Common Issues That Affect Your Site And Getting Traffic
There are some common issues that affect sites causing them to miss out on traffic and visitors. Many of these are easy fixes and can help you improve quickly or better yet avoid issues all together.
- Domain Name Relevance
When you pick your domain name, you want to try and make it relevant to what the site is about and your overall brand.
- Free Hosting
While free hosting is a nice way to get started, it does make it look less professional. Also, there are some host that offer free domains with their services but first check out the my reasons to get your domain name separate from your hosting.
- Slow Pages
Slow pages cause people to move on from your site. Check your site’s speed and what can be done to improve it. Sometimes it’s little tweaks that can make a big difference. (I suggest WPRocket to help with this!)
- Not Checking Content Demand for an Audience
Before starting a site and putting your all into it, check the demand for the content. Know who your target audience is. Is it something that is helpful to people? Something people are searching for?
- Not setting up Google Analytics
Google Analytics gives you a lot of insight into your site. It can help you see what is and isn’t working, where your traffic is coming from and more. Don’t live in the dark!
- Keywords and Topics
Plan out and research your keywords and topics. You want to be purposeful with the words and topics that you choose in order to get traffic to your site. It’s important to understand the intent behind keywords.
- Keyword Targeting
What keywords do you want to target? Make sure that you don’t stuff the keywords where it doesn’t make sense. You want to keep it helpful and relevant.
- Duplication
Duplicating post titles or content doesn’t look good. When post titles are duplicated especially, it starts to confuse search engine bots.
- Consistent Language
Be consistent with your language and brand. If you’re offering something on your site and call it a “free upgrade” stick with that phrasing. When you switch and start calling it a “bonus,” “add on” or “special deal” people may start to question it. Consistency makes people comfortable. When you use the same phrasing for instructions or advice users will begin to understand the meaning behind it immediately when they see it.
- Quality
Quality over quantity is always a good rule. Check spelling and formatting as well as links. You want your site to come across as one of quality.
- Images without optimization
When you don’t optimize your images you waste space and possibly slow down your site. It’s best to try and optimize before uploading but is highly recommended to use an image optimizer plugin as well.
- Call to Action is unclear or missing value
A Call to Action should do just that. Call your user to do an action. What is it you’d like them to do and why will it benefit them? Be sure this is clear in your statement.
- Bad Internal Linking
When you link within your site, it is recommended to stay within topics. For example, if you are blogging on the best places to travel, you don’t want to have an internal link to a page about buying shoes. On your travel post, you could use an internal link to a post about a similar destination.
- Not linking to authoritative sites
Linking is what essentially makes the web go round. Remember the phrase “if you walk with the wise you will grow wise”? Similar theory here. Use authoritative links to work your way to also becoming an authority.
- Quality backlinks
The quality of your links matter. Don’t just link to any site, check it out and make sure it is legit. If you have a lot of bad backlinks it can get you in hot water with google and can also be annoying to site visitors. (Try Ahrefs Free Backlink Checker)
- Neglecting site maintenance
Neglecting site maintenance would be not putting oil in your car or not cleaning your house. In order for it to run correctly and not be bogged down, you’ve got to perform maintenance on your site.
- Social Presence
Your Social Presence is important and consistency across social media. Use the same name across all platforms and the same profile picture. The content can vary some based on the target audience you are reaching but you want to have a presence and have the branding be consistent. (Check out Mention as a free tool to use and check your social presence)
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