You have invested time in your website, worked on your SEO, published blogs and waited for your rankings to improve – the traffic had been coming in, but recently it seems to have gone down.
Your important keywords are no longer on the first page, website enquiries are slowing and you are left wondering what has happened.
Is Google changing its algorithm? Are your competitors pulling ahead? Something wrong with your website?
You are not alone. For so many businesses, Google is an important channel for new customers. The drop in website traffic can have far reaching effects for your business – from website enquiries and phone calls to overall website performance and conversion rates.
Google regularly updates its search systems, to help users find the most useful and relevant information. Some of these changes can impact the way your website is shown and ranked by Google. However, Google’s algorithm changes are rarely the only factor, or the biggest factor, behind a drop of your website traffic – and it is good to keep this in mind, and not jump to conclusions.
In this article we will discuss why your website traffic may be dropping, what you should look for first, and how you can prepare your business for Google’s ever-changing algorithms.
This is one of the questions any business owner would ask themselves when a drop in their website traffic follows directly after Google’s recent algorithm update.
Google makes frequent updates to its algorithm so that your search results show the most relevant and helpful information. In some cases, these changes can impact the way your site is ranked and shown by Google. After a Google update, your website could potentially lose its first-page ranking for key service keywords, move down the search results and you will see a drop in website traffic for specific pages.
While this is certainly disappointing, especially when you feel like you have been working hard on your SEO, a lower position in the search results does not necessarily mean that Google has penalised your website.
Another possibility is that Google has determined that another page is a better match for the search query, better addresses the user’s intent or that other websites have improved their SEO to be more competitive.
Check the date of your traffic drop and compare it to Google’s official algorithm changes to see if any of them coincide. You will need to review the impacted pages and the keywords that stopped appearing in your website traffic. Before you start making drastic changes to your content or backlink profile, take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
Here is one thing many business owners overlook: your website can drop in rankings even when you have not made any recent changes. This could be because your competitors have improved to be more competitive in the search results.
A competing business could have updated their service page, created useful content pages on their website, improved their website design or gained backlinks to their page from relevant websites – all of which could potentially move them higher in the search results. For example, imagine you are a local service company trying to rank for your main service in Chennai. Your service page will tell the customer what you offer, but the websites appearing above you have dedicated service information pages, addressing common customer questions and giving the visitor a clear idea of what they can expect, as well as ways to get in touch.
Which website do you think would have a better chance of capturing this customer’s attention?
That is why it is important to look at your competitors’ websites. See what they have been doing to improve their rankings and what they offer in comparison to your own website. Are their service pages providing customers with more information than yours? Can they offer useful case studies or more detailed explanations on the service?
You should not follow everything your competitors are doing, but you should be aware of what customers are looking for on their website and improve your own content to meet the same level of quality.
Adding keywords to one of your webpages is a good start, but it is also important to provide visitors with the information they need on your service pages so they stay on your website and engage with your content.
Think about the last time you were searching for something online. You wanted information and answers to your questions. You do not want to see the same keyword repeated over and over again on a page. You want to read a paragraph that explains the service, tells you if the company can provide it, and what you should do next.
That is the kind of information your prospects want to see on your service pages.
If your service page consists only of a short paragraph about your services and your contact information, the visitor may not feel reassured that your business is a good fit for them. They will more likely go to another website that provides more information and gives them a reason to get in touch.
Take a look at your important webpages and ask yourself:
You do not need to add more content to make your page longer, simply make the information on your web page more engaging. In some cases, editing your existing webpages can be a better investment than writing a new blog post that covers the same subject.
Before making any changes, it is very important that you spend some time looking at your website statistics. To truly understand what is going on, you do not need to be an SEO expert. A basic understanding will be enough to identify potential issues and move forward.
Google Search Console is the first tool to look at when you are trying to identify why your traffic is going down. This tool lets you know how Google perceives your website, which means your progress with Google’s algorithm changes will be visible here as well. Look at your traffic over time, comparing it to a previous time period. Pay attention to the following 4 metrics:
These 4 factors will give you good insight as to where your issue may be. For example, if impressions are stable but CTR is dropping, you may want to take a closer look at your rankings and the way your listings appear in Google.
On the other hand, if both impressions and CTR are dropping, you will need to look more closely at your rankings, search volume, and potential technical issues that may be impacting your ability to appear in search results.
Remember: traffic is a broad metric. It does not tell you the full story. If you are looking for a bigger picture, focus on the pages that have lost traffic. Losing traffic to an old blog post may not be as worrying as losing traffic to one of your main service pages.
