Digital Marketing
All websites will have a certain amount of fluctuation in traffic. You know what a normal range is for your own website. If you see a significant drop in traffic, your first thought is to undo the latest changes. Don’t do that! There are many reasons your traffic had this drop.
Before you do anything, first you will need to make sure that the drop in traffic isn’t just a problem with your date ranges. If you look only for today’s date, then definitely not all the traffic arrived yet. Also, you need to consider what is a normal fluctuation in traffic, for you.
Next thing, is to check IT for technical issues. If your site is down or loading very slowly, your traffic will drop. Maybe your webmaster has accidentally deleted your tracking code.
Lastly, check news, if there is a major power outage a holiday, or some other news item that may explain a drop. If you’ve confirmed that this is, indeed, a drop in traffic that isn’t caused by technical or external issues.
Check for Penalties
If you get a manual penalty from Google, you will see a significant drop in traffic as either the affected page or overall rankings fall. Most drop in traffic aren’t explained by a manual penalty from Google, but it is simple and definitive to confirm whether or not you have one. You can check this through Google Search Console.
Compare Traffic Channels
It can be helpful to determine which kind of traffic is falling on your website. If it is paid traffic, consider the fact that you are not anymore investing on an ad. That is a great factor that explains the drop itself.
Pause Your Ads
Another possibility is that paid search results traffic is cutting into your organic traffic. To some degree, this is expected. While investing in paid traffic may reduce your organic traffic it should boost your overall traffic. Occasionally though, your paid traffic only cuts into your organic traffic. It’s possible that you have such a strong presence on the paid keyword, that there’s no benefit to buying ads there
Have You Lost Backlinks?
If you segmented your traffic and found that your referral traffic dropped, it is time to look into your backlinks. If a few pages have dropped in traffic and they also happen to have lost backlinks, there’s a good chance you’ve found your problem.
Are They Quality Backlinks?
Not all backlinks are good. If your content is linked from a shady or spammy site, Google may believe you paid for those links and are using black-hat SEO practices. Many other aspects of your links might bring down your rankings. Perhaps the links all use the same anchor text or anchor text not in your own website’s language.
Boost Your Rankings
If you’ve lost out to competitors or just seen a general drop in website traffic, you can always try to boost your rankings to make up for it.
