Managing a website can be a frustrating experience, especially when there is a traffic decline. The decline in traffic can be due to numerous reasons, like seasonal changes, changes in the way consumers use certain internet services and platforms, or even how people use search engines. However, you can overcome these issues by understanding the reasons behind the low traffic and changing your strategy accordingly.
Check The Extent Of The Damage
Your first step is to see if this is a sitewide drop or just a drop in some of your key pages so you know if you have to take action on a sitewide thing or fix the specific pages.
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If you see a drop in search traffic and it’s not a sitewide drop, then that means that the keyword in question has dropped off the first page of SERPs for your competitive keywords.
This could be due to a few things:
- The keyword is too competitive, meaning it’s hard for people to find your site from search.
- The page isn’t optimized enough for the keyword.
- A negative review on Google or another site might have affected this particular keyword in the search.
If you see a drop in traffic and it’s not on just one of your pages, then that means that the keyword in question is no longer ranking on that specific page. This could be due to something as simple as an update to the URL structure (for example, changing /my-blog/index.html to /my-blog/). Or maybe it’s because Google updated their algorithm and they don’t like the way this particular page is set up anymore.
Is Your Analytics Script Working Properly?
Has your analytics script been installed on all pages? Do you see a drop in Google Search Console as well?
If the answer is no, you must check whether the script is working correctly.
The easiest way to do this is by checking the number of web requests per second (RPS) on your website. You can find this information in Google Analytics under ‘View > View Raw Data’.
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If the answer is yes, then it means that Google Search Console detected a drop in traffic and sent an alert to Google Webmaster Tools.
This can happen if your site has been penalized by Google or if you were tagged by another website owner as a spammer/someone deploying black hat SEO tactics.
In these cases, you’ll see an alert in Webmaster Tools saying that there was a drop in traffic, say by around 20% or so. You’ll see a warning message below the graph showing how much of an impact such a penalty had on your site’s ranking position.
It’s also possible that fewer clicks are coming from Google search results, which means less traffic to your website. This can be caused by several factors, but it’s usually related to poor content on your website or a bad user experience.
Are On-Site Technical Issues Sorted?
Check if there are any technical issues on your website that could be causing this drop in traffic.
Some common ones include:
Core Web Vitals
It is a set of metrics that Google considers when checking your website’s health by analyzing its performance. This is where you can see how much load each page on your site is taking up and what bottlenecks are slowing down your site.
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You can also see if there are any issues with content delivery networks (CDNs) or cloud hosting providers like Amazon EC2 or Microsoft Azure.
Malware
Although it is an issue that causes people to lose confidence in your brand, it is a bit tougher to quantify because of its increasing rarity (as Google has been pretty good about cleaning up its index after incidents). But you can still look at the data for malware-related drops in traffic and see if there are any patterns or trends.
On the other hand, DDoS attacks are fairly common, with over half of the affected sites experiencing a drop in traffic within a day of their site being hit by an attack.
Track Recent Changes In The Google Algorithm
Check if there have been any recent changes in the Google algorithm.
For example, the latest HCU (Helpful Content Update) has Google moving away from parameters like how exhaustive content is, and time spent on a page as an engagement metric to how well a page answers a user’s question. So, in this case, even a 500-word article that answers the user’s question trumps a 3000-word exhaustive essay on the broad topic.
You can check for recent changes by going to the search console and looking at the organic sitelinks under your site.
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- Open up your Google search console.
- Click on ‘Organic Sitelinks’ in the left-hand column of your dashboard.
- Find your website under ‘Organic Sitelinks’ and click ‘Show Sitelinks’.
- You’ll see a list of links that appear next to search queries for specific phrases or terms associated with your site.
So, how can you deal with this? The best way is to just rewrite your article from scratch and do your best not to repeat anything that was already written by someone else. If you need help with that, then hire an editor who will do it at a reasonable price (depending on the complexity of the task).
Check For Manual Penalty
If your site has been penalized by Google recently, then this will cause a drop in your search traffic.
The best way to prevent this from happening is to keep on top of your website updates and consistently publish new content adhering to the best guidelines.
If you notice an increase in your search traffic, but the number of clicks is decreasing, this can be a sign that you have been penalized for manual spam.
To find out if you have been penalized for manual spam, look at the Search Console reports for your account. You can see if there have been any manual penalties applied by clicking into the report and searching for ‘penalty’.
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Whatever the reason might be, you can dispute it and get to a resolution quickly to restore your website’s health.
Check Your Website’s Credibility
If you have been hit with a search traffic drop and you don’t know why then you should check the credibility of your website.
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- Examine your site for spammy links, ads, and other things that might interfere with search engine crawlers. If you have done any PBNs (Private Blog Networks), it’s important that those links not be pointing to your site. You can use Fiverr, etc., or just search for link removal services on Google.
- Check the way you write content, and make sure it’s not too promotional or self-promotional (unless you’re a non-profit organization). If you’re a blogger, make sure you’re writing in a way that doesn’t come off as pushy or salesy.
- Make sure you have an author box on each page that clearly shows who wrote that page and when they last updated it (this is also called “robots.txt”). It’s important to have a clear link back to your contact info so search engines can easily find you if they need more information about what you do (e.g., if they need clarification on a question they asked or if they want to talk about something related to what you do).
- You can also run an SEO audit on Google Search Console to get an idea of where the problem is coming from. Once you have found where the issue is coming from, you can use SEO tools like Ahrefs and Moz to check which keywords are ranking on your website and try to figure out what exactly caused the drop in traffic. You will likely find out that some changes in your backlink profile resulted in a drop in traffic. This could be because one of your competitors suddenly got better rankings than you did (or maybe it’s because they recently launched a new product and now people are seeing more of their content).
- Ask questions from visitors who are concerned about your credibility. Use survey tools to capture answers to questions like: Do you feel you can trust this website? Did we answer the question you have? etc.
Take A Good Look At Your Competitors
The first step is to check competitors who have gone up the rankings, or those you have lost position to — do you see a pattern in terms of search intent (they serve the user’s search intent better than you), backlinks, ease of understanding, UX, etc?
If so, then it’s likely that your SEO strategy isn’t working as well as it could be. The next step is to evaluate where they are getting their traffic from and whether or not it’s relevant to your business.
Also, consider whether your site can rank higher than it does now. Maybe this isn’t really about SEO at all; maybe it’s about content marketing. If that’s the case, other tactics should be put into play on your site to get more traffic and conversions.
Mitigate Dependence On Search
The best way to fight the drop in traffic is to look at ways to mitigate dependence on search. This could mean building an email list, word-of-mouth customers, social media, etc. Make sure that none of your traffic channels (other than those that are in your control — like email newsletters) take a majority stake in the pie. So even if one falls, your business can still survive through.
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Final Word
SEO is constantly evolving. No matter how high your website’s ranking is at this moment, it may not remain that way without constant optimization. Whether you’re a blogger, a serious online marketer, or just a passionate online author, don’t let the search engine traffic go down. You should keep optimizing your site to keep the search engines satisfied and continue sending visitors to your website.
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