The Quiet Stages Your Website Goes Through

byChrisTowers

4.5K followers

2 weeks ago

There is something weird that happens when you work on your website. You can put in hours and hours of effort, follow all of the training, write regularly, improve on your posts, and still feel like nothing at all is moving.

I used to sit and wonder what on earth was going on with my site when everything just felt stopped.

Just know, that a slow period does not mean you are necessarily doing something wrong. Most of the time, it just means you are in one of those quiet stages that every site goes through.

The first thing I noticed when I got started is that websites seem to grow in waves. You might publish a few posts and see no activity at all for weeks. Then all of a sudden you see a few impressions, or a click, or maybe even someone leaves a comment for you out of nowhere.

It can feel a bit random I know, but it isn’t.

The search engines move at their own pace. They collect data, they see how your pages behave, and test them before they send you any decent traffic.

Another thing I learned is that your content can take a long time before it starts working for you. I have had posts sit there for ages doing absolutely nothing, and then months later they start getting visitors.

If you judge your site too early, it always feels like progress is missing. If you look at it later, everything makes a lot more sense.

I also found that keeping your website active, even with small updates, helps a lot. You do not always need to publish something big. A small improvement to a heading, an update to a paragraph, or fixing an old mistake shows search engines your site is alive.

Over time, this activity adds up.

Something else that is easy to miss is the effect of your own learning. When you get better at writing, SEO, structure, or layout, then your content improves. But the results of that improvement come much later. You might not see the benefit straight away, but it does matter.

When everything is quiet all the time, it is very easy to think you are not getting anywhere. But this is usually the moment when you are actually building the things that will help your site grow later on.

Another thing that helped me during these quiet stages with my websites was paying attention to the small signs. A few extra impressions in Search Console. A brand new keyword showing up. A click on an older post. These small things are worth noticing. They are signs that your site is getting there, even if it is moving slowly.

A quiet stage is not a sign of failure. It is simply part of how websites grow. I have seen this over and over again, both with my own sites and from many of you here at WA.

So if your site is like this at the moment, don’t panic. Keep writing. Keep updating a little. Your work does count, even if the results take a bit longer to show themselves.

How about you? Have you had these quiet stages where it felt like nothing was happening, and then things started to move later on?

Thanks for reading and have a great day :)

Chris