Is your website/blog gradually becoming a deserted island, with no incoming traffic flow, for no good reason? Let’s look into these 5, most common, root-causes to get things back on track. But before we get into it, check to see if there’s any correlation between your traffic and the industry (niche) you belong to, that you might be overlooking. For instance, what would be the point of online shoppers buying leather jackets during summers?
Also, make sure that the Google Analytics code is properly placed in your website’s allotted area. Once you’ve determined that there aren’t any quantitative factors responsible for the drastic drop in traffic, that you’ve been witnessing, move ahead with the checklist below:
1. Recent Modifications You May Have Made To Your Site
You may have redesigned your website over the past, without making sure if it was SEO-centric. And in such a case, indexing and crawling errors are mostly the overlooked reasons for a traffic drop. If this is it, simply go to Crawl > Crawl Errors, in your Google Search Console, and look through the stats meticulously to figure out any drops after the modifications.
Moreover, head towards Google Index > Index Status, in Google Search Console, and cross-tally the number of indexed pages with your actual number of pages. In an instance, you’ll figure out that not all of your pages are indexed; the Robots.txt, along with page-level restrictions (X-Robots or no-index tags), should be checked if they are properly configured.
2. Penalty Hits from Search Engines
Human moderators are always reactive to your manipulative strategies, in order to hunt them down and hit a penalty, resulting in de-indexing from the search engine. If this is the case with you, check for a notification in your Google Search Console under Search Traffic > Manual Actions. Here’s a list of most probable manipulation techniques that might be putting you in trouble:
- Hidden outbound links;
- Redirects;
- User-generated spam;
- Spammy content;
- Artificial or irrelevant inbound backlinks.
3. Search Engine Algorithm Updates
There’s a wind of updates rolled over by Google in recent times, Core Search Algorithm, being the most venous and the recent one. So make sure you’re complying with Google’s algorithm!
4. Precious Backlinks Being Depleted
Nothing is ever permanent, specifically over a virtual platform where things fluctuate in every matter of a second! So it’s wise to see if your valuable incoming backlinks are still intact. Some very precious tools are there to provide you a true, and fair picture of your backlinks. And their history i.e.: placement and removal.
5. Actions from Your Rivals
Your competitors may be getting an upper hand over you, due to their sneaky tactics; for instance: Google AdWords. They may be bidding higher than you to rank on top of your organic search results, in lieu of the highly searched keywords you’ve been working hard for. You better find alternatives to those keywords if you are not in a position to bid higher for the already highly-paid keywords!