7 REASONS WHY NO ONE IS READING YOUR CONTENT

You’re investing resources and a lot of money into creating content, but your web traffic is as quiet as a side street in Pofadder. Here’s how you can fix it.

The popular saying, ‘Content is king,’ has been exhausted by marketers justifying the need to feature more than just product on company websites. If content is so important, then why do the meaty parts of your website get so little traffic? The fact is, done right, content has the power to forge loyalty and influence purchase decisions. There could be easy-to-fix issues sabotaging your attempts to grow your audience. Resolving the below will ensure your site is on the path to rush hour traffic.

1. No content strategy
Just like any other strategy in the business, a content strategy puts purpose behind the information you put out, ensuring that every post works towards business outcomes and is not created for the sake of it. A strategy keeps your content from veering off course and ensures the information is targeted for the right audience, the right purpose, at the right time. “It’s best to start with the business and marketing goals, and have these determine the content strategy (in line with budget) – rather than, for example, assuming you need to use every possible social platform every day simply because other brands do. This might seem obvious, but it’s common for brands to try and do everything for fear of missing out, which invariably leads to poor ROI. Starting with exactly the right kind of content for your target audience, on the right channels – and building slowly – avoids all-too-common waste,” says Paige Dorkin, TPP Digital Director.

2. Poor SEO
Targeting the most relevant keywords is important to make sure that the search engine selects your web page as the best response to a user query. Understanding user intent is therefore the most effective method of selecting and defining your key words. Different terms have different functions so ensure you use a good mix of head terms (broad, evergreen general search keywords for a certain topic), long-tail keywords (terms of more than three words, drilling down more specifically on a topic) and short-term fresh keywords (buzzwords that are time-sensitive, relating to a new launch or event).

3. No schedule
Predictability and routine have their benefits when it comes to content. Your customer should have a general idea of the frequency of content updates so that they receive a fresh content experience every time they engage with your platform. Finding the same stale posts on their next visit is the fastest way to lose an audience for good. Posting regularly not only creates a traffic spike on the days you post, but keeps a steady stream of eyeballs on your page because Google perceives updated content as more ‘accurate’, ranking your page higher.

4. No social media integration
Creating content and uploading it to your website without sharing it on your business’ social media is like serving food in the dark. People need to be able to find and consume your content easily. They are more likely to see a post about an article they are interested in on their feed than they are to type www.yourcompany.co.za in their search engine. So give people what they want, where they are.

5. Website updates and design changes
If your site was designed when dial-up internet was a thing, an update is necessary but be careful of changes that could result in being indexed differently by search engines. Complicated design changes that slow page load times and frustrate the user experience will invariably affect your traffic negatively.

6. Poor information architecture
Content should be easy to find on your website. A user will click off your site if they need to drill down too deep to find what they’re looking for, if the home page is too cluttered, or if there are too many flashing pop-ups or other dynamic content on the page. Ensure the information is laid out in a user-friendly manner for the best user experience that will improve time spent on each page. According to the Content Marketing Institute, page experience also influences how well you rank as part of Google’s Core Web Vitals, factors it uses to assess a web page.

7. Poor content quality
“The quality of your content is paramount,” says Paige. “It has to inspire, delight or offer real substance to your potential customers (preferably something they’re not already getting elsewhere), or it will be drowned out.” Google’s Core Web Vitals also include the quality of web page content. It will penalise, and rank lower, web pages with poor content quality. You might be wondering how a machine is able to identify good writing, but here are the key criteria it uses to deduce this, among others:

• Pages with unnatural links – artificial links used to manipulate search ranking, Google defines these as “links that weren’t editorially placed or vouched for by the site’s owner on a page”
• Pages with low main content (i.e. really short posts)
• Click-bait headlines that do not describe the main content
• Unmaintained websites
• Pages with detrimental links like malware

You can read the full Google quality guideline here. Developing strong, well-written content that ticks all the right boxes often requires experienced content marketers to manage this for you and who can assist you from strategy to execution, with measurable results. Get in touch with us to learn more.