7 Reasons Why Your Blog Is Not Getting Any Traffic

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We all know that the best traffic for a website is organic traffic, and that regardless of whether you have 1 subscriber or 1000 subscribers, in the long run it’s search engine traffic that matters the most.

Getting search engine traffic is not all that difficult, but there are important things we need to learn in order to achieve decent search engine traffic. It all comes down to how great your content is, and how well it’s optimized for search engines. And yes, your social media sharing is also important toward the improved search engine visibility of your articles.

Over the past year, I regularly edit my old blog posts to improve them for readers and for search engines. This includes improving the information provided, adding updated information, analyzing current keywords using SEMRUSH and Google Analytics, and optimizing the articles for target keywords.

This is an ongoing process that every blogger should undertake in an effort to make the most out of their existing content.

In today’s post, I will be discussing a few blog post SEO mistakes which many of us unknowingly make, thus hampering the organic traffic to our sites.

Whenever I do a site SEO audit, there are a few common factors I find that decrease the visibility of my articles in search engines. Today I will share them with you so that you can avoid these common mistakes, and thus improve the SEO of your blog’s articles.

Why Your Blog Gets No Traffic 

1. Too many repeated heading tags:

Whenever I analyze ShoutMeLoud blog posts with no traffic, this is one big reason for almost no search engine traffic.

Back in 2010-2011, I used too many H2 or H3 heading tags in my articles.  I was trying to make my sub-headings stand out (size, typography, etc.).  This may have made my articles look great to my readers, but it adversely affected the SEO score of the articles.  This may not be true of 100% of such cases, but for me, almost 80% of my posts with repeated H2 and H3 tags are getting no traffic. Editing and correcting them clearly improved the visibility of the articles in organic searches.

Permalink is one important element of SEO. At ShoutMeLoud, we can read about best WordPress permalink for SEO and if you are starting a new blog, it’s always a wise idea to go for a clean permalink structure. The problem comes when you are changing permalink for an existing blog.

No matter if you have few posts or many blog posts published on your blog, but if you directly change your permalink, you will end up doing an SEO suicide of your blog, Of course, there are solutions to this problem. We can migrate one permalink structure to another using the permalink migration plugin. Choose the best permalink for your blog and don’t change after that.

Make sure to use any 301 redirection checker to check if Permalink is 301 redirected or you need to work on your .htaccess file. Make sure to regenerate your sitemap and resubmit it to search engines after permalink migration.

3. Missing Sitemap

We know sitemaps are important for blogs as it helps search engines to index your blog posts. Always ensure that you have a sitemap for your blog and it contains all post links.

 Also, make sure to add your sitemap link in Blog footer, as it will help search engine bots to find your sitemap file effectively.

4. Image name and alt tags:

Using images in your blog posts not only makes your articles look great, but also helps in improving the SEO of your blog posts.

There are plugins like SEO friendly images, which automatically add ALT tags into images by using the image name. I have noticed that articles with images containing no ALT tags or the wrong ALT tags adversely affect the SEO of the articles.

One of the most common blog post SEO mistakes I have seen on many blogs is the failure to change the name of the images to match the topics of the posts.

For example, you might be writing about SEO, but you use an image of a fish, and you keep the name of the image as “fish-catching.jpeg”. This is a very big mistake. The correct approach is to use meaningful image names. Prior to uploading the image, change the image name to something like “SEO mistakes.jpeg”, or whatever is appropriate to the topic of your post.

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If you have made similar mistakes in the past, it’s time to go back and correct them. Add a meaningful image with a keyword as your image name, and use your target keywords in ALT tags.  As mentioned earlier, you can use the help of the SEO Friendly Images plugin if you wish.

5. Long meta descriptions:

Meta descriptions help in improving the CTR of your article in SERP’s, and are also helpful to the general SEO optimization of your content.

With that said, your meta description should not exceed the 160 character limit.

A couple of years ago I would simply copy the first 2-3 lines of my article, and use that as a meta description. This was a big mistake which many of us make.

Long meta description
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Think of your meta description as a call to action.  It is best to write a unique meta description in less than 150-160 characters.

You can also use a plugin like Yoast SEO Plugin to add meta descriptions in your blog posts.

It would also be a good idea to find all of your old posts exceeding the meta description character limit, and rewrite the meta description in 150-160 characters. You can use Ahrefs, SEO spider or SEMRUSH to find all such blog posts. You can also refer to the official Google help page on using meta descriptions here.

6. No keywords in the content:

I know blogging is all about sharing information, but what good is quality content if no one can find it?

As I mentioned in one of my older articles, SEO is not dead – it’s now more competitive and detailed. Search engines rely on bots to understand and rank content. One of the most important factors is using keywords in your content, title, images and in a few other places.

If you have written an amazing article on SEO checklists, but you did not mention the target keyword in the article, you are not helping bots to understand your content.

If you are completely new to this, you can read my previously published guides on this particular topic:

7. Not linking out:

We all want our visitors to stay longer on our websites, but many new bloggers make the mistake of not linking out. For example, I have noticed that many people simply write Google.com, instead of adding the proper hyperlink which will take them to Google.com. Linking out helps in many ways, including the following:

  • It gives a better user experience.
  • It improves the SEO score, as long as you link out to credible sources.

