Why Your Vape Site Gets No Traffic and How to Fix It

by Jason ArtmanJan 20, 2026Vape Shop Help

Your vape site has been out there waiting for visitors for months. Each day, though, it’s the same story when you take a look at your analytics.

No traffic.

Your site has hundreds of product pages. You publish new blog posts as often as possible. Maybe you’ve done a bit of social media marketing as well. No one is biting, though, and you’re not generating any revenue.

Every vape site starts out with no traffic – even the biggest brands didn’t have visitors on day one. What matters is what you do next, and some people get things entirely wrong here because marketing a vape shop is very different from most other types of businesses.

Here’s why your vape site gets no traffic and what you can do about it.

Don't Know Where to Start?

We Do.

We’ve helped vape brands and vape shops around the world get to the top since 2010. Put our expertise to work for you and get a free site audit now.

Vape SEO Service See Real Client Results

Basic Technical and SEO Issues

Before you can even begin to think about improving your vape site’s traffic, you have to make sure you’re ready for that traffic in the first place. Sometimes, the fact that a vape site gets no traffic really just comes down to a user experience issue or the fact that Google doesn’t understand the site’s content.

Make Google’s job easy. Each of the keywords that you’re targeting should belong to just one page on your site. The page’s main target keyword should be in the URL, the title tag, the H1 heading and in the file name and alt text for the main image.
Verify that Google can see you. Create a Google Search Console account and submit a sitemap. Make sure that Google can crawl your site and that your pages are indexed. If no pages are indexed, check your site’s source code and confirm that you’re not using noindex.
Think about user intent. What do people want to find when they search for a certain keyword? People want to see informational content for some keywords and products for others.
Make people want to click. If your site shows up as a search result, you need to give people a reason to click it. Use your pages’ title tags and meta descriptions as opportunities to “pre-sell” your vape site and make people want to visit.
Provide a great user experience. Make sure that your site is fast, looks professional and has logical and intuitive navigation. Make sure that it looks great on all devices and screen sizes. If there’s an issue on your site that causes people to click away immediately after visiting it, your rankings could stall because Google monitors user experience signals and tries to reward sites that excel here.

Most Web Traffic Is Mobile

Mobile devices now generate most web traffic, and Google uses a mobile-first index to deliver the best search results for its users. You might use a computer to develop and view your vape site, but it’s really the mobile experience that matters most.

Make sure that the mobile version of your site passes Google’s Core Web Vitals. The Google PageSpeed Insights tool can provide actionable steps to take if your site doesn’t pass.
Test your website frequently on phones and tablets because it’s crucial to experience your site as your customers do.

Lack of Trust Signals

If you want Google to treat your vape site like a real business and show it as a result when people search for terms with commercial intent, you need to make sure that your site looks like a real business. Your site needs to have:

An age gate, along with any other compliance requirements for your region.
An About Us page.
A Privacy Policy page that satisfies all privacy and information storage regulations in your region.
Clear contact information such as an email address, a customer service form and a phone number.
HTTPS support.
A statement about how your site handles secure credit card transactions.
Clear shipping and return information.

Google expects to see these things on a business site, and your customers expect them as well. Adding them isn’t just the right thing to do for generating traffic – it also maximizes the chance that your visitors will actually become customers.

Positive Reviews and Mentions Can Tip the Scales

Advancements in AI and natural language processing have made Google better than ever at understanding the meaning and sentiment behind text. As a result, customer reviews and positive third-party mentions have become more important than ever and can potentially tip the scales in your favor if your site already has all of the right trust signals.

If you have an online vape shop, encourage customers to review the products they buy by offering free loyalty points in exchange.
Business directories like Yelp forbid incentivized reviews, but you can increase the likelihood of receiving reviews by offering free loyalty points when customers check in via the Yelp app.
See if you can get any local websites to mention you on a list of best vape shops, best employers or best local businesses.

AI-Generated or Copied Content

As advanced as Google’s search engine is, it’s still entirely reliant on text. You can’t rank for a search unless your site has text relevant to that search, which means that you need to support your vape site’s product and category pages with relevant text.

