Keeping people coming to your website can be challenging. However, there are lots of things you can do to get new and old customers returning to your website, browsing your products and services and making those all-important purchasing decisions.
However, there are times where you might notice a sudden decline in your website traffic, and this can be somewhat alarming, particularly if you put lots of work into keeping those numbers up. So why might this happen? Here are some possible causes.
An algorithm update
When Google updates its algorithm, this can severely impact your site. Tolls such as Miscast can help you check if there has been one and will give you information on what the changes are so you can adjust your site accordingly.
Tracking errors
Tracking errors can also mean that your website traffic takes a nosedive. For those who aren’t particularly technical, a tracking error is where your tracking codes stop working or have been removed from the site entirely which results in missing data that can impact your web traffic. Contacting your web developers to check your codes are in the right places and working as they should can fix this error quickly.
Problems with robots.txt rules
It is possible that your site could be working against you by preventing search engines from crawling in the robots.txt file. This is the text file that directs web robots (or search engines) which pages on your site to crawl. If there is an error here, they won’t be able to crawl your website which is bad for SEO and means you won’t appear in search results.
Redirect errors
Don’t add a live redirect to your site unless you have thoroughly tested it first. If your redirects don’t work correctly your customers won’t be taken to your new web pages, and therefore you’ll miss out on all the traffic that should be coming your way.
Crawl errors
You should also check to see whether your website has any crawl errors, that is URLs that might have a mistake thus preventing customers from reaching your web pages. You can check this by using the Index Coverage Report in the Search Console to see if any errors are present.
You are tracking the wrong rankings
It is important for any business to keep track of keywords that are relevant to them. It may be that the keywords you are using are outdated or no longer useful. Doing an overview of the keywords and topics that you use and updating your strategy could see your website traffic improve once more.
Lost links
A dip in web traffic could also be due to lost links. You can check your links through a tool such as Ahrefs to determine whether inbound links to your site have been lost or broken, and then investigate further as to why.
Google is penalizing your site
Of course, there is also the chance that manual actions are to blame. That yourself or an employee has done something which means you are no longer compliant with Google’s guidelines. If that is the case, it could cost you big in terms of showing up in their search results.
These are some of the most common reasons why you might see a sudden drop in your website traffic. Luckily they are all fixable, but the sooner you catch them, the better, so make sure that you stay alert, and you’ll be able to make the right changes to get the number of visitors coming to your website back up once more.
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