12 Reasons Your Blog Might Not Be Growing
You spend hours putting time into your blog, but your visitors aren’t going up and neither is your income. You feel like everything looks nice, but there has to be a reason (or reasons) your blog might not be growing as you expected.
Websites need to have consistent growth to increase your revenue. Let’s be honest; most of us aren’t blogging with the idea of this being a hobby and no income is in the future. We want to make blogging our job, so growth needs to happen.
When our expectations don’t meet reality, it’s time to take a step back and think about why your blog might not be growing and what changes you can make to ensure growth starts.
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Related: 6 Ways To Grow Your Blog Easily
12 Reasons Your Blog Might Not Be Growing
1. You Aren’t Treating It Like a Job
You spend hours reading blogs about how much money bloggers make and how they bring their spouse home through their income. Chances are you want to do the same thing, but your blog isn’t growing.
Let me tell you a secret.
They didn’t get there by putting four to five hours of work into their blog each week. These bloggers treated their website like a job and reaped the benefits. You need to put hours and hours of work into your website to make an income from it, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
2. You Lack a Strategy
Next, you need a strategy; it’s never a good idea to anything without a plan. You cannot write content without a plan and hope it works for your audience.
Remember, this isn’t a hobby; this is your business, and business need consistency and a business plan. It’s never a bad idea to take a few days to create a strategy. You need a plan with an outline and a course of action.
3. Your Niche is Too Competitive
Years ago, no niche was too competitive, and you could write lifestyle blogs simply about whatever fancied you, but times have changed. That is no longer the case, and some niches are either far too competitive or need qualifications in order for your website to rank.
What do I mean?
Let’s take a look at the fitness and weight loss niche. A niche is a category essentially, so these website owners only write about these topics. Since fitness and weight loss have medical topic, Google now prefers the website owner to have some sort of background that gives them the qualifications to write about it. Plus, there are so many websites surrounding this topic, ranking and getting on the first page is simply like climbing Mount Everest.
Low competitive niches that have nothing to do with you money or health are ideal; the fewer competitive websites there are, the easiest it is for you to rank your website and keep growing.
4. Too Broad with Your Niche and Categories
Sometimes, staying focused with your niche is so hard. In the beginning, your goal is to hone in on one category and create as much content surrounding that category. Having too much categories makes it harder for Google to recognize you as an authority in that niche.
It’s easy to lose your focus.
You may write about motherhood and want to share some of your favorite recipes. However, food is a niche that is hard to break into, and Google won’t recognize your efforts. If your efforts won’t help your website get on the first page, then you’re wasting your time.
5. You Pick the Wrong Keywords
Keywords goes right along with SEO and niches. Some keywords are dominated by high authority websites, and a small website like yours will struggle to even get on the 3rd page of articles – which no one will see.
Low competitive keywords are the way to go. These are ones that the little guys like you can rank for in the beginning, allowing your website to grow. If you’re wondering why your blog might not be growing, it could be because you’re not using SEO to pick the right keywords.
Related: Best Blogging Tools for Mom Bloggers
6. Not Using SEO Correctly
One of the most common blog mistakes is not starting to learn and use SEO correctly from the start. If your website doesn’t have proper SEO, then the chances of Google ranking your articles is slim.
Bloggers often take the bad advice to simply write what they want to write, but if you want people to view your blog, then you need to write for Google. This is how Google figures out what your blog – and specifically your articles – are about to get them to rank. You want your articles on the first page to increase your traffic and revenue.
Related: Blogging Terms You Need To Know
7. The Quality of Your Content Lacks
Content is king, and quality matters more than quantity. The last thing you want to do is try to pump out content that is not the best quality you can produce. A short 300 word article is not enough.
Here are some suggestions to ensure your quality is the best possible.
- Look at the top ranking articles and make sure your article covers even more details.
- Use the top questions on Google when you search for your keyword and include those as H2 headers.
- Look at the length of all top ranking articles. The optimal length is typically around 2,500 words, but the total length can be shorter if you’re covering all the details needed.
Your readers should come to your website and be able to solve all of their problems or questions from your article. If it doesn’t solve and answer everything, then you need more details.
8. No Clear Organization to Your Website
Your website should have clear organization so readers can find exactly what they want. They should be able to find new posts without having to dig through older posts. In general, a blog bounce rate is between 70-90, so anything higher than that indicates a problem.
Here are some suggestions to create a sense of order for your blog.
- Put your posts into broad categories with sub-categories to keep all of your posts easy to search for people wanting that information.
- Use tags to direct your readers to related content.
- Make sure your new content is on the front bag
- Use all sorts of internal links to send readers to related posts that will help with the content they are reading currently.
9. You Need an Email List
Another reason your blog might not be growing is that you don’t have an email list. Your website grows if you have an active relationship with your readers, and they grow to appreciate your content you create regularly.
An email list allows you to connect to your readers, sending out alerts when new content is available, and use it to sell products. Your dedicated readers are most likely to buy your products.
10. More Variety Needed for Your Content
Variety is the spice of life, but in this case, your blog. While you need to stick with your niche and appropriate categories, you can vary the type of content you offer for readers.
Try mixing it up because different type of content appeals to different readers. Here are a few options for your blog content.
- Lists or Listicles
- Tutorials & How-To’s
- Resource Posts
- Checklists
- In-Depth Posts
- Reviews
- Interviews
- Comparisons
Always make sure you use relevant images and consider creating infographics to go along with your blog posts.
11. Failing to Market Your Blog
Marketing matters. You put time and effort into creating your blog and content, but if you’re wondering why your blog might not be growing, it could be your marketing efforts.
Your blog will grow through SEO alone, but if you want to make it grow faster, then marketing matters. There are plenty of marketing possibilities to allow your blog to grow.
- Use social media, such as Facebook and Pinterest, to reach more potential readers.
- Give each post complementing visuals.
- Use off-page and on-page SEO strategies
- Make sure your titles are interesting
- Answer questions on Quora
- Guest post
12. Your Site Speed is Too Slow
The last reason your blog might not be growing is that your site speed is too slow. We are impatient people, as a whole, and a website takes longer than 3 to 5 seconds to load, you’re losing potential visitors. They will click out of your website and look for their information elsewhere.
So, get up that site speed!
If you discover your blog might not be growing as you expected, don’t panic. You need to consider the problems and make changes to increase the growth of your blog.
