Why No Traffic On Your Site?
If no-one is visiting your site then you are doing something wrong.
SCENARIO
Consider this scenario:-
- You are thinking about opening a shop in a bustling town
- The sales agent tells you that South Street is a great place to open one because it's always swarming with customers
- You build a smart shiny new shop in North Street
- You go broke because nobody comes to your shop
QUESTION
What is the problem in that scenario? Why did the shop not get the promised customers?
If you seriously cannot see what the problem is then you have a MUCH BIGGER problem than I first thought, and one that no-one on this planet will be able to solve for you.
The problem is ... you put the shop where the customers don't go. They go to South Street. You are in North Street.
WHY? Why did you do that?
Whose fault is it? The agent who told you about the swarm of customers? Or you for building in North Street when you were told that the customers are in South Street?
MADNESS!
YOUR SHOP (YOUR WEBSITE)
So how does this relate to your site and the traffic?
It lies in your choice of keyword.
- You choose a keyword.
- You ask a keyword tool for information about that keyword
- The keyword tool tells you there is a swarm of traffic, and that the swarm is ON PAGE 1
So you've been told, categorically, so why would you put your site on some other page? A page that is NOT page 1? A page that does not get traffic?
WHY? Why did you do that?
Why did you choose to use a keyword that puts you where the traffic isn't?
MADNESS!
GO WHERE THE CUSTOMERS GO
The keyword has the traffic, sure, but you need to put your site where that traffic is.
The keyword tool tells you, via the QSR, what page YOU will be on, if you decide to use that keyword. The QSR tells you how far your shop will be AWAY FROM the traffic that is in South Street.
- QSR 0-20 are on Page 1. These are the shops that are IN South Street. These are the shops that get the traffic
- QSR 21-40 are on page 2
- QSR 41-60 are on Page 3
- etc
At the end of the day, it's entirely your choice about where you put your shop - South Street, North Street (or anywhere else).
You make that choice from the QSR.
THE SOLUTION IS EASY
If you want traffic then you need to stop using the wrong keywords. Stop using keywords that have great traffic, but are on a page that does not get traffic.
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Recent Comments
146
Thanks for the info Chris. I am still struggling with this whole QSR (competition - I use the free keyword tool) business. Any idea if there could be some niche specific issues with low qsr?
Let me explain what I mean a bit. In my niche, any keyword/phrase and long tail keyword that has a qsr under 50 (even under 100) the monthly searches are also very low (on average, less than 10). If I want any keyword with monthly searches over even just 50 I can guarantee that the qsr will be over 100-200.
Maybe I am really missing something here, but is it possible that this can occur with certain niches?
In any niche there are keywords with low QSR, you just have to keep on looking for them.
As I have said, dozens of times over, the traffic number is meaningless. You dismiss a traffic figure of 50 as if it's meaningless. Are you really getting so many visitors that 50 is not worth the trouble? Do you even get 50 visitors a month?
If you want to, you can go ahead and target a QSR of 200, which gets you what you are getting ie zero visitors.
Or you can target a QSR of 5 and get 10 visitors.
Which is better, 10 or 0? It's a simple enough question. Page 1 in 6 hours dead
OK, I see your point. I always go back to kyles training though and in one of them he mentioned making sure the montly searches were above 50. But I think I will give your theory a try.
You can set whatever traffic level you want as your minimum. Set it at 50 if you want to.
Whatever the number is, that number is not going to come to you. You have to go to where it is.
Only the QSR can tell you that.
This post made me go back and take a look at my keywords with jaaxy. As a newbie, I made this mistake in some earlier posts. I'll be making revisions today on those posts. Thank you for this!
-Stephen
Check out some of my other posts related to this topic and save yourself even more grief.
A lot to think about? No! Think QSR and you're done.
Either you place your site where the traffic is, or you place it where the traffic isn't. It's not rocket science.
Good Morning Chris,
From the classes I've taken and research on Keywords I've done I thought I was doing all the right things. I've tried just about everything that has been suggested. I especially paid attention to the Alphabet soup method and then the low hanging fruit one as well. I put a keyword phrase in my Website Title that returned great numbers and high rankings on Google at first my ranking on google was 2nd from the top on the first page of my Niche and I ranked even higher on Yahoo. However, my overall health site rankings are showing 100% on almost all of them.. When my ranking started to slide on Publishing Frequency, and don't understand why my feedback is so low (I'll explain that below) I researched some more and I was told to use keywords that were between 50 to 100 an so I did.
