Triage
My store has no traffic: triage in five questions
New stores, dropshippers and Etsy sellers ask the same thing: why does nobody come? Work down this list in order and stop at the first problem you find.
If this, then that
Is the page indexed at all?
Paste the URL into Search Console's inspection tool. If it says not indexed, fix that first: submit the sitemap, remove noindex, add internal links. Buying a link now is wasted.
Is it indexed but invisible?
Look at impressions for the exact title. Zero impressions on weeks-old pages usually means no demand, or a query nobody types. Rewrite around phrases a buyer would use.
Is it visible but not clicked?
Impressions without clicks point to weak titles and thin snippets. Rewrite the title and meta description before touching anything else.
Is it clicked but not converting?
Then traffic is not your issue. Delivery costs, photos, reviews and checkout friction are. Fix those; more visits would only waste more money.
Is everything fine and you still sit on page two?
Now, and only now, links enter the conversation. Run the payback maths and read the category teardown.
Why new stores wait
Most new stores see little for a while. Google must find the pages, judge them and compare them with rivals who have years of history. That takes weeks. Sometimes months.
While you wait, paid traffic is the quick test of whether a product sells. Meta ads, Google Shopping and organic TikTok give evidence in days. Search gives it in quarters. Budget for that gap.
What to do with the first $100 while you wait
Spend most of it on the page, not on links. Order two good photos, write a 200-word buying guide for your main category, and fix any title that reads like a filename, since photos and copy lift every visitor whatever the source.
Keep roughly $30 back for one or two relevant placements, but only after the page is indexed. Our margin check tells you whether your best product can carry even that. If not, hold the cash for ads or stock.
Re-read Search Console after four weeks. Compare impressions, not rankings, because positions wobble daily. A rising impression count is the first honest sign that Google has started to trust the page, and it arrives well before sales do.
The ten-minute audit
- Search the store's domain with the site: operator and count results
- Open Search Console and read the Pages report
- Confirm robots.txt does not block the catalogue
- Check titles are not all the store name
- Make sure old product URLs 301 to live ones
- Test mobile speed in PageSpeed Insights
- Look for bot-only traffic in your analytics before celebrating a spike
Red flags in cold messages from 'SEO specialists'
| Sign | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| They guarantee a ranking or a date | Nobody controls Google. Google itself says so |
| No store URL mentioned, just 'your website' | A template blasted to thousands |
| They want admin access before any audit | Read-only access is enough for a first look |
| Prices of $5 or $10 for 'full SEO' | Nothing real is done for that money |
| They cannot name a metric they will report | Ask for Search Console clicks, not 'authority' |
Bot traffic is not traffic
Sudden spikes from odd countries are usually crawlers. Google's own systems and uptime checkers also visit checkout pages, which is one reason a handful of abandoned carts proves little.
Filter analytics to real sessions with an engaged time above a few seconds, and compare with Shopify's or WooCommerce's order reports. If orders do not move, the spike was noise.