While Google Search Console focuses on your performance in the search results, Google Analytics is a good tool to understand what happens after someone lands on your page.
Are people engaging with your services? Are they filling out an enquiry form? Calling your business or leaving through the exit button?
This is also important to consider when examining a drop in your traffic. If your overall traffic has dropped slightly, but your enquiries have remained the same, you may not have to worry as much.
It is not always a drop in traffic that should concern you. Losing traffic can be worrying, but losing website enquiries and conversions is even more worrying.
The most important thing is to focus on the right metrics. Bringing more people to your website is important, but it is also essential to capture their attention and encourage them to choose your business.
Sometimes it can be hard to pinpoint one particular issue behind a drop in your traffic, but there are certain common mistakes business owners tend to make that can hurt their website performance.
While regularly publishing blog posts can definitely benefit your website, it is important to remember that content creation should not focus solely on quantity.
Publishing an irrelevant article, or one that simply reiterates information that has already been published can be a waste of time and will bring very little SEO value to your website. In addition, publishing articles that are not relevant to any of your business goals will also hurt your chances of attracting the right kind of traffic to your website.
If you plan to publish articles on your website, make sure that they are relevant to your business and can actually benefit your business.
Backlinks are important to SEO, but remember that the quantity is only one part of the equation. Getting backlinks from random websites simply to increase your backlink profile is not going to benefit you as much as relevant backlinks would. It is important to focus on quality backlinks, and to ensure that the anchor text is relevant to your business.
If your backlink count is suddenly changing for the worse, double-check the source of these links before you decide that all backlinks are now hurting your website.
Have you recently updated your website? Made changes to your URLs or installed a new plugin? Sometimes, small changes can have a big impact on your website performance. This is especially true for technical SEO elements. Important pages could be blocked by Google, or the correct canonical URL could have changed, impacting your ability to rank.
Make sure that none of these issues are affecting your website. Check for any redirect problems, indexability issues and make sure your mobile version of the website is fully optimised.
Technical SEO may not be the most exciting part of SEO, but it can definitely impact your website traffic.
Now that you understand some of the common causes of a drop in website traffic, it is time to take a look at fixing the issues. Here is a simple guide to help you get started.
Review your traffic and focus on the pages that are either no longer visible in the search results or attracting less traffic than before.
Look at the search results and see what opportunities you may have been missing to improve your own page. Take a look at the websites that outrank you and see if they offer more information. Do they have a better structure? Are they answering more questions? Can you improve your website to address some of the questions your customers are asking?
Update your content to reflect the latest information. Make sure that the information you provided is still relevant. Improve your website so that visitors can find the information they need and understand why they should choose your business. Update any information that may be out of date or incorrect.
Sometimes a drop in traffic is caused by technical issues. Make sure that none of your important pages are blocked by Google crawlers and that they are all indexable. Check for internal link-building opportunities so that Google can easily navigate through your website. Double-check the technical aspects of your website to make sure that they are all optimised.
Once you have implemented some of these changes, give it some time to see if they are working. Do not try to implement too many changes at once. If you are rewriting your content, updating your URLs and launching a new link-building campaign all at the same time, you will not be able to tell what is working and what is not. SEO requires patience and it takes time to see results, so it is important to give your changes time to take effect before you make any additional changes.
When a drop in your website traffic occurs, some business owners choose to immediately invest into digital marketing campaigns. Others decide to start publishing new blog articles, or to allocate more of their budget to backlink building efforts.
But what is the best course of action to recover lost traffic and improve your website performance?
The answer to this question will vary depending on the type and cause of your traffic loss, as well as your business’s overall marketing goals.
Professional Digital Marketing Services in Chennai will be able to help you improve your website traffic through a variety of methods, including SEO, digital marketing, social media marketing, and more.
For example, a local business may focus their efforts on local SEO to improve their presence in the local search results. An e-commerce store may improve their product pages so that they can convert more visitors into buyers. A B2B company may focus on publishing informative content pages to educate their prospects and generate more sales leads.
At SME Digital, we take the time to understand your business and the best way to improve your website traffic and ranking potential.
After all, there is little point in driving traffic to a website that is unable to convert visitors into sales. It is just as pointless to invest in online ads without knowing how your target audience will react to your marketing campaign.
A good digital marketing campaign will take all elements of your online presence into account and will ensure that your efforts are being channeled towards the most relevant marketing activities for your business.
