What Am I Doing Wrong?
Carrying on from my previous blog post I said that I wouldn't give up on this dream. But what with no apparent improvement on my site visitors I wonder if there is any point at all.
I have been steadily working on my site for more than 10 months now. Last month my visitors were around the 150 mark. That has steadily gone down. The other day it was just 64.
So what am I doing wrong?
Over the last few months I have made many improvements to my site:
- Rewritten and extended the word count on many posts, (exceeding 1500 words)
- Added images to make posts more visual
- Optimized images
- Put in relevant YouTube videos to make posts more readable and for people to stay on page longer
- Bought the Pro version of my theme, which looks more appealing than the free version
- This has meant that I have removed several plugins that I now don't need
I try to post 2-3 posts a week and plug them on social media. I also try to get comments on my posts. What with a busy life, (don't we all), I do believe I could be on more active on social media and try to get more comments. But I don't think that that is the reason why I have seen a decrease in visitors.
Every time I make improvements I hope to see visitors to increase. But this latest dive has left me deflated.
What more can I do?
Recent Comments
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What is your site about? And besides posting posts what do you do else? Do you advertise on some social media or some other medias/places? Do you have an email list? If yes, do you contact your list on a regular base? E.g. by sending them the posts you write every week.
Don't look all the time for new visitors only. Most of them will be one time visitors anyhow, if you don't offer them anything. So entertain your email list with your post. Give them some free gifts and from time to time make them a paying offer. E.g. Wealthy Affiliate.
I give guides and tips for people tracing their family tree. I also give reviews about programs, sites, books, magazines, etc.
I do post on Google +, Facebook and twitter. I find that I have had more success with Twitter. Due to not having much time though I probably haven't been able to use these to their potential.
I haven't yet set up an email list but it is something that I want to do in the near future.
You do quite a lot already. I suggest you to start an email list. I guess you already have the emails of the visitors who left comments. So you can start an email list. Send them the post you put on your blog. And from time to time make a product review and send them an offer. I hope I could be of help.
I feel like I'm in the same boat as you Owain, I've been doing things to my site to make it more appealing but not yet seeing any real increase in traffic.
Now I'm going back through my older posts to see where I can add more content to them and add some internal links as well. I can only hope that this will make a difference.
You can do that and there is nothing wrong with it but there are some posts you just won't rank for. Kyle mentioned this and his advice is to continue adding new posts. I tend to focus more on that.
Hi Adrian, a few months ago I took some time out to fix up old posts. It took me a whole week to go through my posts and rewrite them.
I couldn't believe how much that I needed to do. After I had developed my writing style I felt that I needed to touch up older posts to make my site look more consistent to the visitor.
I still do this from time to time whenever I see an improvement that I can do for my posts.
My main goal is to add new posts all the time. But if I can I will go back and do some fixing up.
Thanks Craig, you're right there are some posts that you won't rank for no matter how good you think they are. I'm still adding new posts and just going back to some older ones when I get a chance.
I remember you mentioning it at the time and I thought that was a good idea what you did as it makes all your posts consistent with your writing style.
It's good that you still check some of your older posts as long as it doesn't soak up too much of your time.
Hello!
I have been there. I will confess that as of now I still have not had a successful website, meaning traffic wise. The main thing that keeps me going is that sooner or later things will click.
The number 1 thing I have learned here so far is all about traffic and getting your pages ranked. What CraigUKTV said about this is spot on as far as my opinion goes. If your pages aren't ranking well, then you will never get the traffic to that page unless you do some pay per click or something.
It is and always will be my number routine to check page rankings after a few months, keep track of them and see how they do. For pages that consistantly don't rank well, change them up a bit and continue to watch them. I had like 4 pages a while back that used keywords that showed well in the keyword tool. After 2 months, they got zero traffic and ranked very bad or not at all. I immediately changed them, used different keywords and republished them.
Within a day, they ranked better.
Of course I am still learning but this was a huge thing to learn and this will always be the forefront of everything I do here.
Its all about the page rank stupid! (The stupid is not meant for you, it was in reference to myself) Its all about the PAGE RANK stupid! I detailed what happened a bit more in that post. Use all the tools available to constantly watch how your pages/ posts are doing. This is the core of how your website will do, in my opinion.
Keep at it, stay strong, keep working.
I had a website that failed for over 12 years but I am still here trying, lol. The information I have received from WA has definitely helped my out big time and I do feel I have a better understanding of why I failed in the past and how I am going to succeed in the future!
Good luck!
Thanks for that. I did notice that one of my posts did rank well, after three weeks of it being published. It helped with my visitors for a couple of months before losing its traction.
I have keywords in my list title, in the first and last paragraph, as image title and alt tags. Looks though that I will have to check whether I need to add more keywords in my post.
In these situations I look at the following:
1. What changes I have made and are they working as I intended
2. What changes have occurred outside of my control, what impact have these had - fix if I have too.
3. I look at how I got this far and decide if I have gone off the rail
Generally speaking that is it in a nutshell, and at the end I either conclude I am doing ok and just keep on doing what I am doing OR that I have made some unwise decisions and correct those.
It seems like you are doing / have done this so perhaps it is just a matter of keeping going and reviewing in 3 months.
Have faith in what you are doing after your review and build on it.
Thanks for that Steve. Anything that I think I could improve on I have done. I have been looking at when my visitors nose dived and can't really see a connection.
I will have to check how my keywords are ranking and see what I can do about it.
It looks like you're doing everything. I've been told that success on the Internet can take up to a year or so. Hang in there
When I started this I realized that it would take time. After all we are building a business from scratch. I didn't realize how long it would take and also to get a decent amount of money.
