Why is my traffic dropping so hard?
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Hi guys,
My traffic has been dropping pretty hard from just over 3k to around 250 in the last few days. I've ran a few tests using Google webmaster tools and Open Site Explorer, as well as answering a pretty cool quiz that was created by an SEO to determine if I'm the victim of any Google updates etc, and everything is looking okay...
What do you think could be causing this issue? We're only just gearing up to start on a SEO campaign. At the moment no SEO is being done other than just casual blogging.
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Thanks. Nothing wrong with inbound external links as far as I can see. I'll just continue implementing advice from everyone here and hopefully this will amend itself as we pump more traffic through the site!
Cheers.
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Looking at the graph you posted the traffic from May doesn't look like it dropped all that much, especially given the variability of your traffic over the past few months. Your post is unclear if the graph is overall traffic or organic search traffic - so it's hard to say what exactly is going on, but it could just be normal fluctuation as some posts get more attention than others.
The traffic for June is low, but it's only a weeks worth of traffic. If you average it out over the entire month, it will probably be similar to May's.
I would run a quick Open Site Explorer search on the site to see if your inbound link profile looks fishy at all. If it does, you may have been hit by Penguin. If you see any fishy links, you can consider disavowing them.
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Did you make any structural changes to your site before this happened? Did the URL structure change or the main navigation structure? I would first check your robots.txt and meta robots tags to make sure nothing was accidentally changed to block the search engines/remove the pages from the index. An accidental change of a setting can often make major differences for a site.
If you can provide the URL, we can take a quick look.
Mark
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Have you slowed down your publishing rate? If so you should return to former level and stabilize there then recheck graph.
With all the changes going on there are bound to be new contenders in your landscape and you already stated SEO is lax right now so I would move forward with plans. Ensure you tech/server is healthy and user metrics are positive.
Best to Audit with P Bear consideration and then puto your head down.
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I would also add:
- Check if you didn't stuff too much keywords or links.
- Search in Google if you have a new successful competitor and try to beat him.
Hope it helps, good luck!
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Couple of things of the top of my head.
- Check your rankings to make sure that nothing has changed (sorry if that is a no s***)
- Check the Google trends for your keyword to see if it is on the decline or not. You can check on either google.com/trends or google keyword tool but I totally blanked on how to do it.
- Has anything like bounce rate/site speed or down time change? These could account for the issue
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