It doesn’t really need to be said how a website can benefit your business. Combining attractive design with compelling copy and a policy of continual updates can bring new customers to your door. On paper it sounds very simple. But at some point after you launch a brand new online presence you need to ask a very important question. Is anyone visiting your website?
Right now the web serves up well over a billion websites around the world. Which means being listed prominently in search engines takes careful work and expertise. It also takes time. Search engines very, very rarely index a website and zoom it straight onto page 1 of their listings. And in some cases they might reject your website completely. Which can be deeply frustrating.
What’s Stopping Anyone Visiting Your Website?
Let’s look at the conditions any search engine ask you meet before they start sending any bots round to take a look at your online presence.
For a web page to appear in a search engine it must meet the following criteria:
- The search engine knows about your website
- It can easily find and look at the pages in the website
- Each page in the website contains information that matches the keywords given for the page
So, if you want search engines to rank your web pages you need to do the following:
- Make it as easy as possible for a search engine to discover your website and the pages you want it to rank
- Ensure the information published on a page is relevant to the keyword(s)
- Publish content that is better than other web pages competing for a place in the search engine listings.
Just three steps, which on paper look easy. In practice, those three steps are commonly the answer to the following reasons why nobody is visiting your website.
- Your website only just went live
- The search engines don’t like your website
- The website is blocking search engines from accessing pages
- There is no reference to your website anywhere else
- Your website is slower than a sleepy snail
- The content within the pages does not match up with assigned keywords
- Your website doesn’t work on a mobile phone
- The design of your website is poor
- The site has a low PageRank
- The pages in your website have little in them
- There are pages in your website with the same content
- Your website has not been optimised for the search engines
- You’re not updating your website
A great way to get people visiting your website
We will be publishing some future articles to cover the reasons given above (they won’t be in that order by the way). If the idea of covering all the bases above fills you with dread, then don’t worry. Simply get a warm drink and give us a call. We’ll be happy to chat about how we can help with any of the steps above. And give you some time back to doing more important marketing tasks. And very soon, you will be feeling better when asked is anyone visiting your website.