That’s where many new vape site owners run into problems. Unless you’ve written product-related content before, you might have no idea what to say when you’re confronted with a blank product page for the first time.

In the old days, new vape site owners often copied their product description content from other websites. Today, though, there’s a new “easy button” – you can have AI generate your product text for you. Either way, though, the result is the same. The page will be extremely unlikely to rank on Google because the content isn’t unique.

Google is looking for content that brings something new to the table. If a page on your vape site looks the same as dozens or even hundreds of other pages displaying that same product, Google has no reason to show your page over the others and may not even index that page at all.

Image showing an AI-generated product description for the Geek Bar Pulse disposable vape.

AI-generated product descriptions look polished, but they often reuse the same phrases over and over.

Screenshot of a search result showing that a key phrase in an AI-generated product description already appears on thousands of other websites.

A large portion of this description already appears on nearly 3,000 other websites.

There’s a good chance that Google wouldn’t index this description at all.

AI-generated product text only really works if you have a known brand and are only interested in ranking for searches including your brand’s name. Your individual product pages won’t rank for anything, but that won’t matter because you only care about the organic traffic that your home page receives.

Otherwise, you’ve got to write your product text by hand because it’s the only way to guarantee uniqueness.

Targeting the Wrong Keywords

Another reason why your vape site might receive no traffic is because you’re targeting the wrong keywords with your content.

With product and category pages, keyword targeting is easy. A product page’s main keyword is the name of the product (e.g. Geek Bar Pulse), and a category page’s main keyword is the name of the product type (e.g. Disposable Vapes) or brand (e.g. Geek Bar).

When your vape site is new, though, it’s hard for product-oriented pages to get traffic because there’s so much competition for those keywords. Informational keywords have less competition, which means that publishing helpful content in your blog can help you get some initial traffic while your product content is still gaining traction.

Using a blog for organic traffic generation is difficult in the current SEO environment, though, because AI-based search engines and Google’s AI Overviews may summarize your content so well that no one clicks through to read your original article. Many people seem to like the new search paradigm and would rather get quick answers to their questions instead of reading full-length articles.

Image showing an article from eCig One that has been summarized by a Google AI Overview.

This older article from eCig One has been summarized by a Google AI Overview and now receives almost no organic traffic.

You can’t change the current search environment, but you can try to work within it.

In general, you should try to avoid writing blog posts on topics that AI could easily summarize in a paragraph or two. If the topic is easily summarized, very few people will proceed past the AI summary and read your original content.
Instead, look for topics that either aren’t easily summarized or showcase your vape-specific expertise in a way that AI can’t replicate. Our 2026 report on white-label nicotine pouch manufacturers is an example of content that can’t easily be summarized in a paragraph or two.

No Backlinks

Building a vape site that generates traffic is a two-part process.

You need the right on-site signals, which involves the quality and organization of your site’s content as described above.
You also need the right off-site signals, which are essentially endorsements from other websites that Google considers authoritative.

Google uses the quality and quantity of links from other websites as one of its primary ways of determining a site’s trustworthiness and relevance. This system is called PageRank, and it’s been a core part of Google’s ranking algorithm ever since the beginning.

Here’s a summary of how it works.

If your vape site receives a link from another site, it’s a “vote of confidence” that may improve your rankings.
If the site linking to yours has many links from other sites, its link is worth more than it would be if it came from a smaller, newer website.

If you search Google for a highly competitive term like “Geek Bar Pulse,” you’re going to see pages from websites that have many links. That’s the difference between high-competition and low-competition keywords. To rank for a competitive keyword, you’ll probably need many links.

Outreach Is the Key to Link Building

If you want your vape site to be a link-generating machine, writing great content isn’t enough on its own. You also need to tell people about it. When you create a great piece of content that deserves to get noticed:

Send it to partners such as vendors, wholesalers, manufacturers, influencers you know and other vape shops that work with you.
Pitch vape sites such as news sites, review sites, bloggers and trade publications.
Use your own channels such as your email list, social media accounts and any Reddit or Discord groups in which you participate.
Send it to journalists if it’s truly newsworthy.

