“Why is my website traffic dropping?”
For any business using its website as a lead generation tool, traffic is essential. The more visitors you get, the more chances you have to make your product or service known, gain connections and promote your brand. This is why an unexpected decline in organic traffic is a terrifying idea, as it might result in fewer business opportunities and less income.
Whether it’s a technical problem, a new Google algorithm implementation or lack of content optimisation, there are several possible motives why your company’s website traffic numbers have been sinking lately.
For example, older websites have higher risks of being penalised by Google’s algorithm updates because of potential coding errors and obsolete practices still applied to some of the pages. That ‘keyword stuffed’ article you wrote in 2010 that brought a lot of traffic seemed like a good idea at the time. Now, it is definitely hurting your website on an apocalyptic scale.
Content is (a mad) king
We recently had a meeting with a group of young entrepreneurs who run MI6-HQ.com, a fansite dedicated to Bond, James Bond. (cue the music)
They expressed their concern with the MI6-HQ website traffic dropping like a stone over the past months and wanted our help to:
- Assess the possible reasons for the decline in visits;
- Come up with a few creative ideas to solve the problem, like a marketing version of Q.
Even though they offer really good articles (many visitors had lots of nice things to say on their Facebook comments), their search engine rankings and organic reach keep decreasing. There are multiple marketers that repeatedly state just writing “epic content” will drive traffic to any website, period. Unfortunately, that’s not the truth.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree that good content is essential. But if you publish it in a flawed website, you’ll have your king residing in a crumbling castle. That inspires no recognition at all and the results are totally unpredictable.
Google has a license to kill your audience
Google holds more than 74% of the search engine market share worldwide. That’s why you either play by their rules or fall into the internet abyss (a.k.a. Not the first page on Google Search).
We believe part of the decline in the MI6-HQ search rankings is that their website has been running for over 20 years (!!!) and most of their ‘ancient’ content might not have been updated regularly. A quick search (on Google, of course) shows that MI6-HQ.com has 15,500 indexed pages. It’s probably really hard to keep tabs on all of them individually.
Optimising websites is not a one-size-fits-all process. When it comes to web content that is already published, you have the option to improve or kill pages forever. In this specific case, deleting some of the older articles might be an alternative. Having fewer discoverable pages to increase your website findability can sound very counterintuitive, but I assure you, it works wonders for some people. Learning to let go is necessary sometimes.
Analysing your website performance is a laborious but rewarding task
There’s a lot of work involved in optimising your website. You might even say it’s a never-ending task, depending on your level of perfectionism. Nowadays, the competition online is cutthroat, so any edge you have over your competitors is worth the effort.
According to research by Moz blog, more than 70% of searches result in a page one organic click. The rest is diluted from the second page onwards. This just shows how important it is to aim for the top place of the search engine rankings.
It is in reality a great and useful piece of info. I am glad that you simply shared this useful info with us. Please keep us informed like this. Thank you for sharing.
hello!,I like your writing very much! share we communicate more about your article on AOL? I need a specialist on this area to solve my problem. May be that’s you! Looking forward to see you.
Hello there! This is my 1st comment here so I just wanted to give a quick shout out and tell you I really enjoy reading through your blog posts. Can you suggest any other blogs/websites/forums that cover the same topics? Appreciate it!
Thanks for the guidelines shared on your blog. Something also important I would like to mention is that fat reduction is not information about going on a dietary fad and trying to reduce as much weight as you’re able in a set period of time. The most effective way to shed weight is by consuming it slowly and right after some basic points which can enable you to make the most out of your attempt to lose weight. You may realize and already be following these tips, although reinforcing expertise never damages.
I do agree with all of the ideas you’ve presented in your post. They are very convincing and will definitely work. Still, the posts are too short for starters. Could you please extend them a little from next time? Thanks for the post.
We’re a group of volunteers and starting a new scheme in our community. Your site provided us with valuable info to work on. You have done a formidable job and our entire community will be grateful to you.
Hello my friend! I want to say that this article is amazing, nice written and include approximately all important infos. I?d like to see more posts like this.
Whats up very cool web site!! Man .. Excellent .. Wonderful .. I’ll bookmark your web site and take the feeds also?I’m glad to search out so many helpful information right here in the post, we’d like develop extra techniques on this regard, thank you for sharing. . . . . .
Thanks a lot for the helpful content. It is also my belief that mesothelioma cancer has an really long latency time period, which means that indication of the disease may well not emerge till 30 to 50 years after the original exposure to asbestos fiber. Pleural mesothelioma, that’s the most common form and affects the area about the lungs, will cause shortness of breath, torso pains, and also a persistent cough, which may result in coughing up blood vessels.
An fascinating discussion is worth comment. I believe that you should write more on this topic, it may not be a taboo topic however generally people are not sufficient to talk on such topics. To the next. Cheers
It?s really a great and useful piece of information. I?m satisfied that you simply shared this helpful info with us. Please keep us up to date like this. Thanks for sharing.
hey there and thank you on your info ? I have definitely picked up anything new from proper here. I did then again experience some technical issues the usage of this web site, since I skilled to reload the website many times previous to I could get it to load properly. I were considering if your hosting is OK? No longer that I am complaining, however sluggish loading cases instances will very frequently affect your placement in google and can harm your high-quality score if ads and ***********|advertising|advertising|advertising and *********** with Adwords. Well I am including this RSS to my email and could glance out for a lot more of your respective fascinating content. Make sure you update this again soon..
Today, I went to the beach front with my children. I found a sea shell and gave it to my 4 year old daughter and said “You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She put the shell to her ear and screamed. There was a hermit crab inside and it pinched her ear. She never wants to go back! LoL I know this is completely off topic but I had to tell someone!
You actually make it appear so easy together with your presentation but I find this matter to be really one thing that I believe I’d by no means understand. It sort of feels too complicated and very broad for me. I am having a look forward for your subsequent publish, I will attempt to get the hold of it!