When you're a business owner, keeping up with the changes in technology and the internet can be difficult and time consuming. What do you do when you see that you have a drop in your web traffic? Let’s first go over a few of the different reasons why your website traffic might have seen a turn for the worst.
Understanding Google
Are you current with Google’s latest algorithm update? If you haven’t realized it yet, Google pretty much rules the internet, so don't think that your business shouldn’t worry about the changes that Google makes to its search algorithm. The popular search engine makes these changes to enhance the user experience by ensuring that the websites that show up on the search engine results page actually are helpful to the searcher.
Currently Google has already given us an update and it’s only the beginning of 2016. To learn more about the latest algorithm updates that Google does, click here.
Redesign
If you redesigned your company’s website recently, and you have seen a drop in website traffic, thankfully there are a few things that you can do to check if you're the problem. Did you properly implement redirects from your old site pages to your new website? Did you optimize your website for search engines? Redesigning may seem like an easy task but there are many technical issues that you must be mindful of to ensure that you don’t mess up your web traffic.
To learn more about properly redesigning your website to make sure it doesn’t affect your SEO, click here.
Blacklisted
Are you doing any shady marketing techniques getting you blacklisted with Google? There are several techniques, like keyword stuffing, that used to be acceptable in the world of SEO but are now getting websites into trouble. Make sure that your marketing efforts are clean and have the right intentions.
To learn more about being blacklisted or penalized by Google, click here.
Technical Issues
Did your website run into server issues? Is your website having indexing issues? There are a handful of different ways that your website could be suffering from technical problems. If you
aren’t a webmaster, then understanding how to fix these technical issues could feel like you are trying to translate a foreign language.
To learn more about technical issues with your website, click here.
Not as Helpful
There is also the natural common occurrence that happens within the search traffic world -- your website just isn’t as good as other websites on the web. With Google improving its algorithms constantly, it's able to determine which websites can help solve a person’s search inquiry with the best results. So if you're seeing a dip in your organic traffic, then Google might not think that your website is as good as you think it is.
Now that you know a few of the different reasons why your web traffic might be suffering, let’s go over a few tools that can help you get your traffic back up.
Search Console
Formerly Webmaster Tools, Search Console is a Google program that helps you diagnose and fix any problems that your website is having within the Google search index. This free program can help you determine crawl errors, crawl stats, detect malware and more.
Google Analytics
If you need more detailed information about your search traffic, then Google Analytics is just for you. With Google Analytics you can identify your popular content, the demographics of your website traffic and closely monitor your daily search traffic.
Want to take your traffic research to the next level with paid subscriptions? Here are a few examples of services that can give you a little more than the free examples above.
SEM Rush
SEM Rush is a paid service and is a great place to start with competitive research, understanding where your website traffic is coming from, where you can grow and much more. If your web traffic is being affected because of natural reasons, being that your website isn’t as helpful as your competitors, then this service is for you.
Raven
Raven is another paid service to help you get an understanding about how to more effectively troubleshoot potential issues with your website that could be affecting your decrease in traffic. This tool is good to find out if Google is properly crawling your website, provide tips to build your links and much more.
We know that this can be a lot to take in. But those are the basic reasons why you may be seeing a decline in your website traffic. Now it's time to do a little bit of research on the different types of services that we listed above and decide whether or not this is something that you have the time and know-how to fix.
These are all reasons why you should hire an inbound marketing consultant to help you with your marketing efforts, which would include maintaining your company’s website. We're the experts when it comes to understanding what Google wants, what your website needs, and just the overall strategy of SEO. Contact us today if you're in need of help with your web traffic.
Since 2002, Half a Bubble Out has been dedicated to providing marketing, advertising and small business consulting that meet the needs of our clients. We specialize in powerfully telling stories through Inbound Marketing to grow your business filled with more passion and provision. Based in Chico California, we serve clients throughout Northern California and across the country to New York.
