Guide: Organic Website Traffic Drop
Ever found yourself staring at your website’s analytics, wondering why the numbers are plummeting faster than a skydiver without a parachute? Yes, organic traffic drop. It’s that dreaded phrase no site owner ever wants to hear. But before you hit the panic button or start drafting that “It’s not you, it’s me” breakup email to Google, take a deep breath. We’ve all been there.
Sudden drops in organic traffic can feel like being left out in the rain without an umbrella—unpleasant and slightly soggy. Yet, here we stand with our SEO umbrellas ready! Sometimes it’s a sneaky tracking code playing hide and seek. Other times, Google decides to shake things up with an algorithm update just when you thought everything was going smoothly.
The truth is as complex as trying to explain why cats fear cucumbers—it involves technical SEO snafus, content quality quagmires, and sometimes even social media side-eyes. So let’s embark on this journey together; flashlight in hand, ready to uncover the mysteries that lie ahead. Together, we’ll navigate through the twists and turns of digital marketing with ease.
Before we go into depth on how to solve your websites traffic drop, SEO Locale is a digital marketing company in Philadelphia. We’ve built our own tools such as SEOApp.io to help navigate the SEO world. We have all the data in the world to be successful for our clients. Below is a quick guide to learn how to manage your website’s traffic drop.
Diagnosing a Drop in Organic Traffic
Finding a significant drop in organic traffic is the stuff of SEO nightmares.
Naturally, panic sets in… and stress… and embarrassment… and the fear that it’s somehow your fault as the SEO.
If that’s where you find yourself now, take a moment and a big, deep breath. (It’s going to be okay, friend.)
Every reaction has a cause, including organic traffic decline. And when it comes to organic traffic, many causes are out of an SEO’s control. There are even times when losing traffic isn’t a problem.
The best way to validate whether there’s an issue – and find the contributing factors – is to conduct an SEO investigation.
When you’re ready, we’ll guide you through a proven investigation process that’s both measured and methodical — including where to focus and what to look for along the way.
Identifying Tracking Issues with Google Analytics
First, we need to figure out whether this sudden drop in website traffic has to do with a real problem or simply a tracking issue. In our experience, faulty analytics and tracking account for ~15-20% of cases. The great news is, an analytics snafu is typically a quick fix.
Here are a few real-life scenarios we’ve seen with our clients, just to give a sense of some common issues:
- The incorrect implementation of a GDPR compliance banner resulted in a site losing 95% of user data for EU countries.
- Website migrations dropped the Google Analytics tracking code across either entire sites or a specific subset of page types.
- An improperly implemented GA event tagged nearly all users as returning visitors, rendering a client’s new visitor report inaccurately low.
Whether you’ve implemented Google Analytics tracking code directly on your site or you’re using Google Tag Manager, there are a couple of things to look for:
- Drops across channels – Site traffic is down relatively consistently from all (or several) marketing channels — not just organic.
- Conflicting data – Platform-reported data – i.e. reports from Google Search Console or the Facebook Ad platform – is significantly different from the reporting in an internal analytics platform like GA4.
A third-party GA and GTM audit can help make sure everything’s working right.
The Impact of Content Changes on Traffic
If your analytics are trustworthy, then the real fun kicks off. It’s time to dig through the gray area and find some answers.
Not all organic traffic is a result of SEO work — it has a huge brand component too. The bigger a brand, the more organic traffic it gets from search terms with the brand name in the string.
Before launching into a full-fledged SEO investigation, the question is whether organic traffic loss is happening because fewer people are directly searching for the brand. That’s easy to find by looking at user queries in GSC. Filter to queries containing the brand and compare performance over different windows of time.
If traffic from non-brand terms is relatively flat or up, while traffic from brand terms is significantly down, it’s probably the result of changes at the brand or channel level. We’re talking about stuff like:
- The PPC team starts an ad campaign for the brand name because a competitor is bidding on it (so it takes clicks away from your organic result).
- PR and advertising campaigns get paused and the reduced visibility has downstream effects on awareness.
- A negative story about the brand becomes public and pushes consumers away.
No matter the channel, the impact on organic traffic is probably going to show up in brand traffic. After all, the fewer people who see your name, the fewer people who search for it.
Are a majority of clicks disappearing from non-brand terms? The next step is to figure out exactly where the leaks are. Look for connections between queries or pages seeing the most loss.
When digging into the data, identifying patterns becomes easier when you filter and sort by different variables. More often than not, the patterns you find will be the most telling clues.