For many businesses, Google is often the first place where a prospect will look for a particular product or service. However, your competitors can be found in these search results long before your own website appears, making it much harder for prospects to choose your business.
SEO Services in Chennai will help your business appear in these search results, so that potential customers can find your website and learn more about the products and services you offer.
SEO focuses on a number of different areas, including technical improvements, keyword research, informative content building, internal linking and backlink building, among other things.
At SME Digital, every business is unique, which is why we tailor our approach to every website, rather than using a one-size-fits-all method.
Some websites may need technical improvements, others could have good content, but lack the right service-focused pages. Every business has different strengths and weaknesses, and it is important to address the issues that are impacting your website traffic and search results the most.
SEO is not something that will provide you with immediate results or guaranteed rankings. However, it can help you improve your website’s potential to appear in search results, so that it can better represent your business.
No one can predict how Google’s next algorithm update will impact your website, but you can always start preparing for it now. Start by ensuring that your website provides visitors with informative and engaging content, addresses their questions and concerns and represents your business in the best possible light.
Review your website regularly to ensure that your content is up-to-date, relevant and engaging. Keep track of your rankings and traffic, and address any issues as soon as they arise.
Most importantly, you should avoid any quick-fix solutions that promise to help you achieve amazing results in record time.
Improving your website and implementing a smart SEO strategy require time and patience, but they will put your business in a much better position to respond to any changes in the search landscape.
Remember: not every drop in your traffic is caused by Google’s algorithms. Seasonal demand, technical issues and stronger competitors can all impact your website performance. Identifying the root cause of the issue is always a good place to start.
When your website traffic drops, it can be a stressful moment for many business owners. After all, lost traffic means lost opportunities for enquiries, sales and website traffic.
However, it is important not to jump to conclusions and to always double-check before making any major changes to your website.
Review your website statistics to see which pages may have lost traffic, see what opportunities you may have been missing and make the necessary improvements.
At SME Digital, we believe that every business has its own marketing needs and should focus on the elements that will represent them in the best possible light.
Noticing a drop in your website traffic or in your rankings for important keywords? Let us have a look and see what we can do to help you improve your website’s performance.
Contact SME Digital to discuss your website traffic and website ranking concerns and discover how a practical SEO and digital marketing strategy could benefit your business.
You have invested time in your website, worked on your SEO, published blogs and waited for your rankings to improve – the traffic had been coming in, but recently it seems to have gone down.
Your important keywords are no longer on the first page, website enquiries are slowing and you are left wondering what has happened.
Is Google changing its algorithm? Are your competitors pulling ahead? Something wrong with your website?
You are not alone. For so many businesses, Google is an important channel for new customers. The drop in website traffic can have far reaching effects for your business – from website enquiries and phone calls to overall website performance and conversion rates.
Google regularly updates its search systems, to help users find the most useful and relevant information. Some of these changes can impact the way your website is shown and ranked by Google. However, Google’s algorithm changes are rarely the only factor, or the biggest factor, behind a drop of your website traffic – and it is good to keep this in mind, and not jump to conclusions.
In this article we will discuss why your website traffic may be dropping, what you should look for first, and how you can prepare your business for Google’s ever-changing algorithms.
This is one of the questions any business owner would ask themselves when a drop in their website traffic follows directly after Google’s recent algorithm update.
Google makes frequent updates to its algorithm so that your search results show the most relevant and helpful information. In some cases, these changes can impact the way your site is ranked and shown by Google. After a Google update, your website could potentially lose its first-page ranking for key service keywords, move down the search results and you will see a drop in website traffic for specific pages.
While this is certainly disappointing, especially when you feel like you have been working hard on your SEO, a lower position in the search results does not necessarily mean that Google has penalised your website.
Another possibility is that Google has determined that another page is a better match for the search query, better addresses the user’s intent or that other websites have improved their SEO to be more competitive.
Check the date of your traffic drop and compare it to Google’s official algorithm changes to see if any of them coincide. You will need to review the impacted pages and the keywords that stopped appearing in your website traffic. Before you start making drastic changes to your content or backlink profile, take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
Here is one thing many business owners overlook: your website can drop in rankings even when you have not made any recent changes. This could be because your competitors have improved to be more competitive in the search results.
A competing business could have updated their service page, created useful content pages on their website, improved their website design or gained backlinks to their page from relevant websites – all of which could potentially move them higher in the search results. For example, imagine you are a local service company trying to rank for your main service in Chennai. Your service page will tell the customer what you offer, but the websites appearing above you have dedicated service information pages, addressing common customer questions and giving the visitor a clear idea of what they can expect, as well as ways to get in touch.
