The Shark Tank

Noticing that your website is less popular than it used to be–whether last week, last month or last year–can be stressful. However, you can use specific strategies to determine why this has happened and what to do about it. You’ll first want to decide which traffic source has changed and over what sort of timeline: look at your analytics month by month. Then, you can determine if you need to fix something in your website, update your SEO strategies, or strategize your advertising differently.

Starting Your Investigation

Through programs like Google Analytics and CallRail, you can investigate which traffic source may have been lost. Usually, one source, such as organic search, has caused the overall traffic decrease. Perhaps it is a source that rarely, if ever, converts into something valuable for your business–if so, it may not be cause for concern. In the case of an organic lead lapse, one of your top landing pages may have fallen in search results or stopped working. Once you find the page, you can update your SEO strategy or troubleshoot any technical issues.

Strategizing Content

As you analyze your data, you may find that one form of content generates more traffic than others. Google Analytics will compare traffic to individual pages for you. You can then create more of that sort of content to drive up leads. Blogs and service-specific pages are one strategy for achieving this. The additional content provides new opportunities for your site to achieve high search rankings through retained visitors and deliberate keywords.

If a previously popular page has suddenly dropped in rankings, you may consider investigating if Google has changed its algorithm. If you find that it has, perhaps the page can be edited to contain new keywords or updated links. Updating content based on changing Google guidelines, if possible, is more efficient than writing entirely new content.

Scaling Up

You should also compare traffic across individual years as well as multi-year spans. The longer you can trace back your data, the stronger the picture this creates will be. If you can analyze patterns across five or more years, you may find that certain traffic is seasonal, and the recent drop could have been anticipated. Scaling your analysis also lets you see how concerning the reduction is – perhaps traffic drops of this scale are common. If your site traffic is generally steadier, you’ll know the recent decline may be cause for alarm.

Technical Difficulties?

A particularly steep decline may indicate a technical issue with your website. Perhaps the URL has expired, your backlinks stopped working, or a popular link to your page from another site has broken. Has something slowed the processing speed of your site? If so, users will be less likely to stay on it, and it will fall in rankings. On a larger scale, technology may have shifted – is your site accessible to the latest devices? Is the advice or product you offer still useful and relevant to new advances?

Saving Time and Growing Your Audience

Digital marketing is a complex and continually evolving field. Many puzzle pieces must be working in perfect harmony to consistently ensure new leads and traffic to your website. Potential customers must easily find your page to generate reliable and growing business. Enlisting the help of an agency specializing in digital marketing or SEO strategies can ensure that your website stays up to date. With the experts at BluShark Digital handling the marketing, you will be free to focus on growing your business.