Last updated on December 14th, 2018 at 11:15 pm

If you want to increase your blog traffic, but don’t know how and nothing you do is working, you need to read this. Find out what you could be doing wrong and how to fix it!

I talked about how I grew my blog traffic from 800 to 19.000 page views in one month, but what you might have missed is that it took me over a year to come to that place.

For that whole year, I didn’t have ANYBODY visit my blog.

It was weird. On the one side I felt secure that nobody can judge me and my blog, but on the other side I wanted to actually get traffic, so people see what I have to share & so I can start making some money (even if not a lot).

The moment I decided to be very honest with myself, see what I’m doing wrong & change it, was when my traffic exploded.

And it never went back, it grows more and more each month as I’m learning new things.

Now I know many would tell you you don’t need traffic to make money blogging…but the truth is: You do.

Maybe not millions of monthly page views, but over 30.000?

Yes, you do.

More traffic means more ad revenue, more affiliate sales and more product sales, more potential clients. More of everything. So don’t make this excuse. Make it a point to grow your audience and don’t be lazy about it – it can never hurt to have more visitors to your blog.

If you haven’t started your blog yet or struggling to grow your blog, make sure to work through my step-by-step guide here. It teaches you: 1) how to choose a blog topic, 2) launch your WordPress blog without spending a ton of money on things you don’t actually need in the beginning by choosing a reliable, but cheap hosting, 3) grow your blog traffic fast and 4) start making money with that blog. Yes, it takes longer than just buying hosting in 20 minutes, but if you stick with it – you’ll launch your blog within a week.

So, from what I’ve learned, here are 11 reasons nobody visits your blog.

11 Reasons Nobody Visits Your Blog & How To Fix It

1. You’re waiting for “them” to come to your blog.

Okay, so one of the things I didn’t do and the biggest reason for me not having ANY traffic for over a year: I didn’t promote my blog anywhere. And I mean nowhere. I would write my blog post, publish it and expect it to get a lot of traffic without me doing more.

This never happened.

Even with the 800 Page Views I had already started promoting my blog posts a little bit.

The leap from 800 to 19.000 page views?

A ton of promotion on Pinterest for a month.

There are so many websites and blogs out there that getting traffic by chance/ or by being found randomly simply doesn’t happen anymore.

You need to make it happen.

And the good news? 

You can!

Pinterest is in my opinion the best way to get traffic to your blog for free, especially when you’re a brand new blogger and nobody knows about you.

By promoting I don’t mean pin one of your pins to one board and wait for it….Well, you can wait for it all you want, but getting traffic like this is very very rare. What I mean is create multiple pins for each blog post and pin them to different boards every day.

2. You’re not using keywords

How do you usually find anything on the internet?

You search for it.

You put in some words into Google or Pinterest and then they give you a huge list with options to explore.

So the things you put into the search bar?

Those are keywords.

From my experience the more specific you go with a keyword, the higher chances you have to be found on the Google.

So if you’re sharing a recipe for gluten-free brownies, the keyword gluten-free brownies is ok, it’s not awful.

But you can be more specific.

For example those brownies might also be refined sugar-free, vegan, healthy, easy – or all of those.

So your keyword can be “Easy vegan gluten-free brownies”. That’s specific and gives you higher chances to come up in search results when people search for this specific keyword.

Great, now I need a brownie.

Make sure to put the keywords in your blog post’s title, alt tags for your images and throughout your blog post (without overdoing it though – there’s something called keyword stuffing and it’s a bad thing that Google hates you for, ah that google).

OMG, now google will think I’m keyword stuffing for google, trying to come up higher in search results when people google “google”. I am dead to you, aren’t I?

SAVE MEEE, save me.

Anyway. I’m working right now on getting on track with the whole SEO thing, as I’ve ignored for the longest time and thought it’s more overrated than Taylor Swift (OMG now I’m also dead to Taylor Swift and all her fans).

I’m already seeing some improvement for Google, but not quite where I want to be. Once I see real results, I’ll make sure to share more tips here, maybe in a small guide.

For now, in any case, make sure to have the Yoast SEO plugin installed and activated and follow everything it tells you to do to each one of your blog posts (or as much as it makes sense, sometimes it’s a little crazy!).

3. You’re not creating the “right” content.

Have you seen the movie “Welcome to me“?

It’s about a woman who wins the lottery and makes a show about herself called “Welcome to me”. It’s an insane show, but people eventually start watching it. Because, what are you going to do when there’s an insane show on TV.

Well, the chances of that happening to a new blog? Not high.

Sadly, online nobody cares about what someone they don’t know is doing or feeling.

People search online to solve their own problems, not someone else’s.

You need to create content that solves a problem and you need to create it consistently.

So take an honest look through your content and ask yourself for each post:

“What problem am I solving here?”

If can answer 100% without much explanation & fluff – you’re on the right path!

4. You aren’t actually putting in the work.

Another reason that you’re not getting visitors to your blog might be that you’re not working hard enough. That sounds horrible, but I’m honest and I’m saying it, because I’ve been through this.

Don’t get me wrong, you’re thinking about your blog most of the time, you should finally publish that blog post, should be pinning more. You’re preparing for it, but you aren’t actually doing it.

In the end, you’re publishing content once, maybe twice a month just to pop in, promoting from time to time. Overall in reality you spend less than 5 hours/month working on your blog. Again – this is something I’ve done as well.

This is actually what’s been happening to this blog right here lately – I’ve been super inconsistent.

When I get in this “rhythm” my traffic drops.

So find a good rhythm, make a plan and stick to it!

I’ve found that publishing once a week can be enough for some blogs (like this one). For my other healthy lifestyle blog I try to publish 2-3 times a week.