One key area to examine is how content quality and changes may be impacting your organic search visibility. Have you recently updated or removed content from your site? This can sometimes lead to a decline in rankings and traffic if not handled carefully.
Conducting a Technical SEO Audit
The contributing factors behind SEO performance are numerous, interconnected, and often complex. Technical issues can absolutely affect traffic, and a technical audit is recommended to identify them.
Here are some key areas to focus on in your technical SEO audit:
- Crawlability: Ensure search engines can properly crawl and index your site’s pages. Check for any crawl errors in Google Search Console.
- Site Speed: Slow loading times can negatively impact user experience and SEO. Use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to assess your site’s speed.
- Mobile-Friendliness: With mobile-first indexing, having a mobile-friendly site is crucial. Test your pages with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
- Duplicate Content: Identify and resolve any duplicate content issues that may be diluting your site’s authority.
- Structured Data: Properly implemented structured data can enhance your search listings and drive more clicks. Validate your structured data with Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.
By conducting a thorough technical SEO audit, you can uncover hidden technical problems that could be hindering your site’s performance in search engines.
Remember, content changes can also impact organic traffic, especially if rankings are slipping sitewide. A content audit can help identify areas where you may need to improve or update your content to better align with user intent and search engine expectations.
Understanding Google’s Algorithm Updates
Google’s algorithm updates can be a major source of fluctuations in search rankings and organic traffic. It’s important to stay informed about these changes and understand their potential impact on your site.
Navigating Through Recent Algorithm Changes
Google rolls out hundreds of algorithm updates each year, with a few major updates that can significantly shake up the search results. Some recent notable updates include:
- Core Updates: These broad updates aim to improve the overall quality and relevance of Google’s search results. The June 2021 Core Update, for example, had a significant impact on many sites.
- Page Experience Update: Launched in mid-2021, this update made page experience signals like loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability ranking factors.
- Product Reviews Update: Designed to reward high-quality, in-depth product reviews, this update aims to surface more helpful review content in search results.
Monitoring your site’s performance in Google Search Console can help you identify if a recent algorithm update may be responsible for changes in your traffic. Look for any sudden drops or spikes that coincide with known update rollout dates.
It’s also important to keep an eye on your competitors. Are they experiencing similar fluctuations? Analyzing the sites that are gaining or maintaining rankings can provide insights into what Google is prioritizing with a particular update.
Preparing for Future Google Updates
While you can’t predict exactly what future algorithm updates will entail, you can take proactive steps to ensure your site is as resilient as possible:
- Focus on Quality: Prioritize creating high-quality, original, and valuable content that aligns with your target audience’s needs and search intent.
- Optimize for User Experience: Ensure your site is fast, mobile-friendly, and easy to navigate. Positive user engagement signals can help your site weather algorithm changes.
- Build a Diverse Backlink Profile: Earn high-quality, relevant backlinks from a variety of reputable sources to strengthen your site’s authority and credibility.
- Stay Up-to-Date: Follow SEO news sources and industry blogs to stay informed about upcoming algorithm updates and best practices.
By focusing on creating a high-quality, user-centric website, you’ll be better positioned to maintain or even improve your organic search performance through future Google algorithm updates.
Remember, the impact of an algorithm update on your site can vary depending on a multitude of factors. If you suspect an update is behind a change in your traffic, use it as an opportunity to critically assess your site and identify areas for improvement.
The Role of Backlinks and Referrals in SEO Performance
Backlinks and referral traffic can play a significant role in your site’s SEO performance and overall organic visibility. Let’s take a closer look at how these factors influence your search rankings and traffic.
Analyzing Your Backlink Profile
The quality and quantity of backlinks pointing to your site are important ranking factors. Search engines view backlinks as “votes of confidence” from other websites. The more high-quality, relevant sites that link to you, the more authoritative and trustworthy your site appears.
Tools like Majestic SEO can help you assess your backlink profile. Here are some key metrics to look at:
- Trust Flow: Majestic’s Trust Flow measures the quality of your backlinks based on the trustworthiness of the linking sites.
- Citation Flow: This metric looks at the quantity of your backlinks, regardless of quality.
- Topical Trust Flow: This assesses the relevance of your backlinks based on the topic or niche of the linking sites.
Ideally, you want a balanced backlink profile with a high Trust Flow and a Topical Trust Flow that aligns with your site’s niche. A sudden influx of low-quality or irrelevant links could potentially trigger a Google penalty and negatively impact your organic traffic.
