When you create a website, it does not automatically receive organic traffic. Just like launching a business does not mean it becomes profitable overnight, if ever.
Numerous factors affect website traffic. Their combination provides better or worse results for website owners. You will also experience many differences depending on the project and niche.
To get organic traffic from Google, website pages must get into the search engine index, gain relevant keyword search visibility, and rank well.
To achieve this effect and get good results from SEO, you have to comprehend why Google may skip indexing your website, rank it poorly in search results, or remove it from search altogether.
In short, there are several main reasons why a website does not get traffic from Google, and we will talk about them below.
Technical problems
Various technical errors can prevent search engines from indexing website pages. Flawed websites have reduced visibility in organic search results.
Permanently accumulating technical failures can affect website victors’ behavior, which also results in decreasing website positions.
Human errors can also cause issues. For instance, incorrectly written directives in robots.txt block page or even entire section indexing.
Problems in the website’s CMS operation often generate multiple unnecessary pages, like pages with a 404 error, and affect search engines’ attitude toward a website altogether.
If a website is incompatible with mobile devices, uses http instead of https, and loads slower than competitor websites, its potential for receiving traffic from the search engine is much lower.
A technical SEO audit allows you to identify and eliminate these problems. It is worth conducting such an analysis regularly, for example, once every six months. You can also set up automatic scanning using specialized software tools, which is even better.
Getting Under Sanctions (Filters)
Google and other search engines have a fairly comprehensive set of rules that are inadvisable to violate. Search engines use various filters as part of the search algorithms to combat unscrupulous website owners and attempts to manipulate search results.
Particularly, you can get under Google sanctions for the following violations:
- Active purchase of paid links to promote pages;
- Content spammed with keywords;
- AI-generated content;
- Technologies aimed at deceiving users, like cloaking and similar ones.
If you understand the reason for the sanctions, you can always get beyond the filter. However, this endeavor is expensive and takes a lot of time. Consequently, the best way to avoid problems is to work well and never try to deceive search engines or website visitors.
Low-quality Content and Pages
This is currently the most common problem. Numerous copywriters and website owners generate content using various AI tools, like ChatGPT, instead of creating unique and valuable content.
Any similar content is secondary by definition, as LLM (Large Language Models) train on ready-made texts. Technically, the text may be unique enough but non-unique in semantic terms.
Google and other search engines are reluctant to rank such pages in search results since their value is minimal to users in comparison to human-created content.
If your website misuses AI-generated content on its pages, it will surely receive problems with search ranking.
Read more: Google March 2024 Core Update: Reducing “Unhelpful” Content By 40%
This malpractice also includes the excessive generation of various typical pages according to a specific template. They are pages with a small amount of unique content, almost duplicates, “junk” pages, broken links, etc. This is the so-called “thin content”:
Inexperienced SEO specialists or website owners may think it a good idea, but you may never be too careful with this. Otherwise (especially if a website is young and lacks trust), Google may begin to perceive the website as a doorway with all the respective consequences.
Read more: Google Cautions: Exponential Content Growth Causes Re-Evaluation
Website Hacking and Viruses
Security is the number one challenge on the World Wide Web. Intruders hack other people’s websites, and once they gain access to them, they infect them with malicious code and massively generate spam pages and links.
You have to enable automatic virus scanning if it is available on your hosting. You can also use dedicated CMS modules, like numerous antivirus plugins for WordPress.
If you hire a security specialist to conduct a manual scan, you will also be safe. Sometimes hackers can be very resourceful, and it is not easy to detect their activities.
Drastic Changes to the Website
Any changes to your website, impacting multiple pages, can affect its ranking in the search engine. You will likely see the same outcome if you significantly change the content on your landing pages or alter their appearance.
When you redesign your website or migrate it to another CMS, make sure you avoid even seemingly minor errors, as they can cause serious negative consequences. Therefore, you may not want to:
- change or delete a significant part of the content on landing pages;
- alter website structure and URL formation template;
- make numerous technical errors affecting website operation.
Sometimes, developers transfer a new website version from a test domain and fetch the test robots.txt alongside. The test library contains a directive prohibiting indexing by search robots, and no one notices that. Anything can happen.
Competition, Budget, and Time
Occasionally, errors have nothing to do with insufficient website traffic from Google. SEO has more trivial but no less important things. For instance, you may fail to receive (or receive just too few) conversions from organic search, due to the following facts:
- Highly competitive niches make it difficult to promote your website;
- Insufficient SEO budget;
- Too little time since the website launch.
Find out more about all these issues in my article about how long it takes to promote a website and what factors affect promotion.
Being patient is no less vital. Google algorithms are quite inert, and you cannot get to the Top in a few weeks, no matter what anyone promises. You need time to get good results in any area.
If you are looking for an experienced SEO advisor to assist you with website development and promotion, contact me and let us discuss the details.
Volodymyr Fedorychak
Search marketing consultant specializing in IT business and B2B SaaS. I help businesses and start-ups generate traffic, attract customers and build their brand online.
