My site is seriously beginning to slip. Need some help/advice, please.

[TTGSteve]

I'm a new member here, despite a decent bit of lurking, so I'm not going to even try to post a link out of sheer respect. I'm not one of those people. And yes, I will actually login and help other people out by giving advice on things I'm experienced with.

However, as of right now, I'm the one that's in need of some advice.

I have a blog that's a couple years old. It's a blog that focuses on trending topics in practically every niche. I'm the only one working on the site, so I can only do so much with the site. I usually make anywhere from 2 - 5 posts every day, except for on weekends. The posts are typically 300+ words.

The site has nearly 1,000 posts on it by now and a decent bit of legit comments. I've never purchased traffic and I've never paid people to come in and post comments. Most of my traffic comes from search engines. I do get some traffic from social media outlets, as well.

I used to get over 1,000 UV/day (according to analytics), but my site has started to slip big time. I don't know what caused it, but now my site's only getting around 200-400 UV/day and it's been that way for the past few months. The site is a PR 3, by the way.

Despite the fact that I'm not posting any new YouTube videos, I'm still gaining a good bit of views and I also gain new subscribers weekly. It may not be much, but they're still coming in and I'm not going to complain since I haven't put much effort into YouTube as of yet.

So, what's my problem and why do I need advice?

Well, I'm wondering why my traffic took a major plummet, first of all.

Secondly, I've never really monetized the site and I'm not sure which route I should take. I've had people pay for guest posts, but with traffic slipping, I haven't gotten any offers for paid guest posts recently. Adsense doesn't do so well on the site. I've used Amazon and I'm driving a decent bit of clicks to it, but I've only made one sale as of right now. I'd love to make a living off of the site and I could only imagine what I could do with it if I were able to work on it as if it was my full time job, even though I wouldn't see it as a job. I actually enjoy working on the site.

I really don't want to give up and I'm not going to give up. I've been doing this type of stuff for a very long time and I understand that way too many people fail, because they only stick to their game plan for a short period of time and end up quitting. If you want success, you have to stick with it and that's what I'm doing. However, as of late, it just seems like I'm going in reverse.

I really appreciate any and all advice I get from you guys and gals. If you need any more information, feel free to ask

Also... Hi, everyone! I'm glad I finally made the decision to sign up! Get used to seeing me around here.

 

[Endire]

TTGsteve,

I would start by taking a look at your analytics and looking at referrals for the most recent time period where you had low traffic and compare that to a time period in the past. Are there any sites you notice sending you less traffic? If its in search, have you been tracking your average position in SERPs? If so, look at any changes you made, even small ones.

Have you checked your backlink profile? Do you build links yourself? Its easy enough to know that you didn't do anything but someone else could have easily made links to your site without your knowledge and those could be hurting you.

Your first step is to just identify the sources of lost traffic whether it be from search, from social, or from some other website that was sending you traffic and now it is not or at least not as much.

Once you can pinpoint one or perhaps a few different sources that are not sending you as much traffic as before, then you can dig a little deeper and find out why those sources aren't sending traffic any more.

As for your monetization issue, you pretty much named the things you can do to monetize a site. Unless you are selling products or services of your own, the only ways you can make money are by selling ad space or being an affiliate marketer. Why does adsense not do well on your site? Have you investigated why? Perhaps the ads are not relevant to your content? Sometimes websites that don't have one clear theme don't do well because its hard to match the ads with the audience because the content is so diverse.

Hope those suggestions help,

Shawn

 

[Tariq Ghazi]

Backlink also give such problems. Check your primary source of traffic. May be you are not writing articles which has SEO friendly keywords. If the articles you are writing is not interesting for the readers, then it will decrease the traffic to your site. I wonder why you didnt good revenue from adsense when the traffic to your site is high.

 

[aukint]

Tariq do one thing, just revamp your blog site with new graphics for user attraction, also update your website to the latest WP version along with good SEO links, may be it would be helpful for you.

