5 Reasons Your Blog Could be Losing Traffic and What To Do About it!

If you have managed to create a website with good levels of growing traffic, it can be disheartening when the number of visitors starts to decline.  It’s important not to panic or end up feeling low.  Many bloggers have periods when their traffic plateaus or starts to decline.  The important thing is to recognize it’s happening and take action to get your traffic back on track.

Here are five of the most common reasons why websites lose traffic and the most effective solutions.

1.  Seasonal Rises and Falls

Seasonality is one of the most common reasons why websites see a rise and fall throughout the year.  Every niche has a natural traffic trend, with increased popularity at certain times of the year.  For example, a gadget blog is likely to get more traffic in November and December, as people search for Christmas presents.  However January and February may be much quieter. 

The Solution:

If your website is fairly new you might not have enough visitor data to understand the seasonality of your niche.  So it’s important to install an analysis plug in as soon as you create your website, such as Google Analytics for WordPress, which allows you to monitor your traffic.  Also you can use websites such as Google Trends, which show you the keywords most searched for on the web and the trends for any keyword.  This may give you an idea of when to expect traffic highs and lows. 

If you think your website is being affected by seasonality, don’t panic!  Simply try to maximize the opportunities that seasonality brings.  Tailor your content to the different times of the year and make a note of what works.  For example, if you have a blog about digital cameras, in November and December it’s important to maximize the Christmas traffic.  Make top 10 lists of The Best Point and Shoot Digital Cameras, How to Buy a Digital Camera, or The Top 10 Online Digital Camera Retailers. 

Naturally you may see a decline in traffic in January, so think of content that people may need.  Articles such as, How to Use Your New Digital Camera or Tips for Taking the Best Digital Photo take advantage of website visitors looking for tips on how to use their new digital camera.  You might even run a photograph competition for the best amateur digital photo.  Think outside the box and get creative!

2.  How Often Are you Posting?

This is a very common reason why website traffic declines.  You need to keep your content fresh and current.  You can’t simply leave a site without putting new content onto it regularly.  

The Solution:  

It really depends on your niche how often you need to post.  However a good rule of thumb is at least three times per week, up to maximum a few times per day.   More importantly is to get a regular rhythm, posting at roughly the same time each day with the same frequency.  This can help to create a loyal readership.

3.  Content Quality

Now of course not all of us are natural writers.  That’s why when you create a website it’s important to find a topic you enjoy, are passionate about and have good knowledge of.  This will make it much easier to create quality posts.  If you’re not creating good content that people want to read, of course your traffic will decline.

The Solution: 

Take a look at other websites in your niche and see what’s popular out there.  What style of writing do people like?  Ask yourself, are you being relevant to your bloggers?  Are you providing them something of value?  Are you answering their questions and providing solutions?

Also check your grammar and spelling.  People hate blogs that are difficult to read and have poor spelling.  For more ideas on how to create good quality content, read our tips on How to Engage and Grow your WordPress Blog Readership.  

4.  Are You Promoting Your Content?

This may sound obvious but after you create a website, even with the best quality content you need to let people know you’re there and what you are about.  Effective promotional activity depends on your niche and the style of your website, but it’s important to get your message heard. 

The Solution:

One of the most effective ways of promoting your website is through social networking sites, such as Facebook, Linkedin, Digg, Twitter and Stumbleupon.  Here are some ideas:

  • Make it easy for people to share your content.  Sociable is one of the best social networking plug ins, putting a drop down menu of up to 99 different sites at the bottom of each post, making it very simple for people to spread the word about your site.
  • Directly connect to Facebook and Twitter:  once you’ve built up a good network of contacts on Twitter and Facebook, using the Gigya Socialize plug in your visitors can directly connect to your website from Facebook and Twitter.  They can also bring all their friends with them!  This is one of the best ways to keep in touch with thousands of people all at the same time, alerting them of when you have new content or special offers on your site. 
  • Twitter Feed: another really simple plug in that allows you to connect directly with Twitter, putting your latest posts as RSS feeds on Twitter and updating your blog with tweets.  This saves you time and effort and can be really effective at driving traffic to your site.  All of these social networking plug ins are available for free on our resources page.
  • Linkedin: another great social networking site to promote your content is Linkedin.  For more information on how to tap into Linkedin traffic and networking, read this article on 5 Secrets to Using Linkedin to Boost Quality Blog Traffic.

5.  Don’t Give Up!

This is one of the best pieces of advice you’ll hear when you create a website.  It takes time to build up blog traffic and it’s not going to happen overnight.  Don’t expect your content to suddenly take off.  You need to put in time, effort and some creative promotional thinking in order to bring in traffic that will enable you to monetize your blog.  The most important thing is to keep on top of what’s going on with your blog.  Use plug ins such as Google Analytics for WordPress and understand where your visitors are coming from and what they like and don’t like.  Then you’ll know how to make your blog a real success. 

