Websites are meant to be visited. However, the term “visits” can mean different for different sites. For example, traffic can be a good source of income from advertisements for media sites. Whereas, for e-commerce retailers, traffic paves the way for direct sales. 

Some sites do not sell anything. Or they may be selling a brand where an eyeball through your content is enough to count as a win. 

Irrespective of the subject matter of your site, traffic is equal to customers. 

And as per search ranking terms: Ranking = Traffic = Customers  

So, if there is a drop in search ranking, traffic will automatically drop and vice versa. 

No matter whether you are an SEO professional, a webmaster, a digital marketer, or maybe some other stakeholder, it is your responsibility to scrutinize the nagging issue and find a way out as to how to get things back on track. 

Here we will be taking a brief look at seven places you need to zero in on if there is a drop in your traffic and what could be its possible situation. 

Places You Need to Keep a Keen Eye Out For 

You are Tracking the Wrong Rankings: If you have an online advertising site for quite a number of years, the previous keywords might not be relevant in this day and age. Think about your personal search behavior and compare that to the keywords exhibited in your Search Console data. 

Do you use niche or industrial terminology that might be hard to fathom for your potential customers? 

Many people search for different variations of the same question but can still not find a solution or answer to their problem. 

There has been a massive improvement in the natural language comprehension of engineers at Google. Nowadays, people can type in their local language to find results. Here, keeping content in plain language is the key, as this will help rank for those things. 

Moreover, search engines nowadays are ranking websites on the basis of complete sentences or other elements of more natural language, and not just counting on a few keywords. 

So, carefully go through your keywords and keyword phrases. If you are using generic or old keywords, you are actually tracking the wrong rankings and need to update your strategy. 

Broken Redirects: Are you shifting to a new server or performing any structural changes to your site? Or, maybe you are launching a new website? Whatever the reason may be, you will certainly witness a drop in rankings unless and until you have the appropriate 301 redirect plan in place.

Broken redirects are the worst nightmares for every SEO professional there are. If you are using a 301 redirect, make sure that you have updated canonical tags, links, and XML sitemaps. 

Algorithm Changes: Google always makes algorithm changes to boost results and strategies. These changes proved to be a nightmare for many sites as they started suffering from lower site rankings. 

It is highly recommended to use an effective and efficient traffic strategy and cross-channel online marketing that incorporates social media and other digital marketing channels. 

UX Changes in Google: Sometimes, Google changes the UX of search pages, which can significantly take away clicks. 

It is quite possible that a Featured Snippet appeared on a key search result, directing traffic in that direction. It is also possible that some search experiment has impacted the click-through rate. 

Look for terms that have dropped and whether there are any changes. 

Competitor Improvements: You shouldn’t be surprised if you are witnessing a dip in your rankings and losing traffic despite doing everything in the way it is meant to be. One possible reason for this to happen could be that your competitor is performing better. 

You should keep a close watch out for your competitors by closely monitoring and analyzing their link-building strategies, content marketing, and social media activity. Versioninsta or Wayback Machine are good tools to see the changes made by your competitors.

Backlink tools can also be useful to find out whether they have had an inundation of new backlinks. 

Once you have a thorough idea of what made your competitor outrank you, all you need to do is make the same changes but in a better way. 

Server Issues: Is your site encountering any server issues? Then, it could result from a broken caching function or an empty markup served to Googlebot. It is advisable to resolve any server issues at the earliest possible moment. 

You can use Google’s Fetch and Render Tool to find out how a URL on your site is crawled or rendered. 

Redesign and Recent Website Changes: Are you planning to redesign your website? Then, you would certainly not want to lose the rankings and traffic you put so much effort into crafting. 

Here are some of the most effective steps you can employ to boost rankings: 

• Check the link structure of your inbound links to ensure they are functioning properly on your new site. 
• Before launching your new website, it is advisable to collect some baseline metrics reports such as site audit, page URL mapping, traffic, and rank tracker. 
• Ascertain of the fact that all 301 redirects are planned appropriately. 

Careful planning and attention to the essential components of your redesign project can go a long way in preventing a negative impact on your rankings and SEO while playing a significant role in making improvements as well. 

Final Take:

There are no shortcuts to boosting your website traffic. If you want to enhance your search engine visibility, you must put in a lot more effort and time. 

Never take shortcuts to sketchy strategies, as that would only lead to negative consequences of lost traffic and poor search ranking. We at Prasarnet go to great lengths to ensure that your site does not suffer from poor search ranking or lose traffic out of nowhere. We are a digital marketing agency that would take care of everything that falls under the ambit of digital marketing, thereby taking your brand to the moon. Get in touch with us and feel the difference for yourself. Ask for a no-obligation quotation for your project now.