9 Ways To Recover From A Sudden Drop In Website Traffic

9 Ways To Recover From A Sudden Drop In Website Traffic

In today’s highly competitive digital ecosystem, suffering a sudden drop in website traffic can mean dire consequences for the affected business. Whether it is a WordPress blog or an eCommerce solution, any sound business model should have contingency arrangements for adversity, especially when innovations in technology continue to offer viable solutions to all kinds of digital problems. Below are some of the ways to recover from a sudden drop in website traffic. If you are still new into the SEO world, consider engaging an expert SEO agency to have these done for you.

Credit: My Frugal Business

Use Google tools

Google is the king of browsers and has some amazing software like Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Studying a Google Analytics line graph for as little as 10 mins can help you pinpoint the root causes of a sudden drop in your website’s traffic. With Google Search Console, you will be kept constantly informed of any threats to your website’s status.

So whenever you experience the dreaded drop in website traffic, assets like Google Analytics and Google Search Console can help put you on a recovery track.

Face your Google penalties

Google desires that all website operators take some responsibility for internet cybersecurity. To this end, the tech giant has evolved certain policies or rules that its users must abide by. If you consciously or unconsciously breach any of these rules, Google can impose either algorithmic or manual penalties on your site.

The good news is that Google also provides websites with guidelines on how to free themselves from these impactful penalties. If you want to avoid Google’s sledgehammer, the best strategy is to comply with all its rules, including those that may affect website traffic. But keeping track of all Google algorithm (and other) updates can be tedious, especially if your workload is heavy.

This is why hiring a professional digital marketing company can help keep you abreast with Google updates as well as assist in other areas of your entire website.

Update your Keywords

One of the questions to ask about a website already in recovery mode is what factors led to the unwanted state that needs to be recovered from. A potential cause for a sudden drop in website traffic could be a decline in the ranking of your high-volume keywords.

So it is crucial to monitor your keyword data regularly. For example, the “Search Analytics” tab in your GWT account can help you find out whether your high-volume keywords are losing power in search rankings. If this is the case, any effective rank tracking tool can generate the most relevant keywords to arrest the decline and subsequently steer you towards improved rankings.

Be more serious about the competition

If for one or a combination of reasons your website begins to experience a sudden drop in traffic, you should try to identify those competitor sites that may be benefiting from your site’s temporary setback. One way of achieving this is via thorough niche and competitor analysis.

It could be that your competitors have adopted more aggressive digital marketing strategies of late which are catapulting them to greater heights in terms of search rankings. For instance, they may have added extra quality to their website content, improved significantly on their link-building capability, and/or keyed into new technology faster than you.

In such scenarios, one way to catch up and possibly overtake your competitors is to up your game as well, especially in those areas they appear to be getting stronger. In short, consider a radical overhaul of your keyword, link building, and other SEO strategies as well as increasing both your digital marketing budget and expertise.

Address negative reviews and other bad publicity

Negative reviews such as scathing customer feedback and other forms of bad publicity are realities every business must be prepared to cope with once in a while. More worryingly, they could be the reason for the sudden drop in your website traffic. Whether this bad press originated from disgruntled clients or mischievous competitors, you need to react very quickly to avoid irreparable damage to the reputation you may have spent many years building.

Luckily, a host of social media listening tools are available to help you monitor who is speaking for and against you on the internet. Do not hesitate to apologize to unhappy clients if you feel they deserve an apology. You can complement your apologies with enticing offers such as gifts, discounts, and other forms of promotional compensation. You should also endeavor to put in place an efficient, friendly, and helpful customer care department to ensure those client complaints are promptly addressed before they turn into damaging reviews. A PR department is also essential to help check the excesses of desperate competitors, among others.

Deal with any emerging SERP features

The emergence of SERP features in Google brought about a zero-click result in over 50 percent of all searches via Google. To forestall any SERP features discomfort, try and locate your keywords in Google to ascertain if there is a trending SERP feature that may not bode well for your website. If you notice a featured snippet, PAA box, local pack, or a rise in advertisements, for example, it could mean an absorbing of part of a search query’s available clicks.

Whatever the outcome of your keyword scrutiny, the fact is that Google SERP features are here to stay. So a good way to stay on top of the situation is to develop and implement an efficient SEO policy.

Try to replace removed major backlinks

Your major backlinks are important because the loss of any of them can lower your SERP ranking and consequently trigger a sudden drop in your website traffic. To keep track of your link activity, try to obtain a backlink report that will indicate if any of your important links have been deleted during the period you first observed the drop in traffic.

If any of the links have been removed, try and reach out to the concerned websites to find out why they stopped linking to your website. Any of three main reasons could be responsible for removing a backlink.

One, the website may have linked to another website they think has more valuable content. Secondly, the page you linked to may have been moved, merged with another, or completely removed from the website. Lastly, it could be that a website updated a page that has your link and forgot to include it again after the update.

Whatever the case, a serious discussion with the affected site(s) can help you determine why you lost an important link as well as how to replace the link or seek similar links where replacement becomes difficult or impossible.

Comply with Google updates

The history of Google updates indicates the possibility of significant changes in website rankings whenever they are implemented. This is usually because updates often usher in major changes in how Google regards to content, including keywords, backlinks, and more.

If you notice a sudden drop in your website traffic after a Google algorithm update, then you should endeavor to analyze the update meticulously to see if there are things you can do to go back to your pre-update ranking position and possibly climb higher.

Create high quality, up to date content

Use your star web pages, i.e., those pages that have consistently ranked high on Google as models when developing new content for your website. This habit should not only be exhibited during a website traffic loss period but at all times. High-quality content appeals to Google so be sure to leave no stone unturned in your bid to populate your website with outstanding content that will educate your visitors and solve their problems.

Try to also indulge in periodic updating of your old content to ensure that they become more qualitative, relevant, and up to date.

Conclusion – 9 Ways To Recover From A Sudden Drop In Website Traffic

It is the desire of every business with an online presence to rank very high on Google and other search engines. However, the technicalities involved in achieving this laudable objective can be very confusing for most businesses that lack professional digital marketing expertise. This lack of expertise can sometimes lead to a sudden drop in website traffic brought about by one factor or a combination of factors.

If you are overwhelmed by SEO and other digital marketing concepts, do not despair or shut down. All you need to do is find the best SEO solutions the UK and elsewhere so that your fortunes will change for the better.