With the lack of visitors lately I thought maybe I was doing something wrong. Am I being punished by google I asked myself?
Hopefully in time it will improve.
Owain, we have spoken about this before and I can sympathize. Have you checked your rankings? Obviously that is what drives traffic to your site. Out of my 127 posts so far, I think I have around 30+ on page 1 of Google. I'm telling you this so you can compare. Obviously the other search engines also generate traffic. I don't spend any time on social media except to share each post. You don't need to worry about SM, there are people here just generating traffic from search engines.
We all get deflated, myself included but I'm looking on it as a bit of a hobby and hope that eventually it will take off. I know you want to do it full-time and so do I, but I have no idea when that may happen. I think it's niche-dependent too.
I hope you don't give up but you need to get that traffic up and it's all down to rankings. My posts are 900 to 1300 words and very few greater than 1500, one or two maybe.
Thanks Craig.
How are you checking your rankings?
I use Google plus and Facebook just to plug my posts. I do the same with twitter but sometimes I comment on other people's tweets who are in my niche.
Maybe I shouldn't worry too much about word count then. My latest batch of posts are about 1000-1100 words long. But previously they have been at least 1500.
I use Jaaxy to check my rankings. It's a bit tedious as you can only check one at a time. I also keep a note of all rankings on a spreadsheet for each post just so I can keep an eye on them, but lately I haven't been checking back so much since traffic doesn't just come from Google.
That's a good idea about a spreadsheet. Will have to do that. Just so much to do. Argh ... headache!
It sounds like you have done everything you can so far.
The one thing is how most are using mobile devices more that computers/laptops now.
People are in a rush and want everything faster. Long content in pages and posts may not be what they want to read. I keep mine short and to the point because of this.
Don't worry, things will pick up. Winter is over and a lot of people are not as active with online shopping etc..
There is always a quiet season for everything.
Thank you Patsy.
Maybe it is a season thing though. It just feels like it's getting worse. I had hoped that site visitors would stay relatively the same at the best but it's just worse.
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Hi Owain,
Many websites have been hit by Google's latest update - Fred. And yes, it affects ranking and traffic.
Here's an article about it - http://searchengineland.com/googles-fred-update-hit-low-value-content-sites-aimed-revenue-helping-users-271165
Do a search on - latest google update affect ranking and traffic - and you will see many articles about this.
Thankfully, there are ways to get that ranking and traffic back.
Be encouraged. There are solutions. And you can apply them to get it all back.
Success to you! :)
P.S. Conversely, my ranking has improved. For a while, it sat at page 5 of Google search. Then after weeks, to page 4. Lately, I noticed my website has stabilized at top 3 of page 3. I am now working on getting it to page 1, and I believe it can happen.
Thankfully, my rankings on Bing and Yahoo are stable. They don't seem to have changed their algorithm (yet). On Bing and Yahoo, I have been on page 1 and still am. (took me 2 - 3 months to get there, and am grateful they stayed at page 1)
If this action by Google has been done as is suggested, "on the quiet" how many other people have been affected and why isn't this an issue for discussion here at WA
Hi Steve,
If you did some research, you will find that many websites reported loss of traffic and drop in rankings. Exactly how many that's not known.
As to why this isn't an issue here at WA - not being an issue yet does not mean it is not an issue. Over my years as a digital marketer, I have witnessed sites drop in rankings due to search algorithm changes, and for some sites it happened quickly, for some it took months.
This is because it takes time for the search bots to reassess every site based on the new algorithm.
Thanks. It looks like I have lost my way with my site. I need to provide more quality over quantity. It's going to take some time but I will fix it and I will be back Google.
Welcome Owain.
Yes. Now search engines value quality over quantity. This will continue. And future algorithm updates are predicted to look more into quality.
Focus on what value you can offer people.
Yes. You will be back on Google, Yahoo ans Bing (don't forget the latter 2, they are 33% of search traffic).
Great success to you! :)
Thanks. I must admit I was lacking a bit of quality lately. As I am a month behind where I would like to be I've been pumping them out.
Quality not too bad but obviously could be better. Will have to limit my affiliate links and not be so aggressive.
Oh. I read an article that said too many affiliate links can affect ranking now.
So yes, be less aggressive on this.
Yeah I think I overdid it. Will take a bit of work, but hopefully with changes I can see things but finally improve.
I Had one article with 2000 words plus... My readers told me it was very interesting but way to long and I should split it to make it more enjoyable.
People do not have so much time to read every 1500 plus after work. Imagin!
Better a bit shorter but high on quality
Hope you improve and Start earning your revenue.
Blessings
Uta
Some of my posts that I have written I felt were long. So then I decided to split them in half.
Although it's a lot of work I am really looking forward to fixing up my posts and 'hopefully' watch my ranking climb.
I wish you the best of success!
It is a learning process and those who do not give up will succeed
Keep going! The idea is great / it has all its potential
Share your page here too! So you can get better reviews and maybe some ideas how to improve
Thanks. I got ideas on how to improve things but the more the merrier.
I want to cut down affiliate links on posts
Add pros and cons to my reviews
Discuss customer queries on products
That's enough to get started but if you any suggestions then that would be great.
Here's my site: http://thegenealogyguide.com
I will go through it in a bit of time / at the moment I am really running short of it .... Lots of family things to do. Far too many birthdays and so on ;)
Yep I know what that's like. I have done the majority of the first point, but still working on it. I am really concentrating on quality and I really hope that it does improve my rankings. It should.