Have you recently noticed a drop in your website’s traffic?
Did you just find out that your site rank has swooped low?
Well, diving down of website’s traffic is common for every site at some point or the other. And, as a site owner, you would definitely be bothered about the dropping rank. However, the reasons for this sudden plummeting of the traffic and ranks might be numerous. In fact, there might be chances that there is more than one reason that is causing your site to lose the usual high traffic that it drives.
SEO has been a significant game-changer for the last few years. It brings in organic traffic to the websites at large. However, it also goes away suddenly, leaving you wondering what went wrong with the site optimization. This sudden lowering of the SERPs ranking and website traffic might indicate how you need to be updated with the changing trends and SEO strategies for better reach and engagement. It may also be due to organic traffic decrease, which will eventually fall into place.
The dropping of website traffic is a severe problem, and as a site owner, you must be losing your sleep over it. The drop in the site traffic means decreased rank and fewer visitors to the site. No matter what the reason is, your site needs to be revamped and updated. You should be aware of the issue and take the necessary measures to improve the concerned site’s traffic rate.
Let’s check out the various reasons that might be causing less traffic rate on your site.
Chief Reasons for the Website Traffic Drop
- Change in Algorithm
Google has 5 different types of algorithms namely Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird, Pigeon, and Fred. These algorithms are highly complicated and keep on updating themselves. They also immediately retrieve the data from its search index and help find the best possible result for a given search topic. In recent times, Google is updating its algorithms every now and then, which did not happen previously. However, since the majority of the updated algorithms are very minute, it gets overlooked most of the time.
When these algorithms get changed, or there is some major updated version, the SERPs outcome also tends to change. Therefore, many sites with great traffic rates and higher ranks also tend to swoop down due to this reason.
Make sure to check out the updated algorithms and implement the necessary strategies to prevent your site from losing traffic and the decline in the site rank.
- Broken Redirects
Redirect refers to directing and sending the users and the search engines to a new URL other than the previous one. Redirects mainly occur when the URL is broken. Or maybe a website is under maintenance, and the users need to be sidetracked to some other pages for the time being.
A lot of time, your website might experience rank dropouts if the 301 redirect doesn’t work when you are opting for a new server, or the site is temporarily changed. And these broken links are a nightmare for SEO specialists. However, with the 301 redirects, update the XML sitemaps, canonical tags, and the related links. So check and recheck that the redirects are not broken.
- Page Speed
Your page’s loading time can either make your traffic high or break your traffic. Page Speed is a highly essential factor that drives the site ranks. It affects both your page ranks along with the visitors on the website. If the content on the page loads fast, there will be more visitors and high traffic, thereby leading to higher ranks. However, on the contrary, if a page takes a lot of time to load, the rank positions get affected while the visitors tend to leave the page.
If you need to make higher conversions, make sure that your website loads faster. It is directly proportionate. The higher the page speed, the higher is the traffic drive for your site. Therefore it is necessary to speed up the page game and get a higher speed page rank.
- Inadequate or Duplicate Content
Google or most search engines tend to index the pages with updated content or features. So, in case your site is not updated with the required content for a short period, your traffic will indeed decline, resulting in the lowering of your website rank.
Additionally, duplicate content on the site also hampers the website traffic. Suppose your site contains any form of duplicate content internally or externally. In that case, for trying to influence the ranking by diverting site traffic to your page, someone can penalize the website.
- Changes in Natural Search
Google often changes the search result types based on the users’ behavior. This creates an impact on the search engine result pages as your website’s rank declines. And, it is not because your website has got some problem. With the unanticipated surge for a specific topic at times, Google tends to bring forth the new content in the higher rank. At the same time, it pushes the previous contents in the back pages of the Google search results, thereby affecting its ranking status.
- Technical Issues
Technicalities of SEO might be the cause, too, for the decreased traffic in your site. When a website is technically optimized, it not only gains high loading speed but is also secured and makes it easier for the search engines to crawl. The SEO technical keep on checking the website’s technical foundation because it impacts the crawling and indexing of the search engines’ contents. The more technically optimized your site is, the more delightful journey would be for your users. Improved SEO drives 50% of the traffic by organic search results.
Controlling the SEO game will help you manage the rank and bring higher traffic rates.
CONCLUSION
Website traffic and ranking are the essential parts of a website. The decline of either of the 2 creates a significant impact on the conversion rates. Therefore, finding out what is causing this traffic to plummet and decreased rank status in the Google search results is crucial.
However, surging website traffic doesn’t have any shortcut, and you have to implement proper strategies to bring in the high traffic. Follow the latest techniques and implement the best practices for higher site visibility and improved SERPs ranks.