Build Your Rankings Now

Our link building service builds safe, sustainable rankings that can increase your vape site’s traffic. Learn more now.

Vape Link Building Service

So, how do you get links?

Start by creating or claiming your listings on important business directories like Google, Yelp, Facebook and Bing Places for Business. You can learn more about why business directories are so important in our business directory guide for vape shops. Among their many other benefits, though, business directories provide free links from high-authority websites. If your on-site content and SEO are good, just a few high-quality business directory links can be very helpful for driving some initial organic traffic to your vape site.

Business directory links can be very helpful in the beginning. Eventually, though, you’ll need to get some in-content links from real publishers. To get those links, your content has to be good enough to be used as a source. Two common ways of accomplishing that are:

Conducting original research. Our massive list of vape explosions, for example, received significant media coverage and may have even helped to make the vaping community a little safer.
Creating valuable resources. If you write an informational guide that’s thorough enough to become the definitive resource on that topic, it’s likely to be cited as a source when others write about that topic in the future.

Learn more about how vape sites get backlinks.

No Local Citations

If you’re running an online vape shop, link building will represent the majority of your off-site work. For brick-and-mortar vape shops, though, there’s a second component: You also need to get local citations.

A citation is any online mention of your vape shop’s name, address and phone number.

Your goal as a local vape shop is to rank well on Google for searches like “vape shops in (city name),” and for that purpose, a citation has similar value to a link. A citation is text, though, and it may or may not include an actual link.

For local ranking purposes, Google wants to see frequent citations on authoritative websites. It’s also extremely important for details like your address, phone number and hours to match across all citations. Learn more in our guide on vape shop local SEO.

Business directory listings provide local citations, so they’re even more important for brick-and-mortar vape shops than they are for online vape shops. They’re only the beginning, though, when it comes to local citations. You need to get your vape shop listed on as many of these websites as possible, and you also need to make sure that the information is correct.

Websites for local newspapers often have business listings.
Websites for local TV and radio stations may have business listings as well.
Your city’s chamber of commerce may have a directory of local businesses.
Online phone books provide local citations and may also serve as data sources for search engines.
You should also confirm that map services like Google Maps and Apple Maps display the correct information for your vape shop.

Your Hub for Local Searches on Google

If you do one thing today to help your local vape shop generate traffic, creating a Google Business Profile should be it. Your Business Profile:

Gives Google a canonical source for your vape shop’s name, address, phone number and hours.
Improves your chance of being shown for crucial local searches like “vape shops in (city name).”
Increases the amount of information that Google may show when people search for your vape shop by name.
Gives you a featured space on Google where you can showcase your products and services and answer frequently asked questions.
Provides an easy way for customers to review your vape shop, which can help to increase trust.

Getting a verified Google Business Profile can be instant, or it can take a few weeks depending on the verification method.

Wrapping Up

Getting traffic for a vape site is difficult because organic search will always be your primary traffic source – and you can’t get organic traffic if your site isn’t ranking for anything yet.

Even the world’s biggest vape sites started with no traffic, though, and your site could reach their level one day. You can do this – and if you’re feeling lost, our vape SEO service can help.

Building a vape site that receives reliable, sustainable traffic is a long process, but it ultimately comes down to just a few things.

Ensure that Google understands your content and that your site provides a great user experience.
Ensure that your site has the right trust signals, confirming that it’s a real business.
Write your product and category descriptions by hand because AI-generated or copied product text generally doesn’t rank for anything.
Plan your blog strategy in a way that takes AI search into account.
Write original content that’s good enough to receive organic links.
Get some initial links and local citations by listing your vape site in as many important business directories as possible.
Get additional citations for a local vape shop by looking for listing opportunities in local websites, online phone books and map services.

If you do all of these things, it’s completely reasonable to expect that your vape site will have significantly more organic traffic in just a few months than it does today. If you need help, don’t hesitate to get in touch.