4 things to consider if you see a sudden drop in traffic

If I told you that no one is immune to traffic drops, it was probably true. All campaigns are prone to traffic drops and still be easy to overlook. Look twice into Google Analytics to check if code is implemented properly on all pages of your site. Check if correct snippets are being used for your property. Check if the code formatting is preserved.

If you know that error isn’t statistical, it’s time to go deep inside and have a closer look at all the symptoms and find the root cause:-

           1. Important changes being made to your site:– 

site changes come with redesign or migration that may have some pitfalls that may be injurious to your Search Engine Optimization efforts. If there have been any changes recently, then you might see a dip in traffic out of nowhere. Crawl ability and indexation would be two of the most overlooked issues.

Go to Crawl>Crawl Errors in Google Search Console and check the graphs to find any kind of sudden changes to the graphs after the renovation.

Use website auditor tool to find broken URLs reported by Google Search Console. Allow some time to crawl and then find URLs in All Resources Tab along with a quick search filter and check the links to page section at the bottom to see where the broken links hide.

          2. Manual Search engine penalty:– 

If you have somehow violated Google guidelines, you better be ready to face the wrath of Google. You will notice them in the search traffic of GSC account. So Search Traffic > Manual Actions Sections.

User generated spam – If you have spammy and irrelevant links on pages of your site, then you could be penalized for it. Check for all violations and clean up accordingly. You could also default your UG content to a no-follow.

Cloaking and sneaky redirects – these are on page violations and are hard to pinpoint on a site that is bigger than the average. But the website auditor can do the job for you again. If it is for unnatural linking go here – All resources > review all external links from the site. Do not engage in buying paid links or any links gained through link exchange.

If you have been penalized for sneaky redirects – make sure the redirects are not suspicious from your site. Check pages with 301 and 302 redirects sections under the site audit to revise all destination URLs.

Thin content or duplicate content – Refrain from writing fluff or repeated content that is copied from some other copyrighted content.

Unnatural linking to your site – Invest in SEO Spyglass tool, to create a project for the site and choose SEO power suite backlink explorer in tandem with Google Search Console. Switch to linking domains once the backlinks are collected and move to link penalty risk workspace. Select a domain and click on update penalty risk. Penalty risk with more than 50 per cent needs to be reviewed manually.

3. Google Algorithm updates:– 

      This is a major contributing factor as it tweaks and rolls once in a while. If you experience a sharp drop after any Google Algo update rollout, you need to take a look at the factors that are triggering such a sharp steep in traffic.

     Core updates are easy to pinpoint. Keep an eye on any possible fluctuations on the SERPs for any niche keywords to spot any kind of unusual shakeups. The rank tracker could help. This tool will help gather the top 30 pages for your keywords with their rankings and gather results in the SERP history table.

               4. Loss of valuable backlinks:– 

     Losing some backlinks may hurt your rankings and thus traffic. This would happen more than often if your site didn’t have many backlinks more often than not. Check for any kind of notable changes to your backlink profile. Use SEO spyglass which provides you with the summary section see if the backlink progress graph went down gradually.

Competitors and SERP changes may also be some of the contributing factors that lead to traffic drop and loos in rankings for your website.