Sudden drop in traffic in April and stagnant since then
-
Hi, I am the editor at a travel website based in Singapore (www.tripzilla.com). In mid April, we suffered a drop out of the blue and in total, it was a 20% drop overall. We post about 2-3 new articles a day, and we do research our keywords. I have also been updating our older ranking articles but seems like it's not really working. In May, we only received a .50% growth
I have to bring it back to speed, and I really dont understand the decline, since the "formula" of our postings has been the same since I joined the company a year ago.
Please help thank you!
-
Hi there,
Others have already mentioned great starting points. The steps I would take here in order would look something like:
- Confirm that I'm looking at the right data, and identify where the drop is coming from. Is it mostly the blog? A certain section? Top performing pages? Homepage? Or is it more of an all around drop to most pages?
- Once you answer the first question, it will allow you to prioritize where to look. If you identify most of the drop happened on your blog for example, you can focus your attention there to answer questions like, "Have we changed anything on the blog recently from a technical perspective?", "Are we confident there is nothing that is stopping us from ranking technically?", etc.
- The more difficult situation is when there is a general decrease in traffic to most pages on the site (doesn't seem to be a rhyme or a reason). In these cases I would look back at what updates have affected the site before to see a trend. When did the drop happen? Does that drop line up with a recent update? If so, what was that update about? Then some form of a technical audit, content audit, etc would be reasonable next steps to essentially identify the biggest issues in each.
Some other points in no particular order
- Remember that more content/pages does not necessarily mean more traffic. Because your formula was working a year ago doesn't mean it will work now (or work as well).
- Looking at your site briefly, you have a good amount of content (~17,000 pages) but it's difficult to navigate and find articles. If I had to guess, I'd say the site could benefit from a re-design and content overhaul/audit to ensure there are not too many overlapping pages and that they are easily discoverable by users (and crawlers).
I know that's a bit of a brain dump but hope that (along with other response) helps point you to a starting point!
-
Hi, really hope to get feedback from the experts here
-
Hi! Thanks for the replies.
As far as I'm concerned there has been no major site changes. In fact, I even ramped up my keyword planning for our articles beginning March.
In the first screenshot, you can see we were growing nicely until April when it dropped and it has remained low since.
Second is a collection of screengrabs from search console. Third is traffic sources - interesting to see the drop from IA...
And no, I don't think we were affected by any algo changes.
Thanks so much!
-
Hello,
Look through Google Search Console & see what pages have dropped, compare March to June 2018, if you could post that report somewhere I can assist you from there.
As Kevin mentioned, did you change the site at all?
-
Some questions to help you analyze:
-
Was it an overall drop in traffic or for specific articles?
-
Did you check your Google Search Console for any messages or did you analyze performance report or etc?
-
Did you look to see any Google Algo Changes?
-
Did you see any drop in Bing Organics?
-
Any major site changes?
Good luck!
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Will SEO Blogs Divert Traffic from Main Web pages using same keywords?
Our company has drafted several SEO blogs using certain keywords. If we post these SEO blogs to our website and social media channels , and the blog keywords are also used on our main website pages, will the blogs divert or dilute traffic to our main web pages? Thank you for your expertise and insights in advance.
Content Development | | Johnenchroma0 -
Blog hasn't ranked since reposting.
Hey Moz fam! I had a blog that was doing pretty well for the target keyword. Unfortunately, to make a long story short, we had an image in it we weren't supposed to so I unpublished it for a few days while we got that sorted out. Since republishing (with all the same content) it has not gotten a single impression. I inspected the URL and it is totally eligible but nothing in the way of organic traffic. Any ideas on how I can recover?
Content Development | | danieldaher1 -
Sudden drop in rankings. Please help.
Hi guys I am Ujjwal. I am no SEO guru or anything I am just a blogger with basic knowledge of SEO. Yesterday on 6th August 2013 my rankings for many keywords suddenly dropped and I don't know why. Can someone please tell me why it happened and how I can fix it? I really need help Site url: http://www.droidextra.org/ Thanks
Content Development | | ujjwalk3081 -
My New blog has NO content since 2 months, the day it was launch, What to DO? Is it "DEAD"???
2 months ago, I publish a NEW blog, http://www.mervrating.org The blog has only 3 posts. I don't have much time to work on it. Does it HURT my SEO? Can I start working on it on regular basis and try to built authority or does it looks "dead" to search engine? I would like to bring it alive and give it a second chance, will it be hard if it has no content since the beginning? What is your opinions? Thank you, BigBlaze
Content Development | | BigBlaze2050 -
Best way to publish FAQs to capture long tail traffic?
If you want to target long tail traffic from commonly asked questions what is the best way to publish answers to these questions? A really long FAQ page, a new page for each question in a /faq/ subfolder, adding them to relevant product pages that already exist? Is creating a new page for each question a problem because the answer might be a paragraph and Google doesn't like thin content?
Content Development | | ProjectLabs0 -
Best way to get my Blog traffic
I've recently began blogging on my site. The content is all unique and useful and written properly without keyword stuffing... My question is, how do i go about getting people to see the blog (getting traffic to it) so that it can get linked to. I've created content that i believe people will naturally link to, the only problem is they're not finding my blog. Any advice on how to get my blog out into the world?! thanks
Content Development | | Prime850 -
I want to remove some pages from my site with PR, what should I do with traffic?
I have a section of a site that I want to remove. It has a main page linked from the nav menu, and a half dozen subpages under that. The pages get some traffic and have ranks up to PR3, which is what my site's home page is. I'm no longer want to do these pages as they require tremendous upkeep and I'm not interested in keeping them going. So, I know if I just remove these pages and that's all, I'm going to pay for it somewhere with Google. What else should I do? I do't really have similar pages to direct them too.
Content Development | | bizzer0 -
Word Press site traffic plumit
Hi, I have a client who has a word press site that we put together for him. We have noticed that over approximately the last 2 months his sites traffic has plumitied - its gone from a health 200+ per day and sharply decresaed and is not practically zero. Has anyone got any ideas of why this might be? Here is the link to the site - http://wheelworldreviews.co.uk/ Thanks
Content Development | | Tinderbox0