Why Are You Not Getting Traffic To Your Site? The Reason May Be More Obvious Than You Think.
It is definitely one of the most frequently asked questions among bloggers. The answer is usually not simple. However, sometimes we all overlook the obvious. We have all had the following experience.
Your dryer is not drying properly. Common sense is saying to you “Check to see if the lint trap is clogged.” But sense is not common and you skip ahead to step 2. and maybe 3 or 4. No success. So, as if it is her mission in life to make you look foolish, your wife asks “Did you Check to see if the lint trap is clogged?”
When you are troubleshooting, never overlook the obvious. The answer to your blog traffic issues may be something some would consider common sense. So this article is a common sense, fundamental checklist of things you should be doing to grow your blog traffic.
1. Publish Regularly
No matter what your schedule is for posting content, be consistent. Human beings are creatures of habit. Posting the same time and day of the week capitalizes on this fact. Also, consider that your blog is global. 7pm local time maybe best for those in the same time zone, but it may be 3am where most of your readers are. You can schedule your posts ahead to publish at the best time.
2. Optimize Your Content For Search Engines
If “Content is King”, then “SEO is queen“. It does not do any good to publish great content if no one can find it. And search engines (Of course Google, but don’t forget Bing and Yahoo!) are the way most content is found. SEO can be complex. But people overlook the obvious. Have you put the proper information in your ALT tags. Google’s robots cannot see pictures. They accept what you tell time in your images’ ALT tags.
3. Build Links Properly
When building links, a mix of dofollow and nofollow backlinks is desireable. Having only dofollow backlinks is seen by Google as unnatural. By default all links are dofollow. The tag “rel=nofollow” must be added to a link to make it nofollow.
For example, this link is dofollow:
<a href=”http://www.mysite.com”>My Site</a>
If we add “rel=nofollow”, the link becomes nofollow
<a href=”http://www.mysite.com” rel=”nofollow”>My Site</a>
Search engines acknowledge links that do not use the nofollow tag. When nofollow is used, the search engines do not acknowledge the link.
So why not always use dofollow? Google expects links to be categorized. Links with lower priority or importance are expected to be tagged as nofollow. The same applies to untrusted content and paid links, Also a downside of dofollow links is that they attract spam.
4. Make sure you are facilitating the Indexing process
Google can’t instantly find out if a new link was created. Google has to come to your house and inspect or “crawl” your site. I think of it as selling a house. Do your part to help sell it. Good sitemaps make it easier for robots to look around in your house. Blog title and description are like real estate listings. Meta description is another common sense, yet often overlooked detail. Remember you are trying to sell your house. The indexing process takes time. Only Google knows how long. In WordPress, you can use SEO plugins like Yoast SEO to make things easier.
5. Be Patient
This whole process takes time, so be patient. Google has a massive job indexing the entire web. Your content and backlinks will not be found immediately. Googles robots thrive on change. They seek out web content that is frequently changing. If your content is constantly changing, Google’s robots have to visit more frequently. Relevance is the other factor. You need links to show that your content is important to the community. It can’t be stressed enough: Be patient! It is a marathon, not a sprint. In this race the best rewards come through perseverance. You are building something. Set goals and be happy with steady progress.
Building a site is a journey. KlearVue is here to help you along that journey. Sign up for our newsletter and grow with us.
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