Semalt Expert Explains Key Reasons Why A Site May Lose Traffic And How To Fix It



Traffic volume is one of the key performance indicators of any Internet resource designed to interact with potential company customers, partners or investors. Without a steady flow of targeted visitors, the site cannot be beneficial to the business. Instead of being a tool to increase profits, it risks becoming a useless appendage that requires ongoing hosting costs.

In addition, usability affects the number of visitors who return to the site. It affects the conversion rate of visitors into customers, which is important for the effectiveness of the resource.

In this article, we have collected several key reasons why a site may lose visitors. In addition, we will also describe the main methods to remedy the situation.

What are the reasons for the low attendance?

Low traffic has two main causes: unsuccessful development and inept traffic promotion (or lack thereof).

So, let's look at each one in more detail.

Low traffic due to unsuccessful development

The low traffic due to unsuccessful development is related to several factors such as:
  1. Slowness: The longer users wait for pages to load, the less time they have left. It is important to optimize the Page Speed so that a page does not load more than 3 seconds. This SEO Tool can be very useful for you to improve the website page speed: It is the Page speed analyzer.
  2. Lack of responsive design: By forgetting the interests of smartphone users, you lose about half of your targeted visitors. Therefore, it is important to ensure responsive design when developing a resource. This will also make it practical for all types of devices.
  3. The pursuit of creativity. It is important to remember that the main task of the site is not to impress the visitor, but to help him. For the user, a site is first and foremost a shopping tool, an information retrieval tool or a means of communication. This is often forgotten when trying to create unique visual solutions. As a result, the visitor sees an attractive image, original design solutions, but has no idea how to use the resource.
  4. Poorly chosen hosting. The choice of a host determines the speed of the site and the load it will face. For example, common problems with free hosting, a lot of advertising that scares away visitors, and a lack of quality technical support. If you use the services of foreign providers, it can slow down the resource if it is intended for an audience in your country.

The promotion of inept traffic (or its total absence)

If the resource is developed with high quality, the problem probably lies in marketing. Not paying attention to the promotion of the site, you deprive it of the possibility of growth. So, here are some things to remember.
  1. Neglect of other traffic channels: In addition to search, the resource may also receive traffic from social networks. As well as banner ads and posts on news sites. The best results can be achieved by using digital marketing tools in combination with a best SEO tool; rather than focusing on just one thing.
  2. Low-quality content: If the text on the site is written exclusively for search robots, you can not count on high traffic. When creating content, it is important, first of all, to take into account the interests of the reader. Also, you must ensure the content of information and ease of reading. You should not forget the SEO requirements: uniqueness, the density of key hits, etc. But the main task of the text is to give the user the necessary information quickly and in a convenient form.
  3. The resource was created recently: This reason is not a consequence of the poor performance of promotion specialists, but rather a pattern. It is always more difficult for young sites to improve their own positions in search. Therefore, the best solution, in this case, is to pay attention to traffic channels and SEO.

The main methods to increase your website traffic

It's important to understand that there are completely different normal traffic metrics for different niches. First, it's important to know what maximum number of visits per month you can count on. This can be done in two steps:
  • Step 1: Competitive analysis. Based on the traffic of several direct competitors of your resource, you can know the average traffic indicator in the niche. But it is important to remember that the most accurate data can be obtained only by searching for sites operating in the same region as you and offering a similar product.
  • Step 2: Demand analysis. Google Trends allows you to determine the dynamics of the evolution of users interest in certain topics. Topics like: seasonality of the demand, general growth or decrease of interest in the last years.
On the other hand, if you provide a unique product with which the audience is not yet familiar, then it will be more difficult to get data on possible traffic. Because the main source of traffic in the early stages of development will be advertising channels, not search results. A large-scale marketing study is needed as well as segmentation and target audience research, consumer surveys and research of indirect competitors.

In addition to those two steps, you can think about the following:

Audit of sites

The reasons for low attendance must be determined first. To do this, specialists perform a complete audit of the resource, where they determine:
  • Technical status.
  • Search engine optimization errors.
  • The main reasons for the visitors to leave.
If the problem lies in poor design or if the resource is simply obsolete; the only solution is to create a new resource, thus, taking into account the individual business objectives. Also, if the site is a victim of inept marketing, you need to re-engage in its promotion. A comprehensive audit allows you to identify and eliminate most technical errors during optimization. I.e. duplicate pages and content, broken links, lack of CNC, etc. And let me tell you that the best SEO tool, All in One, that can help you for this global audit is the Semalt new technology SEO tool: the Dedicated SEO Dashboard (DSD). It gives you the largest way to analyze your website than other competitor SEO tools.

Consult the site for filters

Due to Google filters, a site can lose a significant proportion of search traffic. The reasons for falling under the filters are different:
  • Using black or grey SEO techniques
  • Bulk purchase of links
  • Numerous technical errors on the site
  • Publishing over-optimized or non-unique content
  • Viruses or hacking
The result of such sanctions can be the removal of a site from the index, either completely or partially. The filter notification can be seen in the Google Search Console panel.

To get rid of the filter, you need to understand and eliminate the cause. Also, you can contact the technical support of the search engine or wait for reindexing to remove the penalties. The main reasons are described in the notification. For more information, you can contact the technical support of the search engine.

Extension of the semantic core

The semantic core should contain the maximum number of query clusters to which your site can provide a relevant answer. The number of search results pages on which your resource will appear depends on this.

To expand the semantic core, specialists use tools like the Dedicated SEO Dashboard. Then you have to manually exclude all irrelevant requests. Because the services do not work perfectly. The following types of keys should be excluded from the semantic core:
  • Goods or services you do not provide.
  • Mention cities and countries where you do not provide services.
  • Names of competing organizations.
  • Words that mislead the user or lead to untargeted traffic: "free", "cheap", "used", etc.

Misspelt words

After collecting the keys, they should be combined into groups that reveal a distinct topic to be grouped. Each group should appear on a separate page to avoid keyword cannibalization; a phenomenon when site pages compete with each other in search results.

When collecting the semantic core, you should not ignore low-frequency queries. For example, these may be long-tail keys: "Buy a winter coat for men in Kiev", instead of "buy a coat". Such keys will attract fewer visitors, but these users tend to be more interested in a purchase (or other targeted action) and convert more easily. But according to them, you can quickly get positions in the TOP-3 due to low competition.

Social Media Marketing

It helps to attract traffic from social networks. There are two ways to do this: targeted ad campaigns and staying active on the official company page. In the first case, you set up ad impressions for your target audience and get traffic from them. The second method allows you to gradually attract users to the site. You will also gain their trust by regularly publishing valuable and informative articles.

Summary. To remember

  1. Use different channels to attract visitors to the site. 
  2. Plan your advertising campaign strategy carefully, don't let things take their course. 
  3. Always analyze the results with the help of web analytics services and adjust the chosen course. 
  4. Constantly develop your site, make it more useful and easier to use. 
  5. Contact professionals who know exactly how to increase your website traffic in a short time and with maximum efficiency.