 

[TTGSteve]

TTGsteve,

I would start by taking a look at your analytics and looking at referrals for the most recent time period where you had low traffic and compare that to a time period in the past. Are there any sites you notice sending you less traffic? If its in search, have you been tracking your average position in SERPs? If so, look at any changes you made, even small ones.

Have you checked your backlink profile? Do you build links yourself? Its easy enough to know that you didn?t do anything but someone else could have easily made links to your site without your knowledge and those could be hurting you.

Your first step is to just identify the sources of lost traffic whether it be from search, from social, or from some other website that was sending you traffic and now it is not or at least not as much.

Once you can pinpoint one or perhaps a few different sources that are not sending you as much traffic as before, then you can dig a little deeper and find out why those sources aren?t sending traffic any more.

As for your monetization issue, you pretty much named the things you can do to monetize a site. Unless you are selling products or services of your own, the only ways you can make money are by selling ad space or being an affiliate marketer. Why does adsense not do well on your site? Have you investigated why? Perhaps the ads are not relevant to your content? Sometimes websites that don?t have one clear theme don?t do well because its hard to match the ads with the audience because the content is so diverse.

Hope those suggestions help,

Shawn

Thank you very much, Shawn. I'm going to spend some time in analytics and I'll go over some things. Hopefully I'll be able to figure out what's happened.

Do you know of any good tools I should pick up that will help me keep track of backlinks, etc...?

I think being in a general niche could be my problem with AdSense. It does well on my YouTube videos, but not so well on my blog. I think linking to Amazon may be my only hope.

By the way, thanks for posting such a lengthy reply. I know that post had to take a decent bit of time and I appreciate all the help.

Backlink also give such problems. Check your primary source of traffic. May be you are not writing articles which has SEO friendly keywords. If the articles you are writing is not interesting for the readers, then it will decrease the traffic to your site. I wonder why you didnt good revenue from adsense when the traffic to your site is high.

Will do and definitely appreciate the advice. I'm posting up some quality, fresh articles that have been written by myself. I also write in a style that's catchier than most websites, so I'm not sure what the problem could be.

Tariq do one thing, just revamp your blog site with new graphics for user attraction, also update your website to the latest WP version along with good SEO links, may be it would be helpful for you.

I think this reply was meant for me? Either way, I've spent a lot of time pimping out the graphics on the site, keeping WP and all plugins up-to-date. I also ask a lot of people about the design and they love it. Maybe it could be time for a new graphics overhaul? I'll talk with some designers and see what's up.

 

[zenlagor]

Hi,

I assume all your youtube videos link back to your blog? give the users some incentive to go to the blog after watching your video. Also get some social signals going on, do a giveaway in one of your youtube videos where users have to follow you to opt in. Whichever network you prefer I find twitter easiest myself.

 

[TTGSteve]

Hi,

I assume all your youtube videos link back to your blog? give the users some incentive to go to the blog after watching your video. Also get some social signals going on, do a giveaway in one of your youtube videos where users have to follow you to opt in. Whichever network you prefer I find twitter easiest myself.

Yeah, I put the links to my site/social media outlets in the description of my videos. I'll definitely make sure to get into the habit of including incentives at the end of every video. That's a good idea about doing giveaways via YouTube videos. I've done giveaways before, but never employed YouTube as a promotional tool for those, unfortunately.

 

[djbunch]

I would look at the backlinks to the post you've sold, see if any of the buyers has done something like point A TON of links all with the same keyword at it.

 

[hango]

It depends on your content. I have a niche site that is all about starting a food blog and make money off Bluehost affiliates. I really recommend looking into software affiliate programs if your niches is about IM, making money online, etc. Even if you have one post.

As far as viewing your backlinks, get a Google Webmaster account. That will help you with keyword rankings on Google and show you incoming links.

PM me your site. I'm curious.