
It’s mobile-unfriendly.
Responsive web design is no longer optional. 80% of internet users own a smartphone. A 2016 report from Hitwise states that mobile search in the US is roughly 58 percent of overall search. Google says 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing and 40% visit a competitor’s site instead. Plus, Google ranks mobile sites higher in mobile search results. Ouch! Use this tool to see if Google views you as mobile-friendly.
Your content needs to be keyword-focused.
Keywords are the themes and ideas that frame what your content is all about. They’re also the terms and phrases that your future customers would enter into a search engine to find you online. As a website owner and content creator, you’ll want your keywords to be relevant to what people are searching for, so they have a better chance of finding your content among the results. Look for keywords that are relevant to your audience and searched more than 500 times per month. Once you know your keywords, you need to create content around them. Use them in your headlines and throughout your copywriting to help Google rank you higher in results and customers find your site.
You’re Not Using WordPress.
WordPress generates easy-to-index pages and, if your website is easy to index, then Google will rank it higher. WordPress runs about 28% of the internet with 409 million people viewing more than 19.6 billion pages monthly and is widely considered the best website building platforms. Sites built using the content management system include New York Observer, New York Post, TED, Thought Catalog, USA Today, CNN, Fortune.com, TIME.com, National Post, Spotify, TechCrunch, CBS Local, and NBC.
Still not sure how to drive traffic to your website? We understand. AME would love to help your business stand out in the forest!
Contact us today to see what we can do to spruce up your current website or tell the world about your new one