Drop in the traffic can happen with the best of the websites. And, it creates a sense of panic among the best of the brands. When half of your traffic is gone without any caution, you may think that your website is being penalised by Google. However, situations like penalisation from Google happen rarely than you think. You need to do some serious despicable act or black hat SEO to be deindexed by Google. So, you must take a deep breath and let an expert look into your Google Analytics to know what happened with your organic traffic exactly. Here are the main causes of an organic traffic drop.
Reason for Organic Traffic Drop
Organic traffic means clicks earned through regular SEO and content marketing instead of email campaigns, ads, backlinks, and social media marketing strategies. Drop is usually different from a gradual dip over months. There are a few effective SEO tactics that can help to fix these issues. Organic traffic is usually steady. If you publish one blog every month, you can get a well-optimised website. Minor monthly fluctuations are expected to be seen on the occasion. When you are aggressive with your content marketing strategy, you can observe an increase in traffic with the new content each time. At the end of the month, you may see a larger increase. So, a sudden drop indicates that something major has happened and you need to dig deep to know the actual reason. Let’s know the cause of the organic traffic drop
- When Google releases a broad core update, it is possible to observe a negative impact on the content (speed, quality, and trustworthiness)
- You have deleted content that has been offering you a high volume of organic search traffic.
- Significant change in the site and content volume
- Migrating to a new domain and relaunching, you experience technical SEO errors.
- Google Analytics tracking code is altered. Therefore, it is not being tracked properly. Google tool has a bug.
- Technical issues on the site are affecting and blocking the traffic. For example, there is a server issue.
- You have been using seasonal or timely content. However, the trend has changed.
- Competitors have outranked you with the keyword that has been giving you high traffic.
If you lose a link from a high-authority site, Google may not consider your site to be authoritative and relevant. It can affect your organic traffic. Website visits through backlinks are called ‘referral traffic’.
Ways to Find and Fix Traffic Drop
Now that you know the reason for the drop in traffic. Let’s see where you can search for problems and their solutions.
Look Into Your Website Thoroughly
Everything should be in order starting from the hosting, server, and uptime to security. It is better to keep an eye on the platform dashboard. Try to know whether your customers have complained about a particular issue related to the site. If there is an issue, you must fix it immediately by getting help from the IT Department, Web Developer or the Hosting Company.
Examine Your Google Search Console
Notifications can make you aware of technical SEO errors. When the site is connected and verified, Google Search Console can tell you if there is an issue with the indexing or server. From the notifications, you can get some advice regarding test fixes. However, you must look at the exact warning phrase. Experts can tell you how to fix these errors.
Go Through Google Analytics
It is important to make sure that the website is tracking traffic accurately. A real-time report option can be utilised to know if the website is obtaining visits through organic search. Searching for your business, you can see whether it is reflected on the traffic report or not. If it is not seen on the report, you may need to fix your GA tracking code.
Look for Algorithm Updates
Find if Google has released any core algorithm update and what it is focused on. When an update is about page speed, content quality, trustworthiness, and questionable backlinks, you should try to improve your content by using them properly. Due to this algorithm update, you may notice a sudden drop in traffic.
Investigate Google Bugs
You need to search online to see whether there is a bug affecting your traffic. Some bugs are pretty common such as GSC. From the SEO community, you can get articles and tweets regarding these kinds of bugs. Google Analytics does not encounter a lot of bugs. However, it is better to be cautious to avoid issues like traffic drop.