Blogging is a great way to gain exposure and build your online presence. But even with all the excitement of blogging, it can be challenging and discouraging if you’re not seeing results. If you spend hours each week writing blog posts and pushing them out through different social media platforms only to find that they’re going unread, then this article is for you.
Writing a blog can be an effective way to both, express your thoughts, and share knowledge with others. But that doesn’t mean that it’s easy to write something that will connect with others. In this article, we’re going to look at the main reasons that might be preventing you from getting the traffic you were hoping for, as well as 10 tips to turn that all around.
25 Reasons why your blog isn’t getting any traffic
1. Your blog is brand new
Building up a successful blog takes a long time.
While you’re on this journey, don’t expect to be on top of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) right away. It takes time to climb that mountain. The more you practice writing and optimizing your posts, the better it will be. You may not see results right away, but you will start seeing people commenting and reading your content more and more.
Blogging is a marathon, not a sprint. The first year is always the hardest, but you should start to see a steady trickle of visitors after you’ve been at it for six to nine months. It takes that long for each piece of content you create to rank in Google high enough to see any results.
In the age of social media, it’s important to be proactive about marketing your blog. Putting a link on your Twitter or Facebook will only get you so far. Be sure to create an email list and use that as a way to inform those people when you have a new post up.
2. Not positioning yourself as an authority
People are not going to flock to your website because you decided to start an online journal.
You need to position yourself as an authority, especially in your niche. Do some research and see if there’s anyone else who is an authority on the topic that you want to write about. If there is, then it’s time for some David vs. Goliath action.
If you want to stand out from the crowd, then you need to show readers why your thoughts are worth reading. Position yourself as an authority by asking questions in your headlines (like I did with this article here), and using data or research to back up your points instead of just saying, “I think…” or “I believe…”
3. You publish too infrequently
If you want people to give a damn about what you have to say, then it’s important that they can find your content whenever they’re looking for information. If you only post once every three months, then Google has no reason to think that anyone is interested in what you have to say.
You probably notice this with other blogs that you read — the ones you love and adore, and those that make you feel like you should go take a shower. The less frequently they post, the more likely it is that they are slacking off or no longer excited about their work. If you don’t have something to say, then don’t say it at all.
This isn’t to suggest that you should publish as often as possible if it’s not amazing content. There are other factors like frequency and consistency, which Google takes into account as well. You can write a post every day, but if those posts aren’t good enough then you’re going to hammer your own site.
4. Your headlines aren’t enticing
This is the number one reason why people click on blog posts. It could also be the number one reason why no one reads your blog. It doesn’t matter how great your content is or how beautiful your images are. If you don’t write headlines that appeal to people, you’re not going to get the traffic that you want.
If you did your keyword research, created a great post, but still aren’t attracting blog readers, then your headlines may very well be part of the problem. If your headlines are boring or have no pizzazz, then readers will just move on without ever clicking. Don’t be afraid to be creative and think outside of the box.
An important thing to remember, the content you write should be geared to either educate or entertain your audience.
If you’re a travel blogger and want to show off your amazing trip to Tokyo, then your blog posts should be written in a way that benefits the reader.
- 11 Must-Know Customs Before traveling to Tokyo
- My Trip to Tokyo, Japan: Living my Best Life Ever!
Which one would be more appealing to someone about to take a trip there?
If you would like to increase your blog traffic, learning how to craft catchy and compelling headlines is a great place to start.
5) You don’t have a consistent posting schedule or content plan
Let’s face it. Being consistent at anything is tough! It doesn’t matter how easy the task is, we all find reasons not to do it.
Once you’ve got some people to return to your site, make sure you give them reasons why they should come back. The best way to do that is by having a regular posting schedule or at least being able to provide enough content that the readers have many reasons not to miss an update.
Not only should you have a consistent schedule for your blog posts, but you can also create an editorial calendar that is shared with readers.
If readers know they will be updated every Wednesday on the topic of “New Trends in Interior Design” then they are more likely to look forward to reading your new content.
