Why No Search Engine Traffic?

OK, so you launched your new website and threw a few articles together thinking you might begin to receive some search engine traffic right away. You wait a few days, a few weeks, and now it’s been a couple of months, and you’re still wondering why you haven’t received any traffic.

There’s a few reasons why you might not be receiving any search engine traffic.

1. Competition

Back in the 90’s and early 2000’s, it was a lot easier to rank for most keywords out there. Why? Because back in the days, there was a lot less competition. Today, there are literally millions of new webpages being added on a daily basis. Your article or content is only one out of over a trillion webpages currently in existence. That’s not to say that your article is competing against a trillion webpages at any given time, but you could imagine how much competition you’re potentially facing in your industry.

2. Targeting Volume-less Keywords

Always keep this in mind – ranking for keywords with 0 traffic volume is useless. Ask yourself this: What good is a #1 ranking if no one is ever searching for that specific keyword? You’re right – it does no good. This is the reason why small business owners need to do keyword research upfront before they waste time on volume-less keywords or keywords that don’t convert.

3. Your Site Hasn’t Been Indexed Yet

Your site needs to be indexed by the search engines in order for it show up when performing a search. If your site is only a few days old, there’s a chance that it may not have been indexed yet. Google and Bing have gotten better about indexing sites fairly quickly, but the wait time is different for every site.

There’s a few ways to get your website indexed quickly. One, submit your URL directly to Google or Bing. Or two, submit your URL to the search engines using a search engine submission tool. Or three, build a backlink to your site from any 3rd party site that gets regularly crawled by the search engine spiders.

4. Google Sandbox Effect

Even if your site is already indexed by Google, there is a good chance that it is stuck in the “Sandbox” if your site is still new. According to the Google Sandbox theory, new websites have to go through a waiting period before it can begin to rank normally like an established website. Some would say that it is like a minor penalty for new websites; not because it did anything wrong, but because Google is still trying to figure out how much credence to give it. Although no one from Google has yet to give a solid confirmation, the Google Sandbox effect is a theory that most SEO professionals believe to be true – including me.

5. Need More SEO Power

A fancy looking website may be good for user experience, but you’re going to need a lot more than a pretty face to get high rankings in the search engines. Search engine algorithms are complex, and there are many different factors that go into determining how a website ranks in the search engines. Google claims to use over 200 ranking signals, which include both on and off-site factors. This means that you may have to work on your SEO game if you are in a competitive industry and you already have a strong on-site foundation.