If you are a website owner or a content creator, you can face this problem quite often. Your site loses traffic, and you don't have any explanation for it. A sudden and steep fall in your traffic can be a severe issue and should be fixed swiftly and efficiently.
There can be many reasons behind this, and Google's new algorithm might be the first thing that comes to mind. However experienced you may be, but whenever you are on the receiving end of sudden traffic drop, you always panic, get slightly confused, and be uncertain about the actions necessary to get things right.
A contingency plan is useful in such situations of drastic decreases in website traffic. Below are a few points to help you out in such a case of dire domain distress.
1. Verify Your Tracking Data
Search Console is your place that supplies data to tell what is exactly going on with your website. A sudden drop in traffic means you've lost coverage and visibility, which leads to loss of revenue.
Search Console:
● It analyses your site's clicks, position, and impression on Google.
● It helps you understand how Google looks at your location.
● Review your index coverage.
● Provides alerts to the issues Google finds on your website.
● It removes possibilities of de-indexed pages and penalties.
2. Confirm Your Tracking Data
Let's assume you see a massive drop in traffic when you open your analytics account. So if you are not doing Black hat SEO, this sudden and steep drop in traffic is an isolated situation. The first thing requisite is to check if you are working with appropriate knowledge. In your analytics account under the admin section, check your tracking codes’ status and open the "tracking code" tab under "tracking info". There is a message underneath "Status" to tell whether or not your system has been reporting knowledge for the final 48 hours or not. Check if your code is placed appropriately on your site.
3. Google Penalties
To check if your site has been penalized, under the "security and manual actions," click on manual actions to review any Google messages. In case your site has received any manual response, you will also receive details on how to solve the issues and resubmit your website for further review to restore your site.
4. Indexing Issues
Under the coverage tab, check if there's a drop in the number of pages indexed on your website. If there is a decline in the number of pages, someone might have accidentally written a disallow rule or activated a non-index command under the robots.txt file. In case your pages have been mistakenly de-indexed, correct any no-index and reject controls, and resubmit your sitemap in search console.
If you've confirmed your data collection in analytics and your pages are indexed, move to the next step.
5. Identify The Keywords And Pages That Los Traffic
You can use the performance tab in the search console to identify the modifications in impressions and clicks for particular key phrases and pages. To get an idea of what keywords and pages have been misplaced by most site visitors, filter the date vary to match weekly intervals.
This filter will show the clicks and impressions of the present week compared to the previous week so you can see what pages and what key phrases resulted in the most vital decline primarily.
6. Analyze Your Traffic Through Analytics
You can use the acquisition tab, in analytics, to see a summary of the traffic driven to your web site. Click on "channels" to view the modifications in quantity to the different channels of site visitors your web site receives.
Select the Site Content, Behaviour, and All Pages tabs to investigate the site visitors for every page on your site. Find out which pages have dropped to find out the primary source of the problem.
7. Confirm Data In Keyword Tracking Software
Falling rank leads to a decrease in site visitors. Generate a Rank watch key phrase monitoring report to observe your rankings. The keywords that dropped significantly are confirmed by the data in analytics and search console.
There are many reasons why a keyword can lose its ranking. The following can be the probable reasons.
8. Match Your Content To User Intent
The main factor affecting your ranking is whether your content is real and whether it satisfies your users. Your content should provide value to the users that are searching with your target keywords by fulfilling their intention behind the search. If your page lacks details, add the focused content, this technique will improve your site performance by satisfying the user's search intent.
9. Analyze And Execute Systematic And Logical Problem Solving
Traffic fluctuates, sentiment modifications, search engines evolve, and software programs can misinterpret all of it. If you are lucky, you will not be required to analyze a sudden drop in your site's traffic.
But those who are in this situation should solve the web traffic issue by logically and systematically coming to an optimum decision. However troubling the drop in traffic is, remember, you have the knowledge of an SEO analyzer tool to analyze the problem and find an appropriate solution for your business website.
Recover And Rebound From Your Organic Traffic Loss
Everywhere you look on the internet, you will find various websites being a step ahead of you. It would be best if you are not tempted to reach the top ranks of search engines quickly. It can be scary for you to lose traffic and lose revenue suddenly, especially if it puts your entire business in jeopardy.
But rather than panicking about your site traffic drop, you should hire a reputable seo agency like digibulls. Go through the different possible causes and get to the root of the web traffic problem. Chances are it can easily be solved with smart search engine optimization strategy adjustments. Bounce back better on your business website!