 


How to Engage and Grow Your Wordpress Blog Readership

Did you know that the average amount of time people spend on any website is 10 seconds?  People will quickly leave your site if you don’t grab their attention and engage them immediately.  Then there’s the issue of getting them to come back again and recommend you to their friends.

People lead busy and stressful lives, so you need to give them something that adds value to them personally. If you can make them feel engaged on an individual level, this will help keep them on your site, encourage them to recommend you to their friends as well as coming back time and time again.  This is the key to Wordpress blog success and this article tells you exactly how to do it.

Offer Advice

This is one of the best ways to keep your visitors loyal.  If you’re writing a Wordpress blog, you must already be an expert on something.  Share your knowledge with practical tips they can use in their own lives right away, whatever is relevant to your site, whether it’s gardening tips, business growth advice or baby care.  Encourage them to come back and share their stories and use the Comments Section to give advice to individual regular visitors.

Appeal to Your Readers

Your website traffic is coming to you for specific information on your niche.  So it’s important you get to know them and understand what they really like.  Read the comments section, look at feedback about your site in other forums and social networks.  Plus you can use plug ins such as Google Analytics and StatPress to really understand your visitors, find out which sites they’re being referred from, which keywords work best and which pages they most enjoy.

Share Your Personal Experience

If you let people know the person behind the blog, they’re more likely to connect and engage with your site.  You can also bring your ideas and advice to life using real examples and stories you’ve come across.  Adding a simple photo of yourself can also increase reader engagement.  WP Photo Album is a great Wordpress plug in for adding a visual edge to your blog with photos.

Try Something Unique

Every once in a while add a post which is completely different, unique and even wacky.  It might draw in some new traffic and provide some fun for your readers.  It’s like the “and finally” story at the end of a new broadcast.  They always have some quirky feature to lift viewers and allow them to leave the programme feeling happy.

Get To The Point

No one wants to read long ramblings that go on and on.  Keep your posts short and sweet so they’re easy to understand and free from pointless waffle.  Or if you have a long topic to explain, use a multi-part series to keep your readers coming back to your Wordpress blog for more.

Encourage Comments

At the end of each post, ask specific and direct questions to encourage comments.  This increases the interactivity of your Wordpress blog and keeps readers coming back to find out the latest comments.  A really useful plug in is Subscribe to Comments, that allows visitors to sign up for email notification of when someone has replied to their comments.


Are You Losing Visitors with Broken Links? How to Fix Them

There are many times that a website builder or owner would encounter broken links and 404 (page cannot be found errors), resulting in the loss of the website’s hard-earned and valued traffic. This article will talk about how that can be easily resolved.

As a website builder, I know for a fact that one of the most common headaches that a lot of website builders have to deal with are broken links.  Broken links are not necessarily out of carelessness as most of the time, they are a result of editing your site’s page file names which in turn changes that file name’s URL. If the previous URL has already been indexed by search engines, it may show up in search results and clicking it will lead to a blank page or 404 (page cannot be found) errors.

A common example is when you change a page URL for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. Once you change a page URL, the old URL will now lead to a blank page. If taken to a certain degree, these mishaps could even get your site blacklisted in the minds of your followers, leading to the demise of your site’s reason for existence. Search Engines do not like broken links too, and this could hurt your rankings.

Fixing Broken Links The Painful Way

If you built your site the conventional way, ie with an HTML editor like Dreamweaver, the usual approach to fixing broken links is editing the .htaccess file. If you’re not a web developer, I can totally forgive you for not knowing what that is. As a matter of fact, not all website builders even know what that is! And even if you can locate the .htaccess file, the text in there would look so gibberish you wouldn’t understand what’s going on in there and even if you manage to know how to edit it, manually editing each and every broken link is not a pleasant experience.

A Wordpress Plugin To Save The Day: The Redirection Plugin

The major advantage of using the free website builder WordPress to create a website is that it allows us to install plugins. These plugins can be used to increase the functionality of WordPress, making it a more effective, reliable and easy to use website builder.

The Redirection plugin comes in handy when it comes to transferring pages from an old site, editing page names and URLs, or deleting pages as all these can lead to broken links. It’s so easy to use and you don’t have to deal with incomprehensible codes. It also allows you to effectively manage their permanent redirections, follow their 404 errors (“File not found” page), and tie up loose ends in general. This plugin can also provide logs of all redirected URLs, enable you to choose redirection methods such as redirect based upon login status, redirect to some random pages in your site, or redirect based on the referrer! Another feature I like a lot about it is it allows you to remove or add www to all your WordPress pages. In my case, I like to remove it.

If you would like to get the redirection plugin, you can download it from our plugin resource page. Once installed and set-up, you can sit back and relax. Your broken links will be taken care of.