Which website do you think would have a better chance of capturing this customer’s attention?
That is why it is important to look at your competitors’ websites. See what they have been doing to improve their rankings and what they offer in comparison to your own website. Are their service pages providing customers with more information than yours? Can they offer useful case studies or more detailed explanations on the service?
You should not follow everything your competitors are doing, but you should be aware of what customers are looking for on their website and improve your own content to meet the same level of quality.
Adding keywords to one of your webpages is a good start, but it is also important to provide visitors with the information they need on your service pages so they stay on your website and engage with your content.
Think about the last time you were searching for something online. You wanted information and answers to your questions. You do not want to see the same keyword repeated over and over again on a page. You want to read a paragraph that explains the service, tells you if the company can provide it, and what you should do next.
That is the kind of information your prospects want to see on your service pages.
If your service page consists only of a short paragraph about your services and your contact information, the visitor may not feel reassured that your business is a good fit for them. They will more likely go to another website that provides more information and gives them a reason to get in touch.
Take a look at your important webpages and ask yourself:
You do not need to add more content to make your page longer, simply make the information on your web page more engaging. In some cases, editing your existing webpages can be a better investment than writing a new blog post that covers the same subject.
Before making any changes, it is very important that you spend some time looking at your website statistics. To truly understand what is going on, you do not need to be an SEO expert. A basic understanding will be enough to identify potential issues and move forward.
Google Search Console is the first tool to look at when you are trying to identify why your traffic is going down. This tool lets you know how Google perceives your website, which means your progress with Google’s algorithm changes will be visible here as well. Look at your traffic over time, comparing it to a previous time period. Pay attention to the following 4 metrics:
These 4 factors will give you good insight as to where your issue may be. For example, if impressions are stable but CTR is dropping, you may want to take a closer look at your rankings and the way your listings appear in Google.
On the other hand, if both impressions and CTR are dropping, you will need to look more closely at your rankings, search volume, and potential technical issues that may be impacting your ability to appear in search results.
Remember: traffic is a broad metric. It does not tell you the full story. If you are looking for a bigger picture, focus on the pages that have lost traffic. Losing traffic to an old blog post may not be as worrying as losing traffic to one of your main service pages.
While Google Search Console focuses on your performance in the search results, Google Analytics is a good tool to understand what happens after someone lands on your page.
Are people engaging with your services? Are they filling out an enquiry form? Calling your business or leaving through the exit button?
This is also important to consider when examining a drop in your traffic. If your overall traffic has dropped slightly, but your enquiries have remained the same, you may not have to worry as much.
It is not always a drop in traffic that should concern you. Losing traffic can be worrying, but losing website enquiries and conversions is even more worrying.
The most important thing is to focus on the right metrics. Bringing more people to your website is important, but it is also essential to capture their attention and encourage them to choose your business.
Sometimes it can be hard to pinpoint one particular issue behind a drop in your traffic, but there are certain common mistakes business owners tend to make that can hurt their website performance.
While regularly publishing blog posts can definitely benefit your website, it is important to remember that content creation should not focus solely on quantity.
Publishing an irrelevant article, or one that simply reiterates information that has already been published can be a waste of time and will bring very little SEO value to your website. In addition, publishing articles that are not relevant to any of your business goals will also hurt your chances of attracting the right kind of traffic to your website.
If you plan to publish articles on your website, make sure that they are relevant to your business and can actually benefit your business.
Backlinks are important to SEO, but remember that the quantity is only one part of the equation. Getting backlinks from random websites simply to increase your backlink profile is not going to benefit you as much as relevant backlinks would. It is important to focus on quality backlinks, and to ensure that the anchor text is relevant to your business.
If your backlink count is suddenly changing for the worse, double-check the source of these links before you decide that all backlinks are now hurting your website.
Have you recently updated your website? Made changes to your URLs or installed a new plugin? Sometimes, small changes can have a big impact on your website performance. This is especially true for technical SEO elements. Important pages could be blocked by Google, or the correct canonical URL could have changed, impacting your ability to rank.
Make sure that none of these issues are affecting your website. Check for any redirect problems, indexability issues and make sure your mobile version of the website is fully optimised.
Technical SEO may not be the most exciting part of SEO, but it can definitely impact your website traffic.
Now that you understand some of the common causes of a drop in website traffic, it is time to take a look at fixing the issues. Here is a simple guide to help you get started.
