Traffic is essential to any form of web-based success. Whether you are a casual blogger or multinational brand, a website is only as good as the traffic it receives. This traffic can come through organic sources such as social media or search engines, can be the result of paid or free marketing efforts, or can even be directly from people typing in your website address. Because there is nothing more important to your website’s success than the number of people visiting and using it, a sudden drop in traffic – or no stream of traffic ever – can be a death knell. If you’re struggling with this currently, then continue reading to find out why people are giving your website the cold shoulder.

A Lack of Comprehensive SEO

Perhaps the biggest and most common reason why websites fail to attract people is bad SEO. Search engine optimization is a cornerstone of sustainable traffic, and websites without an effective SEO strategy will find it difficult to attract visitors. While there are other ways to attract visitors (social media, email and PPC campaigns), most either require a pre-existing database of people interested in your topic or a healthy ad budget. SEO revolves around building quality content infused with keywords and a presence elsewhere on the web in the form of links. These metrics help indicate to search engines that your website is thriving and valuable. If you’re not pinging URLs to search engines and producing enough quality content, then people will likely never know about your site.

No Mobile Accommodations

Social media and search engines are by far the two biggest drivers of traffic. In the case of search engines, websites that do not implement mobile responsive designs – templates that allow the site’s main functions to be easily read and accessed on mobile devices – are increasingly losing visibility in search results. Most traffic to search engines as of now comes through mobile devices, and search engines therefore have a vested interest in ensuring that the websites displayed to users are relevant. On social media, a majority of users are accessing content from mobile devices as well. While social media doesn’t penalize visibility based on a lack of mobile accommodations, users will quickly close the tab and look elsewhere if they discover your website is hard to navigate or read.

Failure to Build Links

Even if you are doing well in the world of SEO and providing mobile users an easy-to-use alternative, you could be missing out on traffic due to link building strategies (or the lack thereof). In many cases, a failure to build links can result in 20 to 40 percent less traffic for a website. If you are producing quality content, building SEO credibility and using social media to its fullest, then there is a good chance that you’ll be spotted by others. These individuals will begin to share content from your website and it will often be picked up by influencers, blogs and other important entities within your niche. When and if these sites start pinging URLs back to yours, their visitors will begin visiting your site in greater numbers. There are many different ways to build links successfully, but the lack of a link building strategy can often be a prime reason why nobody is visiting your website.

Which source provides your website with the most traffic – search, direct referrals, social media, email marketing, or something else? Tell us below and compare your site’s traffic with others!