Instead of feeling like you have to cram your blogging into the long, empty spaces of time that you have leftover in your life, make a schedule for yourself.
6) Your blog isn’t mobile-friendly
Blog posts aren’t going to last long on a phone if they can’t be read! If you’re not already having your site structure tested for mobile compatibility, then start now. As more people are reading online via their phones, it’s crucial that your content is readable everywhere.
One way to improve user experience on mobile devices is to break up large walls of text by inserting breaks. Short paragraphs are easier to read as well as to consume.
7) Not targeting keywords
If your articles aren’t ranking on Google, then you might have a keyword issue.
Not using keywords at all?
If you’re not using keywords, then this could play a large factor in why you’re not getting the traffic you want. While creating great content is king, keywords might be next in line for the throne.
Keywords let the search engines know what your new blog post is about. Again, Google is all about search intent. Its mission is to serve the most relevant information back to the user. And keywords play a big factor when determining relevancy.
Going after competitive keywords?
Another issue could be that you are performing keyword research, but you’re going after keywords that you can’t rank for because you simply don’t have the domain authority yet.
As we would all love to rank for the big keywords that bring in a flood of traffic, you have to play the game by the rules.
In my personal experience, you have to start at the bottom and slowly work yourself to the top by proving yourself to the search engines that your content is worthy to rank for more competitive keywords.
When you set out to write a blog post, it’s important that you already know what keywords or key phrases you want to include in the post. It might seem like common sense, but sometimes a new blogger will forget this step which could very well be the cause for their lack of traffic.
8. Your website is slow
Make sure that your site loads quickly.
Yes, this means that your site needs a fast load speed. It’s not just about how many images you have and how high your resolution is, but it’s also about speed.
Google ranks fast sites higher in the SERPs than those that take much time to load, and they tend to give you more bounce traffic as people come and go.
It’s essential to keep your image size in check. That means that the images need to be optimized and loading properly, as well as any ads or counters on the site, being unobtrusive.
Your WordPress theme must be lightweight, and you need to make sure that your host is lightning fast. A fast-loading site is a must, and if your site is slow, it won’t rank high in Google even if your content is great.
People are impatient! If they have to wait more than 3 seconds for your blog page to load, you’re likely going to lose them.
9. Not promoting it enough
As with any content marketing project, you don’t want to rely on the blog post itself to do the work for you. Make sure that you’ve got a promotion plan in place and use your email list, social media channels, and paid advertising campaigns to get the word out about your posts. Otherwise, no one will know they exist.
To attract your ideal reader, go where they hang out. That might be other websites in your niche, forums, or Facebook groups.
10. Not sharing your blog posts on other sites
One of the reasons that blogging is so effective for businesses is because it gives you access to high-authority websites through backlinks. To attract your target audience, it’s important that your blog posts are getting shared on relevant sites and featured in newsletters.
11. Covering too many blog topics
Having a ton of posts in your blog about different topics isn’t going to attract potential readers.
If you’re a hobby blogger and covering ten topics makes you happy, then do you. But if your intention with your blog is to make money, then it’s highly recommended that you niche down and establish yourself as an authority in one particular area before broadening your niche.
Be sure that you’re concentrating on one niche and using the other posts in your queue as bonus content for when people come back.
12. Your blog is all self-promotion
It’s okay to promote yourself, but not when it comes at the expense of providing value for your visitors. If people feel like they’re just there to be sold, they’ll go elsewhere and won’t tell their friends about it either. This means that you need to provide high-quality information and be willing to link out to other sites or offer guest posts if appropriate.
13. You aren’t including relevant keywords in your blog posts
This is one of the most common mistakes that people make. Perhaps you think it’s not a big deal or maybe you just don’t care enough to pay attention to detail, but when you misspell words in your post, this sends up a red flag for Google. This tells Google that you’re not very good at what you do, which is write. If they think that, then they won’t want to show your site to readers.
14. Your blog is too hard to navigate
Navigation is important for any website or blog, but it’s especially crucial for blogs where readers need reasons to return and reasons not to leave when they get frustrated with the layout or content. Make sure that your visitors can find what they’re looking for within seconds of landing on your blog with ease.
