4
5 Comments

Any experts on SEO / organic traffic on here?

How can I find the reason for a recent drop in organic traffic on two seperate sites?

Are there any tools / methods you can recommend from your own experiences? One which makes it possible to find the reason for those drops in organic traffic?

Feel free to share your stories, methods, tools and recommendations.

Thanks!
Patric

  1. 2

    It could be an algorithmic penalty. Check this timeline to see if the dates match.

  2. 2

    I would check the following:

    • "Manual action" on your google search console (GSC).
    • Are your pages getting de-indexed? Check "coverage" on your GSC or type on Google the following: site:yoursite.extention => this wil tell you howmany pages of your website have been indexed by Google. Is this number inline with the number of pages of your site?
    • Did you mistakenly put a "noindex" metatag on your pages?
    • Check if you lost backlinks: on GSC go to links, or use tools as ahrefs.
    • Are you creating duplicate or thin/low quality content ? This would trigger the "Panda" algorithm and penalize your rankings.
    • Are you using bad backlinks or keywords stuffing? This would trigger the "Penguin" algorithm and penalize your rankings.
    • On your Google analytics check which pages of your site where recieving less traffic than usual and check if those pages are still indexed.
    • Did you change the structure of your site recently? Or moved to a new domain name? Are 301 redirects done correctly?

    IMO it seems you have been hit by an "algorithm penalty" such as Panda or Penguin because your traffic dropped almost to zero, thus these cannot be just fluctuations.

  3. 1

    You can let me know your site, I am working on the SEO also, My website- phreesite.com, No drop at the recent update...Do you use the gray hat? I know lots of Indian's website get penalized also.

  4. 1

    Looks like some good answers so far in this thread already. If it were my site, I would additionally check:

    • compare the 30 days before and after the drop in traffic in Google Analytics and Google Search Console: is the drop coming from any particular URL, geography, brand term or keyword?
      -if you can identify any specific search queries that were driving the traffic, then manually check the SERP--is there a new company bidding on the term that could be taking away clicks? or did the rank drop for pages that had the declined traffic (even just a spot or two on the first page could be the cause), in addition to any de-indexing which was mentioned.
      if you are able to diagnose the change, I'd be curious to hear what was driving it. good luck!
  5. 1

    Seen something similar on some of my own properties. For me, seems related to some site changes that led to some mobility issues that may be pushing me down in the rankings a bit.

    If you have google.com/webmasters already setup, I'd check there to see if you have any "issues" on your site that may be negatively affecting search ranking.

    Also believe there was an algorithm change recently? (may be incorrect there...). My downturn wasn't nearly as bad as yours, but it's definitely suspect that our timelines do seem to marry up.

    In my own experience though, sometimes this is just the natural cycle, and you'll drop down and then recover, just depends on how zoomed in or out you are. I see it a ton on my blog, no real explanation other than the seasonality of some content and such.

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 49 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 29 comments My Top 20 Free Tools That I Use Everyday as an Indie Hacker 16 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments