Now, this is really problematic, isn’t it? You have done your on-page and off-page SEO correctly, and you have succeeded in ranking your blog posts at the top of search engine result pages (SERPs).
But you have low traffic. So, what is happening and how do you fix this?
Here are the common problems:
- Your ranking is localized
- Your keywords have low search volume
- Too many SERP elements
- Your meta description is not optimized
As we go along, I will also provide you with fixes on how to optimize web pages. At the end of this article, you should be ready to identify the problems on your website, and then see what problems are causing your posts to rank but not get traffic.
Your Ranking Is Localized
The first problem is that your rankings are only applicable to your location. This is a problem that many people do not understand—they think that what you see on Google search in the UK is the same as what a person sees in the US.
The truth is that a searcher in the United States sees something different from someone who is in the Philippines. Google does this because it only wants the best experience for the searcher.
What does this mean for you?
It means that you may rank in your country or city, and this is what you see if you search for your keywords on Google. What you did not know is that in the whole world, your post or page doesn’t rank at all.
This happens because the keyword you selected is also local. For example, if your keyword is “plumbing service in Brisbane,” Google will only naturally rank this keyword for people searching for a plumber in Brisbane—even if they do not type the word “Brisbane” in the search box.
To optimize web pages, stop using keywords that are localized. Instead, use keywords that have high search volume globally. If you are using a keyword tool, you must look for keywords that rank in the whole world, not just in your country.
Some keyword tools like UberSuggest, do not allow you to do this. What you have to do is to select different localized keywords, or switch to a different tool.
Your Keywords Have Low Search Volume
This usually happens if you use long-tail keywords. While long-tail keywords are great to rank, they are not always a guarantee to get massive traffic.
Let’s say that you targeted a long-tail keyword but it only has 100 searches in a month. If these 100 people typed that long-tail keyword in the search engine, your post is going to rank high.
The problem is that there are only 100 people searching for that word, and not all of these 100 people are going to going to click on your article.
Why?
Because you are not the only person who used that keyword on a blog post. So, even if you have five or ten articles ranking high, you will certainly get only a small percentage of that 100 people. This, of course, is not enough to drive substantial traffic to your website.
The solution is to be very picky about the long-tail keywords that you use. Even if you are using tools like UberSuggest or LSI graph, you must only use long-tail keywords that have a high search volume.
If you look at the results from the LSI Graph below, you have to use the keywords with the highest volume.
Now, if you scroll down, you will see long-tail keywords that you can rank for, but the volume is low.
If you try to rank for “blogging for dummies PDF 2018,” you will see that the search volume is only 10 per month. So, you can surely rank high for this long-tail keyword, but you cannot expect a lot of traffic from it.
Too Many SERP Elements
Google shows so much stuff now in the search results. There are ads and snippets. Your post may rank on the first page, but it can also get drowned because of these snippets.
Take a look at this example for the keyword “getting traffic for blog.”
As you can see, the first two results are ads. If you scroll down, you get the see the “People also ask” section.
What happens, then?
What happens is that your blog post gets pushed below these things. This is why even if you rank, you do not get traffic. Most people would click the first two articles, which are paid for by Bluehost and Hostgator.
The other thing that can happen is that the question area may re-direct the user to another page. After all, these questions are relevant.
The solution is not to use keywords where there is a huge demand for ads. You can only know more about this if you go to Google AdWords. Signing up is free, and you can use the Keyword Planner to find out the advertising demand for a keyword.
See this screenshot:
What you can do is to use keywords that have a low to medium competition. Your blog post is going to rank and you know that not a lot of people are paying for these keywords for their ads.
Your Meta-Description Is Not Optimized
The last in our list to optimize web pages is to ensure that your meta-descriptions are written well. You may have ranked high on the SERPs, but if your meta-description does not attract the user, the user is not going to click on your post.
If you look at these three results, you know that they have done a good job in their meta-description. The user knows what to expect upon clicking these posts.
Both your headline and your meta-description directly impact the user’s behavior. Even if your title is great, but if you do not write an equally good meta-description, the user is not going to be inclined to click on your post.
The secret to writing a meta-description is to keep it concise. Google has a limit with the number of characters for the meta-description—160 characters, to be exact.
Write your snippet without exceeding this target, and yet make it descriptive enough to entice the user to read your post. The meta-description must be a summary of what the customer may learn or an invitation about how the customer can benefit from your post.
Also, do not forget to use positive words related to your keyword, such as “read our post to boost your traffic” or “learn the top ten ways to improve your conversion rate now!”
Summary
You have done a good job in ranking your website. Now, it is time to optimize your content to improve your click-through-rate or CTR.
These four problems cover most of the issues for ranking high with low traffic gains. Read each of your articles, and then find out what is causing the low traffic. Most of the time, the fixes are easy.
However, if you have selected specific keywords, you may come across a problem where changing these keywords may result in getting your page de-ranked. That is okay if you have the patience to wait until it gets ranked again. But this time around, it is going to get more clicks.
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