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Why Is My Organic Traffic Not Growing? Fix it Now!

For many reasons, your organic traffic may not be growing and you simply don’t know what to do. Sometimes, you consider quitting your blog business. My advice for you is not to quit. In this article, I’ll share 5 things you need to do when organic traffic is not improving.

Your organic traffic pattern may look like this on the Google Search Console for several months or even up to a year:

Stagnant organic traffic

To be honest, it can be heartbreaking when your organic traffic is not growing after several months of hard work. This has led many to quit blogging.

One of the major problems is that many have unrealistic expectations of the blogging business. They do not know how long it takes to be successful in the blogging business.

Another noticeable problem is that some SEO ‘experts’ publish things like this about their newly-started blogs:

They make their followers who may have older blogs wrongly conclude that every website that is doing SEO right must have a similar upward trajectory on their Google Search Console performance report.

So, when your blog does not have this kind of upward trajectory, you begin to panic and feel worried.

Well, one thing is clear; all websites cannot have that kind of upward trajectory even if your SEO is fine for many varying factors. In fact, it is anti-typical to have a new site grow that way. It is never the norm.

In essence, do not panic when your organic traffic is not growing or stagnant or having some occasional spike or even decline. The Search Engine algorithm is volatile and that is normal.

Nonetheless, you’ll still find this article useful to learn what to do when organic traffic is not improving. These things are very practical and easy to implement.

Before going further, let us consider some reasons why organic traffic may not be improving.

Possible Reasons Why Organic Traffic Is Not Growing

The following reasons may be why your organic traffic is not growing. Let’s consider them one after the other.

Nothing Specific or Significant

To be honest, sometimes, it takes time to see significant month-on-month organic traffic improvement, and has nothing to do with what you have or have not done.

In essence, nothing specific or significant may be responsible for the stagnant growth of your organic traffic.

Google’s Bias Algorithm

In case you do not know, Google’s search engine algorithm is very biased in my opinion.

They simply rank articles based on their own reputation of a site, similar to what people call Domain Authority, instead of the quality of that individual content or page.

Algorithm Update

Sometimes, declining traffic may be due to a Search Engines’ algorithm update.

It is important to stay updated with news like this so you do not panic when there is a decline.

Targetting the wrong keywords

Although keyword research is overrated, it is still a fundamental aspect of SEO.

When you keep targeting keywords with high competition, you’re likely not going to get the desired traffic.

No matter the SEO tool you use, I strongly suggest that you always do your own research on Google SERP.

Low-Quality Content

Content is one of the most important SEO factors because it is 100% within your control.

When there is too much low-quality content on a blog, it is very difficult for such a blog to have a significant increase in organic traffic.

For example, imagine a news blog that copies news from other blogs and just rephrases some words. This type of content has no real unique value and is generally considered low-value content.

If the majority of the content on your site is low-value, such a blog cannot grow its organic traffic.

Instead, learn how to write high-value content.

Poor Internal Linking

The easiest way to have stagnant SEO growth is when there is a poor internal-linking structure on a blog.

It is ridiculous because internal linking is the easiest aspect of SEO.

Check out my in-depth tutorial on internal linking.

Unhealthy Link-building Pattern

Traditionally, you are made to believe that you must build backlinks to improve your organic traffic. Well, that has led many bloggers to ruin their own sites.

Google algorithm can detect when a link is unnaturally placed, hence can ‘punish’ a site regularly for it.

This can lead to a gradual decline in organic traffic on a site.

Poor Technical SEO

The technical aspect is always the most boring part of SEO.

Many people ignore the warnings they get from the Google Search Console instead of fixing them.

Always use an SEO tool to audit your site to know how good or bad your technical SEO is.

A site with poor technical SEO can hardly grow organically.

What To Do When Organic Traffic Is Not Growing Or Declining

Stay Calm

When your organic traffic is stagnant or declining, it is important to stay calm.

You need to understand that your site can have declining or stagnant traffic even when there are no major issues.

Not staying calm can actually lead to drastic measures that could eventually harm your site.

Update Old Posts

Updating old posts is one of the easiest and uncommon ways of improving organic traffic.

Follow my detailed guide on how to update old posts and improve your organic traffic.

Target Super Low Competition Key Phrases

It’s a waste of time reminding you how important it is to target low competition, long tail focus Key phrases. You most likely already do that.

What you are probably not doing is targeting super low competitive keyphrases. You are likely chasing the low competition key phrase from SEO tools, which every other blogger in your niche is also targeting and that itself is a competition.

Mind you, note that almost all the SEO tools have the same data or numbers, so everyone, no matter the SEO tool used, is going after almost the same set of key phrases.

Watch this video to know how to discover super low competition keywords that will improve your organic traffic fast.

Rewrite Your Headlines

Headlines or H1 are super important to SEO.

You need to learn how to rewrite all your headlines such that readers are curious enough to click them.

Doing this dramatically improves your CTR, hence your organic traffic will grow. I did this too and my traffic double within a month. It worked like magic.

Watch this video to learn how to write powerful headlines.

After rewriting all your blog post headlines, make sure you resubmit them for indexing one after the other.

Fix All Technical Issues

Check your Google Search Console if there are any reported errors. If there are any try as much as possible to fix all.

Video page indexing fixed on Google Search Console

In case you are not sure how to fix one particular error, simply copy the error text and look it up on the search engine. You’ll most likely see a solution.

One example of such an error could be the HTTPS Is Invalid And Might Prevent It From Being Indexed error.

Keep Publishing

Publishing is the number 1 essence of blogging in the first place.

Never allow a lack of growth to stop you from doing that.

The more you publish, the better your chances of getting attention from search engines.

Always publish and understand that success takes some time.

Give Time

After doing all you think is necessary or certain that your site is fine, you should allow some time.

On many occasions when your organic traffic is stagnant or declining, that’s all you need to do.

Even if you have fixed whatever needed fixing, you still need time for things to normalize.

How Long Is Too Long For A Site’s Organic Traffic To Be Stagnant or Declining?

It is very normal when some sites’ organic traffic is not growing even when you keep publishing regularly and have no major SEO issues.

However, you need to know when to draw the line and be worried.

Assuming you have done all necessary checks and you’re convinced that your site is okay, understand that your organic traffic could be stagnant for as long as 6 months to 1 year before it starts getting substantial month-on-month growth.

On the other hand, if your site’s organic traffic is declining continuously for about 5 to 8 months+, you should be worried.

One of my sites had continuously declining traffic for about 4 months. It was very sad but after a while, it started picking up by itself.

Final Thought

When your organic traffic is not growing, understand that it is sometimes part of the business and that is not unusual.

Do not be fooled by so-called experts who make you think all sites must have month-on-month organic traffic growth.

Fix what may need to be fixed, stay calm, and keep publishing.

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