Boosting Your Site’s Authority through Quality Backlinks
To improve your site’s authority and search visibility, focus on acquiring high-quality backlinks from reputable, relevant websites. Here are some strategies to consider:
- Create Linkable Assets: Develop valuable, informative content like industry reports, infographics, or original research that naturally attracts links.
- Guest Posting: Contribute high-quality guest posts to respected sites in your niche, including a relevant link back to your site.
- Broken Link Building: Find broken links on relevant websites and offer your content as a replacement.
- PR and Outreach: Engage in PR activities and outreach to build relationships with journalists, bloggers, and influencers who may link to your site.
Remember, the goal is to earn links naturally by creating valuable, link-worthy content and building genuine relationships. Avoid participating in link schemes or buying links, as these tactics can result in penalties and ultimately harm your SEO performance.
By regularly analyzing your backlink profile and working to acquire high-quality, relevant links, you can boost your site’s authority and improve your organic search visibility over time. Just remember that building a strong backlink profile is an ongoing process that requires patience and persistence.
Leveraging Google Search Console for In-depth Analysis
Google Search Console (GSC) is a powerful tool for diagnosing issues that may be leading to a decline in your organic traffic. By leveraging GSC’s insights, you can gain a deeper understanding of your site’s performance and identify areas for improvement.
Tracking Brand vs. Non-Brand Performance
One key way to use GSC is to analyze your site’s performance for branded vs. non-branded search terms. This can help you understand where your traffic is coming from and identify potential areas of concern.
To do this, follow these steps:
- Open your Google Search Console account and select your property.
- Go to the “Performance” report and click on “New”.
- Click the “Query” tab and select “Contains” from the dropdown menu.
- Enter your brand name (or a portion of it) in the text field and click “Apply”.
- Compare the data for branded queries to the data for all queries (or non-branded queries) over the same time period.
If you notice a significant drop in traffic for branded queries, it could indicate an issue with brand perception or visibility. On the other hand, if non-branded traffic is declining, it may point to broader SEO or content issues.
Utilizing GSC to Identify Trending Down URLs
Another valuable use of GSC is to identify specific pages or URLs that are losing organic traffic. Here’s how:
- In the “Performance” report, click on the “Pages” tab.
- Sort the data by “Clicks” (or “Impressions”) in descending order.
- Look for pages that have experienced a significant drop in clicks or impressions over your selected time period.
- Click on a specific URL to view more detailed data, including the queries that are driving traffic to that page.
By identifying pages that are trending downward, you can prioritize your optimization efforts and investigate potential causes, such as content quality issues, technical problems, or changes in user intent.
GSC also offers a range of other reports and tools that can help with your analysis, including:
- Coverage Report: Identifies indexing issues and helps you ensure your important pages are being crawled and indexed properly.
- Mobile Usability Report: Highlights pages with mobile usability issues that could be impacting your traffic and rankings.
- Core Web Vitals Report: Measures key user experience metrics like loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability.
By regularly monitoring and analyzing data in Google Search Console, you can gain valuable insights into your site’s SEO performance and make data-driven decisions to improve your organic traffic.
Conclusion
So, we’ve trekked through the murky waters of organic traffic drops together. Think of it less like a plunge into cold water and more like discovering hidden treasure in your backyard. Yes, realizing your site’s numbers are down can send you spiraling faster than an ice cream cone in July sun. But hey, armed with the right tools and insights—from dodgy tracking codes to Google’s mood swings (read: algorithm updates)—you’re now closer than ever to turning that frown upside down.
The journey doesn’t end here though. Just as every hero needs their trusty sidekick (Batman had Robin after all), consider this guide your digital marketing wing person. Whether it was decoding the mysteries behind technical SEO snafus or weaving through the labyrinth of content quality quagmires, remember: knowledge is power but action turns that power into results.
We’ve laughed (hopefully), maybe cried a bit (SEO can do that to you), but most importantly—we learned how essential it is not just to react but adapt. Like superheroes fine-tuning their strategies against ever-evolving villains, so must we against the shifting sands of search engine algorithms and web visitor behaviors.
And while our story might not feature capes or dramatic monologues about saving humanity from AI-induced dystopias—our battles are no less epic.
Let’s keep pushing forward because our sites deserve nothing short of front-page rankings.
Together, let’s make sure those numbers start climbing. We’re in this fight to win, armed with determination and the best strategies. Let’s show the world what we’re capable of.