As for promoting on Pinterest, I use a scheduler called Tailwind. It’s easy to use and I can batch pin all of my pins. I discovered that it’s gotten popular to pin manually and that’s what I was doing for over a year, mainly because I didn’t want to spend money on a scheduler.

To be honest with you I don’t know if there’s a big difference between pinning manually or with a scheduler and I’ve done both. The fact is, since I’m using Tailwind (8 months) I’ve doubled my traffic and am able to focus on more things.

I think the only reason for this is that I can ACTUALLY stay consistent with pinning. If I don’t have the scheduler, I pin from time to time or let it take over my life and start to hate it. I seriously can’t see myself anymore pinning for one hour every day. 15 minutes manual pinning here and there are fine and I do it most days of the week.

If you’re having a hard time staying consistent with pinning and sick of spreadsheets and pinning for an hour, I highly recommend you look into a scheduler like Tailwind – you can schedule everything ahead and analyze what worked and what didn’t. Yet a free trial for Tailwind and see for yourself here.

So: be consistent, publish at least once every week and promote your content on Pinterest regularly.

5. You’re promoting products way too much (before you have an audience).

Okay, so this hurts a little, but I see a lot of new bloggers focused primarily on promoting affiliate products on their blogs and not actually trying to grow an audience. (*this again goes back to: you don’t need traffic to make money blogging*).

So much that it’s hurting the quality of their content.

Yes, we all do want to make money blogging, but meanwhile it’s getting too much. Nothing wrong with promoting things you love & believe in, but it shouldn’t be the purpose of your blog. Make it a part of your blog, not the focus.

Nobody will follow or come back to your blog if your content isn’t helpful and is only about promoting stuff.

It’s like being invited to a jewellery party by a “friend” who makes a commission off of you. When you meet up, they’re only talking about their new line.

You might meet that friend once, maybe twice, but you’ll say no the next time.

Why? Because you feel like someone’s using you.

Don’t be that friend.

Be genuine & focus on growing an audience first! Of course, use affiliate links where it makes sense and would help, but don’t make it the focus of your blog.

6. You’re doing the same thing over and over again & expecting different results.

This is huge, HUGE!

If you’re doing something over and over again and it’s not working (or not working anymore), it’s about time to change it! For example I talked about how I was posting every day on Instagram for over a month trying to increase my blog traffic.

That went nowhere.

And I saw it, I saw it from the first week. Still it took me a while to admit it, to finally get over my need to be discovered on Instagram, get off it and start using this magical tool called Pinterest. That exploded my traffic in a month.

So if you’re doing the same thing over and over again, whether it’s being inconsistent, not creating the right content or too little promotion, maybe SEO, maybe design – change it! Often you know what it is and what to do about it.

7. You’ve been around for only a month.

If you’re brand new – here’s the truth. Blogging is not a quick fix. I wish it was. Most people make it seem like it is. 3 months in, and BAM I’m making $5,000.

Aaaeerrr. No, it takes time.

It doesn’t have to take years, but it could take around 2-3 months for most bloggers to really see a change in traffic and after that to make money. So if you’re blogging for a month and nothing happens: stop stressing about it, stay consistent and be patient! Traffic is coming.

If you’re a new blogger, make sure to work through my step-by-step guide here. It teaches you: 1) how to choose a blog topic, 2) launch your WordPress blog without spending a ton of money on things you don’t actually need in the beginning by choosing a reliable, but cheap hosting, 3) grow your blog traffic fast and 4) start making money with that blog. Yes, it takes longer than just buying hosting in 20 minutes, but if you stick with it – you’ll launch your blog within a week.

8. You’re comparing / trying to be like someone else.

Having a successful blog is super rewarding, but getting there takes a lot of hard work, commitment and TIME.

And when you’re constantly looking at what others are doing and how well they’re doing it, you’re wasting time and you’re not working hard.

Seriously, I love reading other blogs, even though I don’t comment often (or at all).

But, whenever I start doing it too much, looking at how beautiful their blog design is, how genius their writing is or how successful they are at something I’m not – I freeze.

I start doubting everything I do, I feel like it all sucks, what’s the point anyway and I do nothing.

It’s very sneaky.

You see a pin on Pinterest about something you want to do, maybe you had a similar blog post idea. You click on it, it’s awesome. Actually, you know what – it’s better than yours! Yours sucks compared to this genius right here.

So you check their whole site and then someone else’s and then the day is done.

I kinda sound like a psychopath, but I’m honest. This has happened to me many many many many many times and it sucks.

The way I fixed it (and constantly fixing it) was to start with my blog first. I would write my blog posts, schedule them, pin them and then if there are enough hours left in the day – I would check out other people’s content, mostly even not. The truth is, content is content, words are words

9. You’re obsessing over stats instead of building your blog.

This one’s right next to comparing yourself, and it’s here for a reason! If you’re checking your stats and analyzing what you’re doing right or wrong 20 times a day, you’re wasting time.

There’s no need to check your stats more than once a day, if that.

Do what needs to be done and let go of these numbers! They change ALL THE TIME.

10. Your headlines are not what they could be.

A good headline is everything! If your headline is not AMAZING, if it doesn’t solve a burning problem – there’s very high chance you won’t attract much traffic.

11. You’re not in a niche that drives a lot of traffic.

Then, finally, some blog niches are very specific and don’t drive a lot of traffic. There just aren’t many people with that particular interest.

However, if you’re very niched down, this also means there’s higher chance for the right people to find you, so you can actually make money by offering a service or product. And this is where the “You don’t need a lot of traffic to make money” is true.

When there isn’t much “competition”, there also isn’t enough information out there – thus you can charge higher prices and make good money even with a smaller audience.

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That’s it. If you’re doing any of these things, get real with yourself and fix them.