Of course, most people expect that once the site is up and running, hundreds, even thousands of visitors will flood the site. And then, of course, there’s the disappointment (crickets chirping, devil wagons blowing in the wind) because no one but your mother and your brother will come, at most a few cool people you know will click on it because you shared it on Facebook.
So, if you currently have no Ads, no search engine optimization, and no social media campaigns, you can expect at most a few drop-in visitors who will almost certainly not buy/use your service.
It’s a bit like opening a restaurant in the most isolated part of town and not telling anyone except your parents and your friends.
Now that we are getting to the root of the problem through the offline analogy, it is time to dig deeper.
Now that we are getting to the root of the problem through the offline analogy, it is time to dig deeper.
But why are there no visitors right away?
First, let’s break it down, as a visitor can come from several different sources:
from organic sources: from Google search, not paid ads
social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok just to name the most popular ones
from referrals: for example, PR articles
from paid advertising: for example, Google Ads.
You can track where a visitor is coming from through Google Analytics. Since we could go on for pages about this, we won’t go into more detail here, you can find a professional article on the use of Analytics on SEOlympic, for example.
What is more interesting is why you are not yet receiving visitors from these sources. Let’s take a look at them.
Why are there no organic visitors from Google search?
This could be for any number of reasons, but most likely it’s because the search engine hasn’t indexed your page yet.
The easiest way to check this is to type:
site:yoursitename.com
If you don’t see any results, you need a sitemap. This is what search engines use to map your website.
You may need an SEO plugin to do this, but it’s a good idea to get it set up by a professional who knows search engine optimization, otherwise you may still end up with a site that doesn’t work because of bad settings.
Of course, it’s also possible that you get some results, but no one comes to your website from an organic source. In this case, the website is probably poorly search-optimized and Google ranks it so low that users simply can’t find it.
Just think, if you are looking for something, on which pages will you find what you are looking for? It is likely that you will choose from the first page, or at most the first 5 results.
And if you are on the third page, in the 25th position, the likelihood of someone clicking on you is very low. In such a case, it is also worthwhile to pay more attention to search engine optimization of the website to get it ranked as high as possible by the search engine giant.
How soon can you expect results from organic search?
This is perhaps the hardest to say, as search engine optimization is a long-term project. A lot depends on how competitive the market is, how difficult it is to get ahead for specific keywords, and how strong your competitors’ SEO is.
These show that it is possible to achieve serious results in 1-2 years with continuous work and supervision. In return, however, (apart from the SEO specialist’s monthly fee) you get free visitors from organic searches. So the time and effort invested will certainly pay off many times over, but don’t expect a short-term return in this case.
Social media
If you haven’t run a paid ad and have a small follower base, it’s very unlikely that someone will find you through social media. If you want to get visitors from here, you will need a well-designed campaign with professional graphics (or videos) and text.
The first thing to determine is which platform your target audience is on. If you want to target a younger audience (under 25), you should target TikTok. Otherwise, adults aged 25-35 still use Facebook and Instagram the most.
Once you have found the right platform, you need to develop a campaign plan and post regularly, as well as hashtag research, in the case of Instagram.
How quickly can you expect results from social media campaigns?
With a well-developed plan and a sufficient budget, social media campaigns will attract visitors almost immediately. However, very precise measurements and metrics are needed to ensure that the success of a campaign is not immediately extinguished, but maintained over the long term.
And of course you need a certain budget to work with.
Google Ads
There can be two reasons why visitors are not coming from Google Ads:
- because you don’t run paid ads
- because your Google Ads campaign is not managed by a professional.
Managing PPC ads requires a lot of knowledge: it requires proper targeting, keyword research, keyword exclusion. Even bots need to be protected against, as they can easily reduce the money spent on ads to zero without any purchase being made.
If you manage your Google Ads account yourself, you should check that:
- are there any rejected ads?
- is the campaign and ad group active?
- are there keywords that are rejected (for example, Google rejects keywords related to alcohol, cigarettes, fireworks, etc.)
- are there any exclusion keywords that may affect the active keywords?
- isn’t the ad scheduling wrong?
- do the keyword bids exceed the daily budget?
For more tips on Google Ads, click on the link.
In how long can you expect results from a Google Ads campaign?
With a well-executed Google Ads campaign, you can also expect visitors immediately.
However, it’s worth knowing that Ads works on a PPC (pay per click) basis, so you have to pay per click depending on the level of competition for the keywords you are bidding on.
So, to stay within your budget, you may need a professional who can keep it all under control.
Other factors
As you can see above, it’s not easy to give a budget or an exact timeframe (for example, anyone who claims to be a search engine optimization expert and will tell you that they can get you to the top of Google in 2-3 months, get away from them as fast as possible).
A lot depends on how big your competition is and how much budget they have. Obviously, it’s much harder to compete with someone who spends 100x as much on pure marketing as you do on your entire yearly turnover.
The situation of the market cannot be ignored either. During the covid19 pandemic, entire business sectors were in the ground, and no matter how good a professional you were, you simply couldn’t reach people as a fitness centre owner, for example, because of the restrictions.
And during the global economic crisis of 2008, everyone cut back on spending, so a financial disaster like this would encourage people to save and cut back on purchases by a huge amount.
But, not only to give negative examples, if you come up with a product or service that is in huge demand, but you are still the only one in the market, it is much easier to find the target group and the payback is much, much faster.
Marketing is needed
However, in order to get visitors, and even visitors who will buy/use your service, you will need a marketing specialist. (Or there is another way, of course, to learn the trade and be responsible for marketing yourself, but that may mean 2-3 years of active learning and then continuous improvement.)
Without effective marketing, you are invisible and inaudible in the digital (and offline) world.
But we can give you a voice and put you at the centre of the digital map. But you need to take the first steps – clicking on the contact form and writing to us. From there, you can hand over the wheel to us.
