These days, its online presence is a huge part of everyday business for most companies. A good website allows a company to connect directly with its customers, providing an easy method of communication and source of information and, for many businesses, a primary sales portal. As such, website traffic can be a great indicator of the current health of a business.
Indeed, a sudden, sharp drop in a business’ website traffic is an unpleasant jolt and can be indicative of a bigger problem that needs to be addressed. To help businesses diagnose a drop in traffic to their websites, we asked experts from Forbes Agency Council to detail the issues they run across most frequently.
Members of Forbes Agency Council share their experience to help businesses diagnose a decline in website traffic.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Change In SEO Ranking
We typically see a sharp drop in traffic being driven by one of the following things: a change in SEO ranking, resulting in significantly lower organic search traffic; a seasonal impact that can be validated by looking at prior years and industry traffic reports; or a change in the company’s advertising or traffic generation programs (e.g., affiliate/referral). – Elissa Liu, Influential Executive
2. Removed Analytics Code
More organizations are updating their sites frequently with fresh content and features. When a drop in traffic happens, it can be because of an error made while site updates are being made—for example, making your site, or part of it, invisible to Google. This can happen when a programmer is making changes they don’t want Google to see and they then forget to un-hide them when the update is complete. – Scott Baradell, Idea Grove
3. Low-Value Content
Content marketing is a great way to increase organic traffic to your site, but it has to be done right or it can turn people off. We’ve seen too many brands focus only on creating a volume of content—without considering the value of that content. Low-value content wastes the reader’s time and is easy to spot. Create content that’s actually useful to reap the benefits of an inbound approach. – Sarah Mannone, Trekk
4. A New Google Algorithm
When the Google algorithm changes, so does its order of results. Their algorithmic changes impact all of the websites that were benefiting from a high volume of organic search traffic. As such, search engine rank changes are one potential cause that should always be checked for when accounting for a decline in a client’s website traffic. – Adam Guild, Placepull
5. The End Of A Marketing Campaign
Sharp drops can be attributed to a number of reasons, but it most commonly occurs at the end of a paid digital (or traditional) campaign. In some verticals, a drop in traffic can also coincide with the seasonality of the product or service, and traffic can be expected to pick back up again during the next sales season. – Rebecca Kowalewicz, Clearbridge Branding Agency
6. An Established Google My Business Page
A Google My Business page provides essential information about your business without a reader having to click to your website. Often, customers visit a website to find business hours, contact information or directions. When a Google My Business page is established, a business could see a decrease in clicks to their website as information is now more accessible. – Darian Kovacs, Jelly Digital Marketing & PR
7. Erroneous Out-Of-Country Website Traffic
More often than not, we have found that seemingly lower levels of website traffic have actually been accurate, whereas the higher levels in prior months were mid-reads due to out-of-country or out-of-region views that should not have been counted. One of our clients had an enormous amount of erroneous traffic from China. The lesson learned is to look at the geographic sources of website traffic. – Francine Carb, Markitects, Inc.
8. Google Penalties
Any time there’s a precipitous drop in a site’s organic analytics, it’s frequently due to a manual action penalty by Google. This happens when a site duplicates content from other sites or features shady or bad links. We can resolve this issue by auditing links and disavowing bad ones, building quality links, refreshing content optimized for SEO, and resubmitting the site to Google. – Erik Clausen, CG Life
9. Reduced Direct Mail
Before the internet, direct mail was commonly used to drive sales. As digital programs became widely used and online purchases increased, direct mail was reduced. Marketers quickly saw a negative impact on sales—direct mail was actually driving site traffic and sales. Understand the impact all marketing programs have on driving site traffic. Eliminate the wrong one and site traffic will drop. – Lori Paikin, NaviStone®
10. Back-End Issues
For the most part, we can see sharp declines in traffic from a client’s site as a result of poor technical SEO. Slow page speeds, long redirect chains and even pagination issues can creep up over time and result in a seemingly inextricable drop in traffic. When this happens it’s key to conduct an audit and assess the issue immediately. – Kristopher Jones, LSEO
11. You’re Not Mobile-Ready
Algorithm changes from Google can, without question, have a huge impact on site traffic. Last year, Google began placing more importance on mobile sites and website load speeds. Those clients without mobile-ready sites were noticing a sharp decline in traffic as Google began showing a preference (in the search engine results pages) for their mobile-ready competitors. – Bernard May, National Positions
12. You’re Measuring The Wrong Metric
Web traffic shouldn’t be evaluated in isolation. Consumers are visiting your YouTube page, your Instagram channel and your Twitter feed to engage with your brand—not just your website. Consider your entire digital footprint to ensure you are identifying real issues and core causes. – Andrew Au, Intercept Group