15. You are not networking with fellow bloggers in your niche
While it’s important to promote your own blog, it can’t come at the expense of promoting others in your industry. Blogging is a community, so get to know others in the space and build relationships that will impact the reach of your content for years to come.
Facebook groups and forums such as Reddit are great places to connect with bloggers. Usually, if you take anyone’s blogging course, they’ll have their own exclusive Facebook group where you can chat with other bloggers and content creators. The benefit of joining these private groups is that you get to learn from other bloggers who have a similar content strategy as you do.
You can also meet other bloggers in real life by searching for local blogging meetups where you live.
Try searching meetup.com for any groups in your area.
16. Your blog doesn’t appeal to search engines
It might seem like it’s common sense, but content marketers (you) often forget to plan ahead when they’re designing their blog. Search engines are looking for lots of words, high-quality images, and a logical layout with easy navigation. If you don’t follow the rules of SEO, your posts won’t find their way up in search results.
If your goal is to increase blog traffic, then learning how to optimize your posts is a must.
17. You’re not personalizing blog posts
While it’s great to have a professional tone, you also want your blogs to be personable so that readers feel connected to you and trust what you have to say. Make sure that there are bits of valuable information in each blog post about you, your company, or who is writing it so that it doesn’t come off as just another business blog.
18. You’re not linking to other content
You might not want to cannibalize your own site’s traffic, but linking to relevant and complementary content elsewhere can help you build more connections with your readers. Keep your content fresh by including links to other sites so that people will come back for more.
19. Your content is too short
While blog posts don’t necessarily have to be super long, you can’t expect people to come back if your posts are only a few sentences long. Make sure that you’re offering value in each post so that it’ll keep readers coming back for more.
While many sources recommend writing at least 300 words, don’t expect anything of this length to rank. If you’re a beginner blogger, that’s fine. Eventually, you want to increase your blog posts to 1,000+ words. In the beginning, I struggled a lot when it came to writing a sufficient amount of information on a topic. But with each post I wrote, it became easier and easier.
One way to increase your article is to answer questions from the ‘People also ask’ section that’s on the first page of the Google results. These are questions people are searching for answers to.
While you don’t want your content too short, you also don’t want it too lengthy.
Try not to include fluff. Save that for the authors. lol
Successful bloggers will often tell you to just focus on creating helpful content and the results will follow.
20. Your blog posts aren’t formatted for SEO
If the average person landed on your site, they would be able to tell you what type of content is there.
But what about Google?
How does it know that you have great content to offer readers if no one has told it so?
Search engine optimization or SEO is a process of optimizing your blog posts so that they are easily found by Google and other search engines. There are many different SEO strategies but the main goal is to help search engine crawlers better understand your content, which in turn helps them direct readers to your site.
Even if you’re not familiar with SEO, it’s important that you learn the basics. You might notice that if you search for something, one website always pops up. The owner of that site has mastered the art of SEO and it’s what gets them the majority of their traffic. That doesn’t mean that you can’t get to that point as well!
It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to make big waves in search engine results if your blog post isn’t formatted for SEO. Make sure that each post follows the rules for high-quality content and keyword usage so that people can find your posts when they’re looking for them.
21. Your blog nees more visuals
Videos, images, graphs, and charts can help break up text in your blog post so that it isn’t so overwhelming to readers. Plus, images are easy for search engines to pick up on and index in SERPs. Use these visuals when they make sense within the context of your blog posts to keep readers engaged.
Read through your blog post and insert visuals wherever it may benefit the reader.
- infographics
- screenshots
- images
- stock photos
- YouTube videos
Research has shown that we remember things 65% better when presented with pictures. So help your readers learn by inserting a little bit of imagery into your content.
22. You aren’t including relevant keywords in your blog posts
Keywords are important because they tell search engines what your post is about so that they can direct readers to your site.
When you use keywords in your blog posts, this also helps with SEO.
How so?