Review your traffic and focus on the pages that are either no longer visible in the search results or attracting less traffic than before.
Look at the search results and see what opportunities you may have been missing to improve your own page. Take a look at the websites that outrank you and see if they offer more information. Do they have a better structure? Are they answering more questions? Can you improve your website to address some of the questions your customers are asking?
Update your content to reflect the latest information. Make sure that the information you provided is still relevant. Improve your website so that visitors can find the information they need and understand why they should choose your business. Update any information that may be out of date or incorrect.
Sometimes a drop in traffic is caused by technical issues. Make sure that none of your important pages are blocked by Google crawlers and that they are all indexable. Check for internal link-building opportunities so that Google can easily navigate through your website. Double-check the technical aspects of your website to make sure that they are all optimised.
Once you have implemented some of these changes, give it some time to see if they are working. Do not try to implement too many changes at once. If you are rewriting your content, updating your URLs and launching a new link-building campaign all at the same time, you will not be able to tell what is working and what is not. SEO requires patience and it takes time to see results, so it is important to give your changes time to take effect before you make any additional changes.
When a drop in your website traffic occurs, some business owners choose to immediately invest into digital marketing campaigns. Others decide to start publishing new blog articles, or to allocate more of their budget to backlink building efforts.
But what is the best course of action to recover lost traffic and improve your website performance?
The answer to this question will vary depending on the type and cause of your traffic loss, as well as your business’s overall marketing goals.
Professional Digital Marketing Services in Chennai will be able to help you improve your website traffic through a variety of methods, including SEO, digital marketing, social media marketing, and more.
For example, a local business may focus their efforts on local SEO to improve their presence in the local search results. An e-commerce store may improve their product pages so that they can convert more visitors into buyers. A B2B company may focus on publishing informative content pages to educate their prospects and generate more sales leads.
At SME Digital, we take the time to understand your business and the best way to improve your website traffic and ranking potential.
After all, there is little point in driving traffic to a website that is unable to convert visitors into sales. It is just as pointless to invest in online ads without knowing how your target audience will react to your marketing campaign.
A good digital marketing campaign will take all elements of your online presence into account and will ensure that your efforts are being channeled towards the most relevant marketing activities for your business.
For many businesses, Google is often the first place where a prospect will look for a particular product or service. However, your competitors can be found in these search results long before your own website appears, making it much harder for prospects to choose your business.
SEO Services in Chennai will help your business appear in these search results, so that potential customers can find your website and learn more about the products and services you offer.
SEO focuses on a number of different areas, including technical improvements, keyword research, informative content building, internal linking and backlink building, among other things.
At SME Digital, every business is unique, which is why we tailor our approach to every website, rather than using a one-size-fits-all method.
Some websites may need technical improvements, others could have good content, but lack the right service-focused pages. Every business has different strengths and weaknesses, and it is important to address the issues that are impacting your website traffic and search results the most.
SEO is not something that will provide you with immediate results or guaranteed rankings. However, it can help you improve your website’s potential to appear in search results, so that it can better represent your business.
No one can predict how Google’s next algorithm update will impact your website, but you can always start preparing for it now. Start by ensuring that your website provides visitors with informative and engaging content, addresses their questions and concerns and represents your business in the best possible light.
Review your website regularly to ensure that your content is up-to-date, relevant and engaging. Keep track of your rankings and traffic, and address any issues as soon as they arise.
Most importantly, you should avoid any quick-fix solutions that promise to help you achieve amazing results in record time.
Improving your website and implementing a smart SEO strategy require time and patience, but they will put your business in a much better position to respond to any changes in the search landscape.
Remember: not every drop in your traffic is caused by Google’s algorithms. Seasonal demand, technical issues and stronger competitors can all impact your website performance. Identifying the root cause of the issue is always a good place to start.
When your website traffic drops, it can be a stressful moment for many business owners. After all, lost traffic means lost opportunities for enquiries, sales and website traffic.
However, it is important not to jump to conclusions and to always double-check before making any major changes to your website.
Review your website statistics to see which pages may have lost traffic, see what opportunities you may have been missing and make the necessary improvements.
At SME Digital, we believe that every business has its own marketing needs and should focus on the elements that will represent them in the best possible light.
Noticing a drop in your website traffic or in your rankings for important keywords? Let us have a look and see what we can do to help you improve your website’s performance.
Contact SME Digital to discuss your website traffic and website ranking concerns and discover how a practical SEO and digital marketing strategy could benefit your business.