Why Is My Organic Traffic Down? Here Are 4 Things to Check
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Why Is My Organic Traffic Down? Here Are 4 Things to Check
Do you see a negative trend in your Google Analytics account? Are you wondering why your organic traffic is down?
Is this time to panic?
Before you rush to find a new agency to try and figure out what happened, here are 4 ways to diagnose a decline in organic traffic.
So you see some unfortunate trends on your overall Google Analytics reports. How to tell what exactly is being affected?
Now that you know which page needs your attention, go ahead and run some checks:
Google’s Search Console will be able to help you identify your most affected search queries:
You do want to only pay attention to your top 10 rankings, as nothing else was driving many clicks, so you can also sort results by the number of clicks the page was generating during the previous period. Here’s the list of search queries that used to send more clicks:
This task would be much easier if you were tracking your most important search queries. In that case, it would just take one click to your tracked #1 positions. Site Checker does a good job saving your time here:
The good news, you are not alone. There are at least 9 more pages ranking for that query as well as many other search features that may start stealing your clicks. So next steps are:
SpyFu comes with that feature as well, so if you were not tracking your keyword check if SpyFu has records for it:
If you notice a competing page that is confidently moving up, you want to check them out. Are there link building or content tactics that may be moving the needle here?
Are you alone in seeing some unusual organic traffic fluctuations? A few quick resources to check here are:
Knowing that there’s an update going on will help you understand whether it is anything that even needs an immediate fix. If there’s a global update going on, you will need to give it some time. Things take time to stabilize, and there’s never anything urgent.
Keyword intent optimization will boost both organic rankings and conversions, so it is a must when auditing content that is losing rankings. Commercial (or purchasing) intent is something you need to look out for. Lior Krolewicz ofYael Consulting explains purchasing intent as:
a measurement of the likelihood that a given individual will be purchasing specific goods or services at some point in the future.
Optimizing for what your potential site user intends to do on that page is crucial.
To help you expand your copy as well as optimize for search intent, use Text Optimizer. The tool uses semantic analysis to help you discover related concepts and entities to be covered in your content for it to do a better job to address a target query:
To start, run your current content through Text Optimizer and see your current score. Aim for a score of 60 and higher for better results.
Also, make sure your grammar is always perfect. There are a lot of tools that can help to see your errors, illogical constrictions and make your speech smooth.
Organic traffic fluctuations are normal and need to always be expected, so really the most important tip here is “Stay calm”. Once you notice something going on, give it a couple of days and then look into that. Auditing traffic declines can be done at home, so save yourself some time and money and look into that using the steps above.
