Congratulations, your company’s website is up and running. You’ve waited for months to showcase your products or services for everyone to see. There’s just one problem; it’s been several months now and you have seen absolutely no difference between the time you didn’t have a website and the time you did. You ask yourself, why am I not getting any new contact forms submitted or calls to my business. Let’s examine.
1. Inserting keywords
Most websites are fine for what their purpose is; to show images and display information to their potential customers who actually know or have heard about their company. They can simply type in your website name and poof, pops up your website. However, for the vast majority of people, your information will never get to them because they are searching through Google for specific keywords that your website might be missing.
Our first piece of advice is to make sure you identify your buyer’s intent; meaning, imagine if you were trying to buy the goods or service your business is selling. What would you type into Google to find someone like you or hopefully even you?
- For Example. Let’s say you are running a men’s shoe store and your main products are men’s snow boots. In this instance, you can imagine that a potential buyer would type in “men’s snow boots near me”
- Another good practice is to title your images with the proper keywords but try not to overstuff them as this will cause unpleasant feelings between you and Google. (Utilize the “alt tag: to describe your picture for better results.)
Bottom line: Insert keywords within your pages (preferably in sections such as the H tags, title tags, meta descriptions and within your most important content within the body of your pages. If you are not similar with these words, a quick google search will do the trick or you may always contact us for additional assistance.
2. Inserting the Wrong Keywords
Now that you have inserted the keywords that your business is associated with, you can expect more visitors and phone calls to your establishment right? Well, no exactly. The next step is to make sure that the keywords that you have chosen to respresent your website actually have some traffic; meaning that people are, in fact, using these keywords to search for the products and services their interested in purchasing.
- For Example: Imagine if you have a specific niche such as culinary school for girls under 7. You have to make sure that there is enough “volume” to utilize these keywords. There are great tools such as semrush and ahref that will help you identity what keywords have a good amount of volume. They do, however, come at a price and a steep learning curve.
- Word of caution: Make sure that these keywords have a good amount of volume and that they are not impossible to rank for. Search for categories such as seo difficulty to determine how hard it would be to rank for your respective keywords.
Bottom line: Choosing the right keywords will make or break your SEO efforts for your website. Its importnant to know exactly what your goals are and execute the right tactics so that you will see the best results in the quickest time.
3. Duplicate or Copied Content
The majority of search traffic comes from Google. In fact they control roughly 93% of all organic searches in the US and 96 percent of all organic mobile searches.
From time to time, Google rolls out new algorithms that takes into account hundreds of factors to determine where your website will rank as they continue indexing and crawling your site. A while back Google announced that
The Lowest rating is appropriate if all or almost all of the MC (main content) on the page is copied with little or no time, effort, expertise, manual curation, or added value for users. Such pages should be rated Lowest, even if the page assigns credit for the content to another source.” – Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines July 2018
Trust us, you don’t want to get under Google’s bad side and get penalized. We have had new clients who come to us asking why they are so far down the list in Google search results. And the simple answer may be because you have several pages with the exact same content and Google has essentially placed you on timeout. However, this is not to say that you can’t use quotes or other information on your site if your intent is not to be malicious.
Duplicate content and copied content are treated very differently by Google. However, it’s always best to steer clear and create your own original and high quality content.
Bottom line: Make sure that every page of your website produces original content. If you notice that you have a good amount of duplicate content on more than 1 page, take action immediately, and rewrite it.
4. Mobile-First
As of July 1, 2019, mobile-first indexing has become the new standard for websites, This means that, unlike the good old days where Google crawled or scanned your website from a desktop, today they begin indexing your website with a mobile device. In other words, if your website isn’t optimized for a mobile device, you will be missing out on potential traffic coming to your site and dropping even lower on Google search results. Older websites that were built using static Html might feel these effects the most. Always make sure that your website looks and operates in the exact same capacity as does your website on a desktop.
We have had several clients who come to us with an out of date website that only focused on producing desktop websites without ever considering the effect smart phones now play on our life’s. Today, the majority of search is done on a mobile device so it’s up these each individual company to ensure that their website look and functions properly on all devices.
Bottom line: Make sure that whoever your developer is or was, that they took into account how your website looks on all devices. If your website is cutting out a portion of your content, then its safe to say that its not responsive or “mobile-friendly”
5. Get a Blog and Start Writing
If your website doesn’t have a blog, then you are losing out on valuable traffic that your competitions are surely taking advantage of. Google rewards websites that create fresh, relevant and authoritative content by increasing their rankings on Google (assuming you’re utilizing the information we discussed earlier regarding keywords). If you can demonstrate in Google eyes that you are an authority figure in your industry, you will be rewarded greatly in the form on more visitors to your website.
Every one of our clients has a service that we provide to create new content on their websites. So if your not writing, you should be!
Bottom line: Content is one of the surest ways to increase your website traffic while also increasing your page authority in the process. One thing that will never change in the SEO community is that content will always be king!
FINAL THOUGHTS: Of course, there are many other reasons why your website might not be performing well – from how is was designed, developed and structured to other factors such as the amount of backlinks it may have, to the amount of CTA’s (call to actions your website provides). However, these 5 reasons are a great starting point to get you on your way to increase the amount of traffic that your website is generating.