If you are worried about the bounce rate, you can make your external links open in new tabs. If you need more information on this, you could read this post on outbound link SEO.

My suggestion for you is to keep improving your old content. Writing new content takes time, but improving existing blog posts is easy, and it greatly improves your results from those posts. Whenever I publish a new post, I go to my older posts that are related to the content, and I link to my new posts. This not only helps in improving the overall SEO of the old articles, but updated information always attracts more reactions from users in the form of comments and social media shares.

You can read my guide on how to use SEMRUSH to improve the SEO of your blog, which will give you detailed insight on how to improve the SEO of your old posts.

If you have any questions regarding above topic, feel free to ask me in the comments section below.

If you find this article interesting, consider sharing it.

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

65 thoughts on “7 Reasons Why Your Blog Is Not Getting Any Traffic”

  1. Narinder kumar

    Thanks, Harsh for sharing an informative post its really interesting techniques you can share with us I will try to some changes of my old blog post. because I am also facing same issue.

  2. Rajendra

    Hi Harsh,

    If i want to show 20 exercises and their small description in one post then what should be heading style for 20 exercises titles? It should be h2, h3 or only bold style? Using more h3 or h2 style for heading will decrease organic search?

    I am concentrating on writing quality content but i don’t want to do mistakes. I want your suggestion.

    Please reply.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Hey,

      Have one H1, one H2 and multiple Paragraph, bold style for 20 exercises.

  3. Sonum Bhardwaj

    Hi Harsh,

    This is exactly what I was looking for yesterday, and saw its update today on Facebook. I am definitely going to check these parametersand edit them in my blog posts.

    Thanks for sharing such advises which helps other bloggers to improve.

  4. Swapnil

    Hi Harsh,

    Thank you for sharing your idea. these type of mistakes are commonly made by many blogger. thanks for pointed out the mistakes & also show the effective way to solve the mistakes.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Hey Swapnil,

      Glad that I could be of help.

  5. yogesh vishvakarma

    Thanks Harsh,
    i was doing some things wrong. but this article helped me a lot.
    and now i will not repeat the mistakes 🙂

    Thanks again

  6. Pawan Waghalkar

    Thanks for this post Harsh, its a wealth of information and every blogger should refer and bookmark it. Next, I am going to spend some time and try to implement some of these suggestions on my blog posts.
    Thanks again.

  7. Sharmistha

    Hi Harsh, Your articles always have been super helpful. Specially when I moved from free to self-hosted domain. Thanks for all the tips.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Hey Sharmistha,

      Glad that you liked the article.

  8. Suresh Khanal

    Harsh,

    By image name do you mean the file name of the image? And do Google or other search engines take into account the file name also in addition to Alt meta tag?

    On more, how much is the importance of meta description for images?

  9. Marvin Talaro

    I always find your post very informative and helpful. The descriptions are very clear. Now I know that repeating H2 and H3 within the article is a bad idea.

    Thanks for the guide! Big help to me.

  10. Anuj Kumar

    Exceptionally supportive written work for each blogger. yet, I need to realize that what number of external and inside connection would I be able to use in each and every blog entry.

    Truly

    Anuj Kumar

  11. Udit

    Hi Harsh,
    I have a doubt here.
    Whenever I do write a product centric post, especially in case of a detailed review, I generally talk about all the aspects of the product. I have so many topics to create sub-headings. For instance, the post is a review of Samsung Galaxy S4 and H2 and H3 can be created for Hardware, software, Camera, Battery back up and so on. Here I get puzzled what structure should I follow, how to optimize H2 and H3 and whether it’s required to insert Keyword in each heading irrespective of its class. Like on some reviews site, I find people write this way: Samsung Galaxy S4 Price, Samsung Galaxy S4 launch date, Samsung Galaxy S4 Camera. Please put some light here.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Udit
      When you write H2, h3 tag try to make it more meaningful & like the way you spend time on writing headline, make your heading h2 & h3 more detailed & meaningful. The example you gave is another good way to do it only if your article is detailed. For 40-500 words article, using repeated heading tags might be seen as Keyword density spam. If your’s is a authority blog, you don’t need to worry about it much.

  12. Steven Nguyen

    “repeated H2 and H3 tags”
    Sir, I don’t really understand this line. May you explain this more, please.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Stevan
      This is related to heading tags.
      Your post title is H1 tag
      After that you should use H2 tag.

      What many bloggers are doing is: they use too many H3 tags to make the title look bigger & attractive, which is not right. One should always follow the heading hierarchy.

      1. lh.louis

        Well some blog design need to change as well because sometimes… an example your h1 in the blog design is like h3 of others blog design. In the end, fixing the blog design, the css style is what can change them size of h1 or h3.

  13. Manpreet Singh

    Sorry for being off topic but my adsense a/c has been disabled due to invalid click activities nd being a newbie, i was unaware of it. I do accept my mistake and want to appeal to reinstate my account. Plz help me in filing a strong appeal.

  14. Mr. Sumit

    Really very helpful article for all new bloggers because 80 out of 100 new blogger are facing this problem.
    So, I suggest all New Bloggers to read this awesome article.

    After Utilizing All this Tips Your Blog defiantly getting traffic from search engine.

  15. CH SATEESHKUMAR

    Nice post. Does interlinking has any effect on search engine traffic?

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