What should I do if my website traffic has stagnated even after publishing new content?

Sometimes websites will go stagnant over time, losing readership for reasons that webmasters may not understand. Even if you produce new content, you may not necessarily be able to attract new audiences or even get previous visitors to return. One reason behind this could be because of lower keyword rankings in Google's organic search results, which may be difficult to recover from even if you try to re-optimize for them.

There are several ways you can refresh your website and make it perform even better than it did prior to going stagnant.

Write and Share New Content

One way to rejuvenate your website is to write lengthy new content. Try to aim for 1,000 words or more per post, but if this isn't possible because of a lack of resources or other reasons, target 700-800.

Keywords that are relevant to your industry and used previously in outdated content can appear in new content, helping you rank higher for those terms you may have lost.

After writing and publishing your content, you should share it on social media outlets and other offsite blogs to help draw more traffic and indicate to Google that it's a high-quality source for information.

Revisit Older Content

Do you have a shorter blog post from several months ago that no longer ranks well against competitors and gets no additional visits?

You may benefit from going back to this content and updating it with newer information to keep it up-to-date and adding more content to make it stronger. Once you have updated this post with new information, it can supplement newer content covering similar topics and draw more traffic. You don't need to forget about it entirely when it's still potentially useful for drawing traffic.

Many blogs also allow you to change the publishing date on a blog post, which enables you to share it as new content without readers seeing it as older content.

Make Sure Your Content is Targeting the Right Readers

Another possible cause of stagnation is targeting the wrong audience. For instance, you may be a medical practitioner trying to attract new clients, but you have a blog that mostly covers topics that attract other competing medical professionals. This will get those potential clients to pass on your content and look elsewhere.

A good way to reach the right readers is to see what your target audience is actively searching for and reading. See what popular competitors are writing about and try to emulate their strategies by covering similar topics.

These are some of the many ways you can attract your ideal audience while keeping your website fresh.