Wondering how long for a new website to get traffic? Getting traffic to a website organically can take some time and it will depend on a few variables:
- Your chosen niche/topic and the relative competition
- How much content you generate and how you go about sharing it/promoting it
- The back links you build (and those your visitors build)
- The share-worthiness of your content – how good is your content?
In a relatively uncompetitive niche you should find you are getting traffic from your social media shares quite quickly if you do this regularly. You can automate this process with a clever plugin called Revive Old Posts which syndicates your posts as they are published (and re-syndicates older posts too).
To get traffic from the search engines will usually take much longer though. Google particularly can be a hard nut to crack and they typically will place newer sites in a “sandbox” for some time before giving them any credibility at all! If you target longer tail keywords with low SEO difficulty, this can be a way around the problem, although some keywords will still be competitive.
Even though you may not rank well in Google for some months, other search engines can be more forgiving, especially if you’re in a less competitive niche. Bing, Yahoo, Duckduckgo.com etc can rank you more quickly and give you free traffic.
How Long For A New Website To Get Traffic? Checking Your Online Presence
Within a few weeks you should be able to find your website with a quick search on Google for your actual domain name. Use “yourwebsite.com” on a Google search to see if it shows up. Of course this kind of search won’t bring any traffic but it’s a way to see whether you are even appearing on the search engines. Usually the other search engines will show you before Google does.
This search shows that at least you are showing up for your own domain name. If you don’t show up for such a specific search like this it might mean you have been “sandboxed”. If you have, it can be weeks or months before you eventually show up in the SERPs – (Search Engine Results Page).
How Long For A New Website To Get Traffic? A Competitive Niche & Keyword Domains
Within a very competitive niche you shouldn’t expect too much in the way of getting free traffic without a huge amount of work. For example in the affiliate marketing space, it can take months or years to start showing up for even the least competitive keywords. In a less competitive niche, or if you’re targeting specific keywords within your domain name, this can happen much more quickly.
Keyword domain names can help you gain traction if you’re attacking a very competitive niche. This site, for example has targeted affiliate marketing mentors within the domain name.
More on this strategy in this article: how to rank an affiliate website.
Useful Plugins For Bloggers
A new website may never rank for its chosen keywords and you shouldn’t expect too much from a small website without creating a good amount of content. In a competitive niche, you will need to work much harder, and for longer than in an uncompetitive niche.
Bloggers may need to create a lot of content in order to attract the attention of the search engines and get free traffic from them. There’s a few plugins which can help bloggers with their SEO (search engine optimisation): See best free blog plugins for WordPress. By using specific keywords within your content, you have a greater chance of getting ranked for those particular keywords. Yoast SEO is a plugin which helps with this. Share your content too, using social media share plugins and place social share buttons on your site to encourage your audience to do the same.
The key to generating free search traffic begins with quality content. Google uses a number of factors to determine how to rank particular websites on their search results page. One of these is back links and Google will look for a natural link profile which shows people naturally linking to your content. They won’t do this for content which doesn’t provide some value. So content is king!
Getting Your Own Traffic
If you’re an affiliate with a new website, it can be frustrating waiting for Google to rank you in order to start generating traffic. So it’s far better to have a strategy which doesn’t completely rely on search engine results.
After all, in a competitive niche, you may not get any free traffic for some time anyway. So, far better to take some responsibility for creating your own traffic. If and when the search engines do eventually reward you for your content, it will be in far greater doses if you’re created and shared a heap of content already on your website!
To get more traffic you need to create more content. Ideally learn more about your target audience first so you can target your content towards those people who will take the most action on your website. See how to know your target market.
Use Google’s keyword planner to find long tail keywords in your niche. Then use the plugins mentioned in this article to automate a sharing strategy throughout your social media presence. Keep doing this and make it a habit. You should start generating traffic through your social media platforms. You can also build backlinks yourself by reaching out for guest post opportunities. Or hire a professional SEO company to do it for you:
See also how to increase website traffic organically.
If you stick to this strategy for long enough, you’re much more likely to be rewarded by the search engines with rankings of your content. If it doesn’t happen, you have your own strategy anyway! You can also run paid marketing campaigns using Google’s Adwords platform. I’ve found dynamic adverts work well with blogging. See this article for more on this strategy.