Why your blog isn’t attracting organic traffic

Yet another post about attracting organic traffic and getting more people to see your blog posts. Yup, it’s a common issue many business owners face with their blogs. 

They launched a blog and expected it to start attracting organic traffic right away. But they’ve waited… and no one’s clicking through to their blog posts.

Sounds familiar?

If you’re not seeing a lot of organic traffic to your blog yet, don’t stress! There’s no definitive timeline set in stone. The results depend on many factors, including:

• your inbound marketing game-plan
• how long and how often you’ve been blogging
• your search engine optimisation skills
• your writing and storytelling skills
• your persuasive writing skills
• the information you’re sharing
• the way you’re writing your meta titles and meta descriptions
• the calls to action you’re adding to your meta descriptions.

The list goes on.

However, if it’s been weeks and still no traffic, then here are a few easy tips to help your blog to pull traffic for your business website.

Research better topics

One of the best ways to increase click-through rates from search engine result pages is to choose better topics. Analyse the keywords people are using to find what you’re selling. In other words, learn how to do keyword and topic research and learn the basics of search engine optimisation (SEO).

As an SEO copywriter, I’ve audited my fair share of blogs, and have discovered so many topic mistakes it’s not funny.

And then I have to deliver the bad news:

“You’ve been targeting the WRONG topic! That’s why no one’s reading!”

I also get asked:

“How come no one’s clicking through to my post about [WRONG TOPIC]?”

“Why isn’t anyone interested in my post on [SOME POSH WORD NO ONE USES]?”

After a quick scan over their blog posts, I detect the problem right away. There’s no mention of the keywords real people use to find the blog posts about the topic the business is publishing.

Then I look behind their blog posts to check the meta title and descriptions. No mention of the keywords. That’s sort of OK. However, the biggest issue is their meta descriptions don’t always mention the topic nor are interesting or descriptive enough to encourage anyone to click through to read more.

If you’re reading my blog post after spotting it on a search engine or on social media, then the meta description which appears on the search result or on social media made you want to click through.

Right? That’s how it works.

So, if you’re creating content about a great topic but are not letting people know the content exists, then that’s why no one’s reading it!

Ahem… “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it…” – you know the rest.

If you find the right topic, you can build a blog and let them come.

Always target a specific audience

The more you narrow down your target audience, the more you’ll attract your ideal customer.

This means being even more specific when choosing your topics and keywords.

Think of it this way:

Want more single mums and dads to stay at your hotel? Blog about things for single parents to do in the region.

Want more 4WD owners for your vehicle detailing service? Blog about the mistakes local 4WD owners make when they clean their vehicles themselves.

And so on…

As long as you know people would want to read the content, write content that ‘speaks’ directly to them.

Knowing that other players in your region offering similar services are not yet blogging about your topics, you’ll have an advantage in search engines like Google.

You’ll also have an advantage on popular social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ as you’re not really running against anyone.

Attracting organic traffic with local keywords

Below are two easy ways to choose your keywords for each post you write:

Target your location keywords

Let’s use an example:

You’re a florist in my town, Rockingham, and you’re serving customers in Rockingham, Kwinana and Mandurah.

When attracting organic traffic for your location, you target these keywords and other keywords associated with your address.

You mention the areas so when your customers are searching for florists in those cities, e.g. “Rockingham florist” or “florists in Rockingham”, they’ll find your content – and therefore your business – a lot easier.

Use long-tailed keywords

Long-tailed keywords narrow down your target group even further. They reduce competition and pull in more organic traffic.

Let’s say you’re selling business books and you’d like more entrepreneurs to buy from your bookstore. The long-tail keywords for an interesting blog post targeting this group could be:

• “business books for new entrepreneurs”
• “business books for Australian entrepreneurs”
• “business books for entrepreneurs”

Wrap up…

If you want to attract more organic traffic to your blog posts, optimise each posts with the right keywords to help search engines pick your posts out of the million pieces of content available in the search results.

Also write enticing meta titles and descriptions (what show up in search results) that motivate people to click through. Write them like mini ads… because they’re there to sell your services or products.

Get organic traffic before they go to your competition!

If you’re wondering what you’re doing wrong or why your blog posts are not attracting organic traffic, contact me for a quick website content review. Or ask me about my blogging services.