- Is your website SEO just not performing as expected?
- Are you not attracting visitors ? Is it failing to earn it’s keep?
- Are you seeing your competitors gaining your visitors?
So many business owners have paid good money to have a website developed, in the hope that it would bring in business, only to see it fail. Beautifully designed, high functioning sites aren’t a guarantee to effective SEO. We have seen sites that look awesome, yet fail to be ranked to there potential.
Spending all your budget on a website that is graphically wonderful is wasted if it can’t be found by your user group.
Hopefully after reading through this post you will be taking the first steps to reversing this.
SEO – Stats
Stats – without them you know nothing. This is one area where you need access to your websites statistical logs, from these we can gain a picture of what is taking place and how users are using your website. This will allow us to pinpoint the areas of concern and formulate an action plan.
Common Reasons for Poor Performance
Here we have listed the most common issues for a website performing poorly
Issue:- Nobody can find my website and I hardly get visitors
Possible Causes:-
SEO / keyword use: It sounds like your website hasn’t been optimised for search engines. For a quick basic check, see if the Title of your web pages contain the search terms your potential customers would use to find the types of products or services you offer. These keywords need to be in your content too. If the Title of your homepage says “Welcome to our website” or “Homepage of Yourdomainname.com”, you’re in serious trouble and need to apply some SEO ASAP.
SEO / competition: If you’re in a very competitive sector, it’s possible your website itself has in fact been optimised but there are so many other websites targeting the same SEO keywords that your site is only on page 10 or 20 of the search results, where nobody looks. If that is the case, you could try to target more specific and less competitive search phrases, or work on getting more incoming links from other websites, which act as ‘votes’ for your website and help increase your rankings.
Accessibility / indexing & crawling: Another possible issue is that search engines have trouble accessing your site or seeing the content. Firstly, check that your site has been indexed by doing a search for www.yourdomainname.com or site:yourdomainname.com. Also make sure that the majority of your content is presented in text format and not embedded in graphics or animations, which search engines can’t ‘read’.
Issue:- High bounce rate: Visitors leave my website immediately
Possible Causes:-
Coding or Design: This could be a coding or design problem. Check if your site is compatible with all major operating systems and browsers. And does your site look OK on a variety of different screen resolutions? Older sites may be incompatible with modern browsers. Your website may look fine to you, but could look completely distorted on other systems. Could there be anything in the design that’s turning visitors away? Perhaps your designer has used all colors of the rainbow, funny animations, or huge images or Flash files that take ages to download. It could be time for a makeover or a new website.
Content or Writing Style: Could the copy on your website be driving people away? If your content is vague, overly long, boring, or doesn’t address your visitors’ needs, there’s a good chance people leave. Most visitors take just a few seconds to decide to stay on a website or click “back”. If they can’t see what they’re looking for right away, they’ll leave and try another website from the search results instead. So make sure your content is presented in a way that the purpose of your website is clear and people can quickly scan the page and find what they’re looking for.
Usability: Is the layout and structure of your website logical? Is your navigation easy to find and use? Website users are mostly lazy creatures and expect to find certain things in certain places. Users loose interest fast, if they can’t find what to click on or intuitive navigation they will leave. If your website uses a very unconventional structure, layout or navigation, people may get confused, give up and choose an alternative website from the search results that’s easier to understand and navigate.
SEO: A high bounce rate or site stickiness, could also be an SEO issue. If you’re not targeting the right keywords with your website, you may be getting visitors who are actually looking for something else. Check that the words you use in your Title and your page content are highly descriptive of the exact things you offer. If you only sell orange plastic widgets, for example, don’t optimize your website for widgets, or plastic widgets, or orange widgets, but for orange plastic widgets. That will result in more qualified traffic and will lower your bounce rate.
Issue:- No conversions: Nobody contacts me or buys my products
If you make no sales or get no enquiries through your website, here are some possible causes of that problem:
Call to Action: Does your website make it really easy for people to take the action you want them to take? Do you have a big, obvious “buy now”, “free download” or “request a quote” button on your page, or even just a descriptive text link to the page you want them to go to next? Every web page needs a strong call to action. Don’t just hope people will find your shopping, download or contact page via the navigation menu. You need to guide your visitors to the page you want them to end up on.
Dead Links: How often do you check the links on your website? Do they all still work correctly? You’d be surprised how many business owners wonder why they’re not getting any sales, oblivious to the fact the link to their payment service is broken. There are free online tools that let you quickly check your site for dead links.
Shopping Cart Problems: If you sell online, do you use a reliable and user-friendly payment service? Go through all the steps yourself as if you were a customer and check that the payment process is quick, smooth and error-free. There may be a stumbling block somewhere that you’re currently unaware of.
Marketing: The reason you’re not selling could also be there’s a problem with your approach to marketing, your pricing or your business model. Did you do any market research before starting your business? Is there a real market out there for the product or service you’re offering? How do your prices compare with those of your competitors? And do you highlight your USPs (unique selling propositions) on your website? Tell people why they should buy from you or use your services. Know what makes your offering unique and be sure to emphasise that. Again, a professional web copywriter can help you with this.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it’s a good start. Hopefully it will provide you with enough information to narrow things down. Remember we are available to assist you in any areas that you do not feel confident to address.