I think I have another problem, I dedicate a lot of time in helping others, I always answer questions and try to help Newbies. I do reviews on peoples Blogs and tutorials. I do reviews on SiteRubix to earn credits and to help others. When someone is discouraged I point them in the right direction and encourage them, and then look in on them to see how they're doing and to see if they need more help? Unfortunately, in doing all of this my ranking on publishing content is way down. I believe it's because of the following reasons: 1. because I'm still building my site and I'm an "A" personality, but it's just about done, 2, I try to follow the WA policy of paying it forward and 3. I'm so busy giving feedback that I'm not posting enough content! I work 10 to 12 hours a day at least 6 days a week and sometimes 7. I'm not kidding, but I feel like I'm spinning my tires? Any suggestions would be welcomed. Thanks for your time Chris, and your Blog is full of important info that I'm sure is going to help me. Sharon:)
It's a major juggling act to balance the time spent on maintaining your own site with the time spent supporting WA members.
Everyone on the planet has exactly the same, 24hrs/day. Only you can make the call as to where you want to spend yours. Like money, you can't spend it twice.
No-one will hold it against you if you focus on your own site. When you are successful in that then you will be able to take time out to come back here and pick up on the support side.
Thank You Chris, I get it now! You have been very helpful. If there's anything I can do for you please let me know! I'll be back once I have created a whole lot of Content for my Website:) Sharon
Thanks, Chris. Sadly, I think that kinda describes my shop.
Did the target QSR get lower?
I was going for QSR
The "target QSR", as you put it, has not changed, but it does differ depending on which lesson you get it from.
Some places it's 300, elsewhere it's 100. I think I've also seen 50 somewhere. The actual number is an irrelevance. They are all guidelines, not hard and fast rules.
Going for "QSR under 300" simply means not attempting to take on the big guns that you'd have no chance of dominating.
Just like everything else in life, not all your competitors are identical.
Of the 300 (or whatever number you target), a good proportion will be utterly hopeless and can be discounted. A handful will be absolute top guns. The rest will be a mix of good/bad/indifferent.
If you are on page 3 already then, as you say, with maturity and activity it will improve. Unless someone else comes along with something better (probably someone who has recently joined WA, who knows) and shoves ahead of you.
New sites are being born every day. Old and un-maintained sites are being removed every day. It's a moving target, like everything else in life. Nothing stays the same forever. Maybe customers will get bored with South Street and move North for a change.
One of my colleagues recently out-gunned a major Page 1 dominator (actually Discovery Channel) by piggy-backing a trending sports event and finding a keyword which combined the sports event with the channel but in a low ranking form.
He has done this on numerous occasions, and now earns just over $1m/mo (no kidding) from his blog http://www.johnchow.com/
Your comment made it a bit clearer for me. I'm learning a lot! Thanks for your hard work in responding to all of these questions!
It's one of the joys of being slightly schizoid. I always explain stuff as if I'm trying to get me to understand, and to hammer it into my brain.
This in itself is a great idea, that way more people can follow the thought process and gain a greater understanding from it.
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Great explanation Chris. I for one always thought that only 1 to 10 are on page one, but I now see you say it is in fact 1 to 20.
From that I deduct that anything from a QSR of 20 and below would mean I could rank on page 1, right ?
Or more precisely, if the QSR is say 15, it means there are already 14 other sites higher than what my chosen keyword would put me in.
I hope I am not confusing everybody now. Please let me know ?
Thanks you very much.
-Theuns
It's easy enough to find out how many entries are on page 1. Call up a search page and count them.
The QSR actually takes into account many more things than simply the number of entries, so it's not quite as black and white as that. But, as a rough and ready "rule of thumb", it does an adequate job.
Your "under 20 means page 1" is not a bad target, and again is extremely easy to test.
Your assumption that "15 means 14 ahead of you" is not correct because
a) probably half of that 14 could be crap compared to your site, thus are "behind you". Maybe, only 7 are "ahead of you"
b) one or more could be spectacularly brilliant and hold the top 5 places
Overall, though, your assessment is workable and reasonable.
Got it. Many thanks for your explanation.
My pleasure.