In this post, I’m going to share with you how to revive a website.
Unfortunately, I have more experience with this than I ideally want with having to revive websites on 7 different occasions.
I have seen my website go from receiving thousands of visitors weekly to barely getting 100 a month.
You might be experiencing it at this moment but before you give up I got some suggestions that have helped me on numerous occasions.
I’ll show you multiple ways to prepare and execute the revival of a dead website.
Let’s get into it!
1. Re-evaluate the relevance of your niche
In some cases, the reason your website died doesn’t have anything to do with technical problems or competition stealing your traffic.
Sometimes the niche just isn’t as relevant as it was before.
An Example can be a website that is dedicated to selling seasonal products. You’re not going to receive a lot of visitors in the middle of June if you sell Christmas products.
I remember hoverboards being very popular 10 years ago but if you have a website dedicated to hoverboard right now it’s not going to get anywhere near the numbers it’d get back then.
In these cases, it might be best to pivot to another niche.
There are all types of tools that you can use to evaluate the relevance of your niche such as keyword research tools to find out the popularity on Google.
You could also use content marketing research tools to see how popular the niche is on social media.
2. Performing a Link Audit
Backlinks can contribute a lot to ranking on search engines and bringing traffic to your website. If your website all of a sudden loses all its traffic a link audit can reveal if your link profile is the cause of it.
Maybe your website has accumulated a lot of “bad” links or you have lost a lot of good links that contributed to getting visitors to your website.
After that, you can start disavowing bad links and make a plan to obtain the backlinks needed to get your website back on track.
3. Reach out to websites that used to link to you
A loss of backlinks in most cases is the result of websites getting rid of the links directed to your website.
This can be the result of them finding links to content that suits their needs more or maybe they just deleted the entire page.
Getting in contact with the owner of the website can maybe result in him restoring the link or replacing it with another page on your website.
If you start doing this with all meaningful backlinks, you’ll be able to regain old Google rankings and get traffic again.
4. Adjust your keyword research strategy
Are you using the right keywords to get “eyes” on your website and its content?
Depending on the competition for ranking your keyword, its popularity, and its relevance you might get a lot of website visitors or none at all.
There are multiple keyword research strategies you can use for SEO but not all might fit your with your website.
Some websites can thrive by going for low-hanging fruit keywords.
In contrast, others are better off going for extremely subject-specific keywords that might have more competition but go better with the topical authority of your website.
On many occasions, a hybrid of both can even be beneficial.
5. Focus on targeting unintended ranking keywords
Your website might have seen a drop in traffic because of a loss of rankings.
As I mentioned before reaching out to the websites that no longer rank to you is effective but you could also focus on your unintended ranking keywords.
If you can find out with Google Search Console which unintended keywords your content is ranking for or have a lot of impressions you can start making content for them.
You can bring in a lot of traffic by ranking these keywords and start reviving your website.
6. Perform A Competitor analysis
If your competitors are thriving in the same niche but you aren’t then a competitor analysis can be a great tool for reviving a website.
A good competitor analysis can uncover winning keyword strategies, link-building opportunities, corporation opportunities, and a lot more that can help you bring your website back from the dead.
After spotting these opportunities, it’s only a matter of taking action to get your website back to where it was.
7. Adjust the look of your website
The look of your website can influence the user experience of your website visitors. If you have a website that looks like an amateur makes it or is outdated it might hurt your credibility.
This is why it’s important to make sure your website reflects your expertise or knowledge. Adjusting the look of your website can have an amazing effect on your opt-in, sales, and traffic.
8. Add multiple traffic sources
Relying on 1 traffic source might be one of the biggest reasons a lot of websites “die”.
In the past, I have had multiple websites with thousands of visitors monthly that lost all their traffic because of algorithm updates or people taking all my rankings.
What helped a lot with reviving these websites was not only trying to get my rankings back but also adding other traffic sources.
Traffic sources can complement each other. A great example of that is YouTube and Google SEO.
Google values quality content and consistently getting traffic indicates that people value your content.
As a result, your rankings might increase based on that and more visitors will be directed to your website through Google.
So if you send YouTube traffic to your web pages it can have this result.
9. Update old articles
Search Engines and your ideal target audience desire accurate and fresh content. This is why updating articles can do a lot for a dead website.
A headline that isn’t updated can already be enough to prevent someone to look at your content and visit a website with the guarantee of fresh content.
It can help with regaining rankings and getting people to stay longer on your website.
10. Focus on E-EAT
E-EAT is part of the guidelines Google uses to rate the quality of search results. It stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
The better you score on E-EAT the higher your chance is to rank high on Google and as a result get more visitors to your website and revive your website.
Websites with high E-EAT scores are also less likely to be hit negatively when search engines change the algorithm.
Final Words
Reviving a dead website can be challenging but it teaches you a lot about how a website works and what is needed to keep it relevant.
Not every method stated here will work for everyone so you’ll need to find out what fits you the best but what I do recommend regardless of the method is creating fresh high-quality content.
Do you have any experience with reviving dead websites or are you in the middle of reviving a website? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.
That’s all for today.
See you at my next post!
