So you’ve published a website to promote your business – only nobody has visited. Your site might look beautiful, but it’s not worth much if nobody sees it. So what are the reasons your site might not be getting much traffic? It’s hard to know the reason if you’re new to building and promoting websites.
As a web design company in Brisbane, we get asked this question alot, so let’s take a look at ways
1. Google doesn’t know about it
Google, for all it’s wonders, isn’t omnipotent. It doesn’t know the instant a new website appears online. Google finds new websites by ‘crawling’ the web – basically, Google sends out bots that follow link after link after link, mapping out the web via the interconnected threads that tie them together. If your website is brand new, that means nobody has linked to it yet – and Google has no threads to follow to run across your website.
Eventually, Google will find your site, but you will probably want to speed up the process. You can do this using Google Search Console.
Google Search Console is a tool that Google offers to help you see how Google sees your website. When you sign up, you can submit a site map of your website – so Google knows where to look for your site’s content.
2. Your content is poorly optimised
One of the main ways people will come to your site is through a Google search. But if the terminology on your site isn’t related to what your potential customers are searching for, you’ll lose out.
It’s tempting to use a minimalistic approach to sell your product, with beautiful photos and simple language – but consider the person who would ideally find your website by searching for a phrase like ‘custom tailoring South Brisbane.’ Make sure there is written content on your site that corresponds to the terms the average person might use to find it. Put yourself in the mind of your customer – what would you type into the Google search box, if you were looking for your product or service?
Optimising your written content is called on-page SEO and there are many nuanced things you should keep in ind when you are writing your text. If you are a WordPress user, try installing the plugin Yoast SEO – it will give you real time advice on optimising your on-page SEO.
3. You haven’t done any marketing
Marketing doesn’t just mean putting up a billboard or buying a TV spot. Consider who your target audience is and look into digital media marketing options – for example, Facebook will let you push ads to people in targeted demographic groups.
When you launch a brand new site, it doesn’t have a big chance of ranking high in Google until it has received more links and views – a little bit of promotion can start driving up interaction with your site, which will help to drive it up the search rankings. Consider your existing social media channels – Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin – and start driving your viewers to your site by linking to your latest blog posts and sharing your best content. Email marketing is another great way to drive traffic to your website. If you have a list of emails you can utilise many of the free email marketing software platforms available online to send our an email campaign promoting your website.
Depending on the type of product you have a bit of fanfare can be absolutely suitable – is your new website going up to complement the new store you just opened?
These are just a couple quick suggestions for reasons your site might not be getting much attention. Things can get trickier – particularly if you have competitors that already dominate in the mindshare of your potential clients, or competitors who have expert SEO. But use these as jumping off points and you’ll start finding new and better ways to get your site in front of the eyes of your potential customers.