Well, when you have a keyword in your post about a particular topic, it tells Google that the word is important and should be used more often. This leads to a better quality score which results in an increase in traffic to your site.
One way of doing this is by including LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords, which are words related to your main topic. For example, if the keyword you’re going after is ‘how to kill weeds in my lawn’, then some of the LSI keywords may include;
- best product
- naturally
- during the summer
- get rid of
- with vinegar
- entire yard is full of
- grow grass
An easy way to do this is by doing a Google search of your topic and then scrolling down to the bottom where it reads ‘Related searches’. Here, you’ll find some related keywords. Another place to look is AnswerThePublic. This website is also helpful when brainstorming blog post ideas and headlines.
23. You aren’t including relevant keywords in your blog posts
Another very likely reason why your blog isn’t receiving much traffic or in some cases, none at all, is that your website has low domain authority.
If your blog is newer than other blogs in your industry, you might have a hard time getting people to come back. When doing content marketing for online businesses, it’s important to give potential customers reasons to trust that you’re worth their time and business over longer-established competitors. Make sure that you’re driving relevant traffic and building authority so that your TRUST and LIKABILITY scores are as high as possible.
Moz has a free domain SEO analysis tool that you can quickly check your domain authority score. The tool will also show you your top pages and ranking keywords.
24. You aren’t including relevant keywords in your blog posts
Even if you become an expert in something, that doesn’t mean that there is a massive audience out there that’s dying to hear what you have to say. If your blog isn’t bringing in new readers, then perhaps the topic itself just isn’t all that compelling.
At the end of the day, online businesses need to determine what’s going to make their blog stand out and speak to a specific audience. When you find your niche and focus on growing an audience around topics that are relevant to them, traffic will come naturally.
25. You don’t have enough blog posts
It might sound counterintuitive, but it isn’t at all unusual for blogs to post only a handful of times per month. If you don’t have enough reasons for people to come back and read your blog posts, then they probably won’t. Make sure that you’re putting out useful content on a regular basis so that readers have reasons to come back.
Your blog needs content so that Google can rank your website for the keywords you want to rank for in search engine results pages (SERPs). Plus, blog content attracts readers. How do you get blog content? Write it! It takes time, practice, and patience. The more you write, the better you’ll become at it. Don’t worry if your first few attempts aren’t up to par. You’ll get better with time and practice. Compare your first blog post to your fiftieth. The difference will be night and day.
13 Tips to Increasing Your Blog Traffic
Your blogging journey can be more rewarding when you have people reading and sharing your content on the web.
Here are some tips that will help you attract more readers to your blog:
- Make sure your content is relevant to your audience by writing good content that solves their problems.
- Tell a great story. Your blog posts should be full of life and character in order to keep readers interested in what you have to say
- Create shareable content that is easy to digest.
- Build relationships with influencers who have a significant following so you
- Be consistent with your posting schedule and create a content plan that you can follow.
- Attract the right people to your blog post comments by offering them value in return.
- Secure your website against hackers by updating software and plugins as soon as they become available.
- Network with other bloggers in your niche by participating in online discussions.
- Your blog doesn’t have to be perfect, but it should be helpful!
- Create great titles for your articles that are useful and easy to share on social media.
- Write articles using keywords that are relevant to what search engines are looking for.
- Use images, videos, slideshows, and other multimedia in your blog posts.
- Increase the number of subscribers to your RSS feed by promoting your blog on social media, email, and through article submissions.
Conclusion
Most of the reasons why no one reads your blog boils down to SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
The more you optimize your blog for the search engines, the more traffic you’re going to receive.
The best advice I can give you is to be patient and keep going. Implement what you learn and DON’T give up. Just know that almost every blogger has been in your shoes.
Take the time and go through your blog, see what needs improving and what needs removing. Getting a significant amount of traffic to your blog requires a lot of time and hard work.
If you’ve been blogging for a while, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
What challenges are you currently facing with your blog?
Even if you haven’t written many blog posts yet but still have some questions, ask away!
Leave a comment below! I’d love to hear from you.
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