Have you experienced website traffic down in 2024 and more precisely from September onwards then read the full article and try to fix things described here.
For the past several weeks, many websites and blogs owners have complained that their website’s traffic has gone down significantly while their keywords are still ranked in the same position. So let us talk today, what is the whole matter and how can you recover from this thing.
Many users are also asking a question on social media that their website traffic has decreased significantly. And in response to this, many users are writing that some update of Google is going on, due to which many people are still getting less traffic on their website.
This process has started around 14 September when Google Search Console was not updated for 4 days. Although Google called it a technical error, many people say that they have seen a dip in their traffic only after this.
In October, this complaint increased even more and by the end of October, almost all the websites experienced a decrease in their traffic. In November many more website owners confirmed that they have seen a dip in traffic.
On November 4th Google confirmed that they are updating a Spam Update and it will be completely rolled out within the first part of November.
As part of our regular work to improve results, we've released a spam update to our systems. This November 2021 spam update should be fully rolled out within a week. We encourage sites to follow our best practices for Search: https://t.co/jK3ArQmTqT
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) November 3, 2021
Some webmasters started making changes to their website, while some started fixing their core web vitals. Some changed their hosting and some started modifying or deleting their content.
Also Read- How to do keyword research manually For Free
Let’s talk about how to fix website traffic down if you are facing traffic problem on your website or blog
But before fixing the issue let’s why you are facing website traffic down in 2021.
There could be mainly 4 reasons why your website may be facing a loss of traffic.
- Website speed
- Primary keyword trend
- Secondary keyword position change
- Google dance
Let’s talk one by one and their solution.
Website Speed may be a reason for Website Traffic Down
Google has always been saying that website speed is a ranking factor, but it is not such a big factor that it can cause rankings to go up and down. But for the past few days, it is being seen that the speed of the website matters a lot. And this becomes even more important when your website is not very old and big.
Most people test their website by putting their URL in Google Developer Tools and they are happy when the result looks a bit good. But you don’t have to be satisfied with it.
I will tell you the reason for this now. The result we see is called lab data and it is completely different from field data. The data that Google considers in ranking the page is your field data and not lab data.
So what is the difference between field data and lab data?
Suppose most of the traffic on your particular page comes from Indonesia, where the speed of data is not so good. But when you test that URL in Google Developer Tools, it tests according to its server which is in the USA.
Solution
Its solution is that you will find many such websites on the Internet where you can see the speed of your web page according to a particular country.
So how will you know that from which country, this web page is getting how much traffic and from which country is getting the most traffic?
For this, go to your Google Search Console account and click on the Performance tab.
You will see options like Queries, Pages, Countries, Devices at the bottom. As soon as you click on the pages, then you will see all the pages on which you have got clicks or impressions.
You select the page from it that you want to optimize. As you select it, then click on the option of countries next to it, then you will see how much traffic that webpage has got from which country.
Now you can optimize your page according to its traffic. If that page is getting more traffic from a country where the internet speed is not that good, then you have to make that page a little lighter.
Now how do you make it lighter?
You can make many changes like you can use a light theme, if you have put a lot of images then you can optimize that image by changing its format from jpg or png and put webp. If you have put an image too high on your post, then you can move it down a bit so that your FCP reduce.
Primary keyword trend can cause in Website Traffic Down
You may be seeing a constant dip in your traffic though your primary keyword position on the search engine result page is as it is. Then what is the reason for the traffic dip?
Maybe it is happening due to the change in trend. some keywords get trending due to certain circumstances and then lose their volume.
How to check
You can check your primary keyword trend in Google Trends and Google keyword planner.
For this, you go to the website of Google Trends and enter your keyboard, set the time duration to 90 days so that you can know the trend of the last 3 months. Google Trends will not tell you the volume of that keyword, but you will get an idea of whether the trend of your primary keyword has gone down or has gone up.
You can also check Google keyword planner, recently it has added the trend section which indicates the trend in percentage.
If your primary keyword’s trend has gone significantly down then its time to change the Primary keyword by updating the content around the new keyword in the same category.
For example, if you have written a post about ‘Anjelina Jolie’ but the current trend is upward about ‘Relation between Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’ then you can update your content around it.
Secondary keyword position changes may cause in Website Traffic Down
We get quite obsessed with our primary keyword but neglects secondary keywords that are equally important. These keywords can bring equal traffic if not more.
When we write a post it can get ranked for thousands of keywords that are not included or used very little.
So how to check
- Go to your Google search console account and select the website if you have multiple websites added to your account.
- Then go to the performance tab and select on pages.
- Select the page for which you want to check the keywords and position.
- After selecting pages, click on ‘Queries’. The queries or keywords now showing are for that particular page.
- Now download the keyword list by selecting the ‘Export’ button on the top right corner. By default, the time is selected to last 3 months.
- Now change the time to last 7 days, and download the keyword list again.
- Now paste both the 3 months and last 7 days data into one Excel sheet.
- Select both keywords columns and then click on the ‘Conditional Formatting’ on the top of the Excel sheet.
- From the drop-down menu select ‘Highlight Cell Rules’ and then ‘Duplicate Value’.
- Now, Excel will highlight all the keywords that are common in both columns. The unique keywords will remain as it is.
- You can see which keywords have lost ranking in the past week. If the impression on those keywords is moderate or high then you can accommodate those keywords in your content.
- You can also further filter the keywords by their country.
Google Dance
The Google Dance refers to the high level of volatility that a new website or blog on your website experiences while Google determines where to place it on its index.
Google does not like when SEO people try to manipulate SERP rankings by manipulating backlinks or PBN backlinks. This happens more to new sites that are yet to build their authority.
Wrapping Up
So if you are seeing a sudden drop in your traffic then do not panic and don’t make huge changes. It may affect you adversely and you can see further website traffic down. Also, check your backlinks in the links section of the search console and if you find those are spammy then immediately disavow them.