Why has my website traffic dropped?

Are you concerned that your website traffic has suddenly fallen? Have you confirmed this by reviewing your Google Analytics performance metrics and are you able to see which traffic sources have fallen? If all your traffic sources have suddenly fallen then its probably a tracking issue.

If your organic traffic from Google has suddenly fallen, then it’s quite likely to be related to one of the following causes:

A new website

1. You’ve recently upgraded your website to a new design and or
2. You’ve recently changed your website to reside on a cloud platform like Wix, Weebly, Squarespace and Shopify

Many websites loose a lot of their organic traffic when the design is upgraded and or migrated to a new platform.

This could be due to a simply oversight like not removing robots txt blocking Googles crawler. More often, it is due to the SEO component of the website upgrade process not being correctly managed and in our experience this is the most common reason for sudden organic traffic loss. Typically the underlying cause is either the lack of and or miss management of redirects.

If this applies to you then you should get some SEO advice as soon as possible. Time is of the essence when trying to recover lost rankings and the sooner you act the better.

If none of the above applies to you, then the following may have impacted your traffic:

Website hacked

Your website may have been hacked and compromised. Google is good at identifying websites that may have been hacked and may decide to exclude the website from search results. Normally a message would be sent to the website owner via Google Search Console but if you don’t have access to this then you are unlikely to have received the notification. WordPress websites which are very common are often the target of hacking and this commonly occurs when WordPress website versions are not kept up to date.

Start by accessing Google Search Console and check for errors and notifications from Google. Otherwise you should contact your web developer to conduct an audit.

Google Ranking Issues

Google’s algorithm may have changed in a way that has impacted your website rankings. Google’s algorithm is changing multiple times every month and from time to time undergoes larger core updates. Any of these updates could potentially result in your traffic levels changing and dropping.

The reasons that your website may have been impacted by an algorithm change could be varied and this would require an in-depth SEO investigation to identify the cause and to determine the best course of action.

These could be from relatively minor issues or Google may have singled your website out and applied a penalty for more grievous offences. Issues may be related to either onsite problems like duplicate content or offsite issues like spammy links.

You should be aware that SEO resolutions can take weeks and even months to work and for your rankings to improve. Sometimes the road to recovery can be slow and getting expert SEO advice as early as possible is critical.

If you’d like a website audit and SEO consultation, please contact us today.