There are many reasons people visit a website, but never move beyond the landing page, or make any further engagements with the content on the website. Common reasons include difficulties viewing the content from their mobile device, or simply never even knowing the blog section existed.

Below we will explore a few of the main reasons people do not move beyond your home page. But before we get started, let’s establish the difference between a website and a blog. A blog is a collection of articles; whereas a website is a collection of web pages, which may or may not include a blog.

Now that that’s settled, here are a few of the reasons your visitors don’t give your blog the attention it deserves.

Poor Website Design

Many small businesses make the mistake of adding way too many bells and whistles in an attempt to be unique and innovative. But more often than not, this only creates confusion for your users, and makes the website difficult to navigate.

If there are too many items to load on a page, the website also slows down, and users could become frustrated and close the page. For those who stick around for a while, they may still not even know there is a blog, as it is not immediately obvious. So once they get their fill of the home page, they simply move on.

Not Mobile Friendly

In 2016, mobile browsing surpassed browsing from a personal computer for the first time. In October of that year, 51.3% of searches took place on a smartphone or tablet. And yet, there are many companies who neglect to make their websites compatible with mobile devices.

If users have a hard time viewing the website on their smaller screens, they are unlikely to move beyond the home page. Understanding the importance of this, Google has been penalizing websites that are not mobile friendly, by ranking them lower in mobile search results.

Poor Website Copy

Most About Me pages are downright boring — the same goes for home pages, which also tend to be about the person or company. If this is the case for your website, people have no incentive to move beyond that first page.

Website copy with a lot of typos and grammatical errors can also turn people off from reading, even if it might have otherwise been interesting. And finally, if the website copy tends to be a long and self-indulgent ramble, readers assume the blog posts will be just as terrible, and decide not to read them.

Annoying Pop-Ups

Since the dawn of the internet, nothing has been as annoying as pop-up boxes. Yet, we use them to encourage readers to subscribe to our newsletters, or buy our books. This is fine as long as users may easily close the box.

If there is no immediately obvious way to close the box and view the rest of the content, people will invariably just close the web page to escape any obligations to subscribe to newsletters, watch ads, or purchase items.

Poor Promotion Skills

Typically, when people own a blog, the idea is not to promote the blog itself, but to promote individual articles that resolve issues people may be facing — from boredom to filing taxes. If you promote these individual articles via social media, and through collaborations with other bloggers, or even in person, people will bypass the home page and go straight to the articles.

It is easier to market an article over an entire blog, because people have time to read one article, and know what to expect from one article. In contrast, they may not have time to explore the entire blog, and will not know exactly what to expect from the collection of posts. Make it easy. Point them to a specific item, and let them discover the rest on their own.

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Are you struggling with drawing traffic to the articles you’ve published on your blog? In the past five months, my personal blog has averaged 23,621 hits per month. Are you confident your website could do as well, or better, with the right content management plan? Then shoot us an email. I’d be happy to help!

About the Author

Alexis Chateau is the Founder and Managing Director at Alexis Chateau PR. She is an activist, writer, and explorer. Follow her stories of trial and triumph at www.alexischateau.com.