You’ve laboured long and hard on writing the content. You’ve sought out the best designer and developer. And you love how your new site looks. But, while all your friends and family tell you how great it is, you haven’t had a single lead. What have you done wrong?
The simple answer is ‘probably nothing’. A new site (and new URL) can take some time for search engines to find it and consider it ‘worthy’ of directing visitors there.
But there might be other issues, too.
Here are some of the main reasons your site might not be getting the visitors and leads you expected – and some ways around the problems.
- Your site is new
It can take months, years sometimes, for a website to get established.
The best SEO is not keywords or ads, it’s traffic. The more people who visit your site, the more the Google search engines will think ‘that must be a good site, I’ll send people there’. The more people they send, the busier the site gets, the more Google will send searches there, and so on.
So, keep publicising your site as much as you can – put posts on social media asking people to read something on your site. Add a note to all your emails asking people to have a look and give feedback if they want.
You could even consider offering an incentive. (See later section on offering free resources.)
- There’s a lot of competition out there
Depending on what you do, you’re probably going to have a lot of well-established competitors out there. When I search for ‘writing training’, for example, I see pages of well-established training and educational organisations – many of which are paid-for ads.
The search term ‘writing training’ brings up mainly academic establishments. Which isn’t surprising as they’ve been around a long time and have loads of visitors. I get similar results when I search for ‘copywriting’ and ‘editing’.
However, when I search for ‘writing training Marlow’ or ‘copywriter Marlow’, I come up first! That’s simply because there are far fewer writers and trainers in Marlow than there are in places like London or Glasgow.
Marlow copywriting and training
If you’re in a highly competitive market, consider ways of making your business easier to find for a target audience. For example, change the name of your business (see section below on your name and your URL) or write content focused on a particular problem, locality, product or target group. (See later section on writing valuable content.)
Add local pages to boost local businessI have pages on my site that deliberately name local towns and counties.
Pages on Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, as well as local towns such as Maidenhead and High Wycombe.
- Your name is not the best URL for SEO
Your URL (the address of your website) is one of the best SEO tools you have. My local plumber has cleverly bought the domain name ‘fixedpriceplumber.co.uk’. He gets far more leads on his site than a ‘TJ Smyth and Sons’ for the obvious reason that people search for ‘fixed price plumber’.
If, as many people do, you use your own name for your business, only people who know you will find your site. Take my site for example, www.forrest-turner.co.uk. People who don’t me and are looking for copywriters or trainers aren’t going to be searching for Lorraine Forrest-Turner.
But all is not lost; you can change the name of your website.
My URL is www.forrest-turner.co.uk but my site is called ‘Marlow Copywriting and Training’ and the tag line is ‘Professional copywriting and training services’.
My site is on a WordPress platform, and I changed the name of my site in Settings. (See screen shot attached.) You might have to ask your developer to do this for you.
- You don’t offer free resources
It doesn’t always work but offering an incentive to visit your site can help increase traffic.
Interestingly, it doesn’t matter that the traffic it encourages aren’t prospects. The more traffic on your site, the more Google will consider your site valuable content, the more it will send people there, etc.
Depending on your business, you could, for example, turn a white paper, FAQ page or blog post into a ‘how to’ guide and offer it a PDF as a free download.
Maybe you have a wonderful original photo gallery you can offer for free? People are always searching for free images to complement their content. Just ask for a credit and a link to your site.
And remember to publicise your free content in your own emails and on social media.
- You’re not telling the right people you have a new website
While having friends, family and acquaintances visiting your site will create some activity (which help search engines find you), you’ll run out fairly quickly – and there’s only so many times anyone wants to visit a friend’s website. You therefore need to find other ways to promote it.
Some paid for advertising on the right social media platforms might be a good way to kick things off if you can define your target audiences well. But do balance the cost of the advertising against the results. All the major platforms (Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) have useful advice on how to make the most of their advertising opportunities.
Always ask people to share your posts. It’s surprising how just asking makes people do it. And always include a link to your website in your posts. Don’t give it all away in the post itself. Say enough to interest them but make sure they have to go to your site to get the best bits.
Do the same with emailers and newsletters if you have a mailing list. Give them a flavour of what they’ll get. Then include a link to the content on your website. (Which is exactly what I did with this post.)
- You don’t have enough valuable content
Getting back to where we started, the best SEO isn’t keywords, it’s valuable content.
When websites are new, they usually have fewer pages and less longform content than more established sites. It might take a few years to build up a library of blog posts, case studies, service pages, etc.
I have about 40 blog posts on my site. But it’s taken me about 5 years to write and post them all!
If you don’t have time to write it yourself, think of hiring a copywriter. (I’m free! Well, available. I do charge.) This might seem like an expensive exercise but if it drives more visitors to your site, and they buy more of your products and services as a result, then it’s been money well spent.
And an experienced SEO copywriter will know how to weave keywords into your content naturally so that it attracts search engines without turning off humans.
Yes, I’d like you to give me a price for writing some content for me.
Photo by Firmbee.com on Unsplash
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