Why am I Not getting Blog traffic?

If you are not getting blog traffic you will know how frustrating it can be. You have spent days, weeks, or maybe even months getting your blog designed and set up.

Maybe you taught yourself how to build your blog on WordPress, or possibly spend a few hours a week creating blogs and readable content so your blog doesn’t look like a barren wasteland when it’s launched. 

But for all that you are not getting traffic, and you know it’s true, you went to the time and trouble of connecting Google Analytics so that you could monitor the inbound avalanche of people and ….nothing. As I said, frustrating. 

So what can you do to promote your blog more effectively and start to get some traffic? There are several methods and techniques that you can employ to boost your numbers. Try some of these tips.

Make Sure Google Analytics is Connected Properly

First of all just to be on the safe side, make sure Google Analytics, Search Console, or any other analytics tools are properly connected to your site.

It is frustrating to wait for that blue graph line to spike high on Google Analytics to indicate visitors, but even more frustrating to find that you are actually getting visitors but just can see them due to an incorrect account set up.

Check your SEO

The key to getting ranked on Google search results is to make sure your SEO is on point as much as possible. There are many plugins available on WordPress that will walk you through the necessary SEO steps.

It’s usually worth investing in the premium version of whichever plugin you choose to give yourself the maximum chance of having the best SEO possible.

If you have some money to drop you could outsource your SEO to the professionals but if not a plugin is the way to go.

Leverage your Social Media

No-one can visit your blog until it’s visible on search results they know it’s there. So a good way to drive traffic, raise awareness and start building an audience is by using your social media accounts to your advantage.

Use your Twitter, Facebook pages, Instagram and Pinterest to start pushing some visitors to your site. Pinterest has recently been given much credit for being an excellent traffic driver so you may want to give it a try.  

If you have more than one social media account then you may need to use a content posting and scheduling tool to help.

Personally, I like Crowdfire a lot. It posts to all the main social media accounts, auto-generates posts from your blog, and helps with content curation. All for about £8 per month.

Post more Content

The more posts and pages you have the more opportunities you have to rank on the search engine results. Once your visitors are on your page you want to keep them there.

Only having only 3 posts on your blog about toothbrushes just isn’t going to be enough to inspire visitors and entice them to stay. Have an honest look at your content. Is it well-written, informative, and engaging?

If the answer is no you may want to create new or different content. If you are short on time or ideas think about outsourcing to a professional blogger to build some content fast. 

Assess your Site Design

Along with having interesting content you also need to have a nicely designed blog. Your site should not look cluttered or strain the eyes with garish colors.

It should be tasteful and nicely laid outsource so your visitors can navigate around it easily and find what they are looking for.

The same applies to your blog posts, they shouldn’t be a mess of colours and hard to read fonts. Nothing will make a site visitor click ‘exit’ faster. 

Get some Backlinks

Getting sites to link to your site is a great way to build trust and authority which will make your blog rank higher in Google search results. Getting quality backlinks isn’t easy but it’s not impossible.

Beware of cheap low-quality backlinks, they can hurt your site more than help it and cause your site to rank lower. Focus on getting quality links from similar blogs or industries to yours.

Google is placing much focus on quality as part of its new BERT update. The focus is on quality rather than quantity to return the best results possible to Google users. 

Do some Guest posting

A nice way to get your name out there and drive traffic to your blog is to participate in a bit of guest posting. This is the practice of posting articles on other people’s blogs in exchange for an author byline and a link back to your own blog.

This will get you (hopefully) some traffic and also create a nice backlink for you (see the previous section). Make sure that you are posting to blogs that have a decent domain authority and are somewhat relevant to your niche.

Again, quality is key here and you don’t want to get a bunch of junk traffic to your site, that will not benefit you in any way. 

What not to do

Do not be tempted to use one of the many services out there that guarantee to drive traffic to your site. Much of this is junk traffic or bots that will do nothing at all to help your numbers overall.

Any spike in your visitor’s chart will return to prior levels once the service stops. On the same note, do not be tempted to use Black Hat SEO techniques. This is the practice of using questionable techniques to drive your site up higher in search results.

It is frowned upon by Google and they will penalize you if caught which will put your website effectively on a blacklist where you won’t be ranking at all. 

Summary

Driving traffic to your blog in high amounts and keeping it there takes patience, perseverance, and persistence. Unless you’re lucky enough to create a killer piece of content that goes viral overnight you will be more likely to see steady, consistent growth. 

Over time as you add more content you have more opportunities to rank in search and gain more site visitors. So keep added quality content consistently and you should see your number of hits increase.