Promising blog, but traffic won't increase

[Manos88]

Hi all,

I have a wordpress blog about a good niche that I expect to become much bigger over the coming years. My homepage URL (forgive me for not kwowing the correct term) contains a very relevant keyword to my niche's main keyword. The site is now almost 1 year old. I only started applying serious seo to it since about 6 months. The site is now PR1, with Alexa rank getting better each week.

So far I've focused most on:

- content (quality articles written by myself, and using a third party for the past few articles)

- look & feel (the site looks pretty okay I guess, running the twentyfourteen wordpress theme... it could use a custom header though)

- article placement (I tested various placings, but I can't be sure; I'm not getting enough traffic yet for doing proper a/b testing)(site is also showing relevant ads to the niche. So good, right?)

- creating and maintaining the social media ring around it (the 3 big ones, and pinterest; I added pretty share buttons to my blog, and they're getting me some subscribers)

- commenting and backlinking (I don't like doing this, but I noticed placing comments on big blogs drives instant traffic. I also got good no-follow links from a busy relevant wiki, and I have placed some high pr(4-6) do-follow links in wikis... now I'm just waiting for the PR-update

The problem:
For the past 6 months I got around 30-60 unique visitors per day. Last January number the numbers gradually went up to a peak of 120 uniques. That day I was #1 in the SERP for the main keyword of my url, but now it's back on page 2 of the serp

What could be going wrong? I've added more content, did more linking, my bouncerate is steadily going down (normal: 60-50%, today 45%), I cleaned up my tags (investigated which ones were driving traffic and which ones were just junk I shouldn't have created), cleaned up some dead links with a few 301's... the site is responsive and looks good on mobile (don't know about tablet, but they're not bouncing much so I think it's good).

 

[WickedLamborghini]

My opinion is that you should stick to your method but invest a little more in your Social Signals, that would give a boost to your organic traffic. More apelative design too.

 

[Numbuh362]

It seems like you're doing everything right, maybe get some more seo services? Do you have facebook, twitter, and google plus accounts for your website? If not create social media accounts, it will benefit your site.

 

[bartosimpsonio]

What kinda social media work are you doing? Sounds like you need a facebook page and bring in some other social signals there as well.

 

[Manos88]

The blog has a facebook page, G+ page, twitter account and pinterest. FB and G+'s pages look pretty bad, but they have some subscribers. My twitter account is by far the best quality social channel I use, with regular tweeting it has got me about 300 followers. This drives a little traffic, but not much.

It's just that I don't see any real progress apart from the bounce rate going down. With that peak of 120 visitors I was around €2-3 per day. It was just at that point where it started becoming fun... but now back to pennies and cents

 

[WickedLamborghini]

Then the problem might be the niche. Try to build more quality or just start all over again with a different niche.

 

[KingManu]

you seem to have it covered from all angles, maybe it's just a quantity issue. Sure, quality is your main focus and that is good, now just focus on quantity. Research the entry keywords every time, see what people what to see and just deliver more and more about it. Make some videos on YT related to your content or your website, look for some link exchanges niche related, make sure you always use images to drive some traffic from g images too. maybe make an e - book for your niche and offer it free with your website link in it.
Just some ideas

 

[Manos88]

Thanks for the advices, I think I'll do best with doing those proper researches for low-competition keywords, to drive a bit more traffic. I don't think the niche is the problem, in the end it will turn out to become a big one, that I believe.

 

[Manos88]

I think I've found the reason why the traffic is stuttering. In webmaster tools you can keep track of search volume (thank you, captain Obvious), and it seems as if the entire niche is having its problems.

 

[Manos88]

I'm learning new things everyday, there are parts of SEO I know very little about. Therefore I would like to share my experience about when yesterday, I learned about a cache-plugin for wordpress. Since I'm on a pretty slow server, activating this plugin made a huge difference to my site speed! Today, the bounce rate dropped 10% and pageviews increased significantly as well.

I hadn't gotten a click in over days, but today I already counted 3 clicks (worth 80 cents but hey, it's something )

So for those of you with cheaply hosted wordpress blogs: install that cache-plugin!

 

[Manos88]

An hour later: more pageviews, another click. I'm very pleased

I started writing a good quality article, one that contains several low-comp. keywords, being longtail and 3-4 words. I'm very curious how much traffic this will bring.

 

[Eagle Eye]

keyword density? have you considered this?

 

[Manos88]

Yes, I do consider the density. I use the Yoast SEO plugin to monitor the posts' density, and have gotten rid of keyword spamming tags. However, I've kept the categories list in the sidebar, since it forms the only means of navigation through my posts other than scrolling the homepage. I also kept in mind that certain keywords already appear a lot on my site other than in my posts, so I kept the kw-density lower for those keywords (in-post).

In the meanwhile, another click What a difference in comparison to the last 7 days (€0.90) --> today at a motivating €1.81...

 

[Manos88]

Yesterday another 4 clicks, today already at 5 clicks I'm amazed! This is also due to the fact that I sacrificed a widget-adsense block for an in-post block. Although the ad is now no longer above the fold, this seems to get more clicks...

In the meanwhile I'm waiting for my new super-blogpost to get indexed -_- Gimme traffic!!!!!!!

 

[the-dream]

I'd say your problem is you don't have any real strategies to get new visitors apart from hoping they see you on Google. Think of some!

 

[Biznik]

Keep visitors coming back by capturing emails. Are you doing that?

 

[Manos88]

I'd say your problem is you don't have any real strategies to get new visitors apart from hoping they see you on Google. Think of some!

Yeah you're right. Basically all that I'm doing thats supposed to get traffic is:

- writing good content
- apply SEO on page
- bit of manual linkbuilding
- keep the social networks of the site updated every once and awhile

Keep visitors coming back by capturing emails. Are you doing that?

No, I'm a total noob when it comes to databases and sending emails. At this point, I can only get the time or money to enter about one quality post per week. Is this enough or should it definitively be more?

 

[Manos88]

Would it be a good idea to rewrite some of my least popular articles to attract some easier keywords, or would Google see this through, and penalize me?

 

[Manos88]

Another bad aspect of my site is its hosting. It's very slow, sometimes even taking up to 10 seconds to properly load a page. The quick-cache plugin does wonders for loading up additional pages, but of course it's the first (landing page) that's most important.

So when my contract ends in April, I want to move the site to a faster host. I want quick loading for a reasonable price, with a decent customer support service. Can anybody recommend a certain company? I prefer an American company; due to server locations and dollar/euro benefits.

 

[awesomewebsites]

You can try social signals as well if you have not explored it yet. Try to write viral articles that get automatically shared on social networking websites. This will certainly boost the rankings of your website. Another possible reason may be not good authority. Have you claimed authorship of the blog ?