If you’ve found yourself asking ‘why is my website not getting visitors?’, you’re not alone. Lots of businesses experience seasonal lulls in enquiries, sales, or bookings. But when this goes on for too long, it can start becoming a real issue.
As marketing experts, we often find brands coming to us with websites that are underperforming. Whilst building your visibility does take time, especially in crowded markets, businesses are also often making small, easy to fix mistakes without even knowing it.
In this blog, our SEO experts share industry secrets to help you improve your ranking:
15 Reasons Your Website Might Be Underperforming
1. Your Brand Name Is Too Generic or Competitive
Having a memorable brand name is important but if your name is too generic or overlaps with common search terms, it can end up hurting your discoverability online. When your brand competes with widely used words or phrases, it becomes much harder for search engines to understand and prioritise your website in the right search results. In these cases, you’ll need to work extra hard on keyword targeting, brand-specific content, and long-tail SEO strategies to ensure your site stands out.
2. You Have a Non-existent Keyword Strategy
Your success with SEO hinges on your keyword strategy. As a business, it’s vital that you know everything about who you’re targeting with your products/services, and that includes knowing what they’re searching for. If you’ve ever wondered ‘why is my website not getting visitors?’, a weak or non-existent keyword strategy could be the answer. If you’re not already filtering keywords throughout your content, it’s time to start.
3. Your On-Page SEO is Weak
Search engines rely on well-structured content to understand what your page is about. If you’re missing key on-page SEO elements, such as keywords, headings, image alt text, internal links, and meta descriptions, you’re likely to be overlooked. Even small changes, like optimising H1 tags or writing more descriptive title tags, can make a noticeable difference. Think of on-page SEO as the foundation of your visibility. If it’s not solid, everything else will struggle to perform.
4. Your Website Pages Are Slow to Load
According to a number of studies, brands have just 3-5 seconds to grab the attention of their customers. If, like many, the industry you operate within is saturated, a slow load speed on your site will quickly deter new custom. Visitors will likely leave your site and visit one of your competitors instead. Not only does this mean less business for you, but this will also increase your bounce rate (BR).
You can improve load speed on your website by not overloading your pages with widgets and ensuring your images are compressed. Ideally, your uploads would use the ‘.WEBP’ file type and be below 200KB.
5. Your Site Isn’t Optimised for Mobile Devices
As we’re sure will come as no surprise, over 60% of all Google searches are conducted via a mobile device. With this in mind, it’s crucial that your site is optimised and designed with phone users in mind. Failure to do so will likely result in missed opportunities and again, an increased bounce rate.
6. Your Content Doesn’t Address Pain Points
People like to feel listened to and understood. They don’t just want generic products or services. They want solutions that speak directly to their challenges. Throughout your website copy, make sure you highlight your USPs and address the specific problems your target audience is facing. Show them that you not only understand their frustrations but that you have the expertise and solutions to resolve them. Content that resonates emotionally and practically is far more likely to convert.
7. You’re Lacking Backlinks
Backlinks are incredibly important for a number of reasons. Not only do these mean that businesses, blogs, and other online sources are linking to your content (exposing you to new audiences), but it also increases your site’s authority in the eyes of Google. A strong link-building strategy is a key element of SEO, with external links drastically improving your site health and ranking.
8. You Haven’t Thought About User Experience
Good websites should direct customers through the sales funnel. In order to do so, you should always be testing and refining your user experience (UX) with the goal of making it as easy as possible for visitors to make an informed purchase or send an enquiry.
Getting alternative perspectives from a marketing agency, stakeholders, and customers is a great way to finetune your UX. The best brands are constantly looking to evolve.
9. Your Content is Too Jargon Heavy
There’s a time and a place for jargon and your website isn’t always it. Of course, this does depend on your industry and who you’re trying to reach with your content. Generally speaking, however, it pays to limit jargon or at least take the time to break this down if you do use it. This will ensure your content is easy to digest and understand, encouraging people to stay on your website for longer.
10. Your Website’s Not Being Indexed Properly
If your site isn’t being indexed, it doesn’t matter how good your content is — search engines simply won’t show it. Common issues include incorrectly configured robots.txt files, missing sitemaps, or pages accidentally marked as ‘noindex’.
Tools like Google Search Console are essential for checking whether your pages are being crawled and indexed correctly. Working with an SEO agency like VerriBerri also gives you access to more in-depth analysis, using specialist software to pinpoint where the problems are occurring. Regularly auditing your technical SEO setup, whether that’s in-house or through an agency, ensures your hard work actually gets seen by the people searching for you.
11. Your Competitors Are Outranking You
Your competitors outranking you is something no business wants to hear but if you’re asking ‘why is my website not getting visitors?’, it could be time to look at others in your industry.
Whilst we don’t advise copying your competitors’ campaigns, there is a lot to be learnt from their successes and failures. From here, you can build a better picture of what your customers are searching for and what they respond well to.
12. You’re Not Consistent with Your Blog
Uploading fresh, optimised content to your website is one of the best ways to build your visibility. But consistency is key.
We often see brands putting out the odd blog post here or there with months in between, which can be a major reason behind business owners asking themselves ‘why is my website not getting visitors?’. While this content will have some value, it will likely be very minimal in comparison to those who update their page on a regular basis.
Ideally, brands should be posting to their blog on a weekly basis. The more content, the better, however, so don’t be shy if you have more to say! Make sure to address industry news, your consumer pain points, and key topics to keep people engaged. You should also make sure your content is SEO-friendly before uploading. Click here to read more about how to optimise your content for search engines.
13. You’re Relying Too Much on Paid Ads
Don’t get us wrong, paid ads on Google and social media can be incredibly effective (for the right brands). Nevertheless, solely relying on one marketing technique is risky. The digital marketing landscape changes constantly, and platform updates or rising ad costs can quickly impact performance. A well-rounded strategy that includes SEO, social media, and other organic channels ensures your visibility (and traffic) doesn’t disappear the moment your ad budget pauses or algorithms shift.
14. Your Website Doesn’t Include Strong Calls to Action (CTA)
Whatever action you want customers to take, be it making a purchase or submitting an enquiry, they’re not going to do it without a little encouragement first. Using strong calls to action (CTAs) will allow you to guide visitors along the sales funnel. Here are some to filter into your content:
- Book your free consultation
- Start your free trial
- Speak to an expert
- Request a quote
- Schedule a call
- Join our mailing list
- Shop the collection
15. You’re Not Promoting Your Business Elsewhere
Your branding and website are just the foundations of your business. While still incredibly important, they’re unlikely to make you sales alone. Once you have these elements in place, it’s time to invest in your marketing strategy to ensure you maintain momentum.
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No more asking ‘why is my website not getting visitors?’. For more information about working with our team, get in touch with our team by clicking here.