Sometimes businesses find themselves in the enviable position of having to account for where their traffic numbers go. Diagnosing the problem becomes a priority because the longer the problem persists, the worse the traffic numbers for your business.
As most IT professionals can attest, there are several things that can cause a website’s traffic to plummet, ranging from poor search engine optimization techniques to inadequate technology and inadequate update policies. It is possible.So what are some of the most common problems plaguing business traffic and leading to its decline? Forbes Agency Council Share their experiences below.
Photo courtesy of each member
1. Google Algorithm Changes
Search engines continually update their algorithms, and these changes can negatively impact your client’s search rankings. The first thing we do is check to see what the update has changed, including if there are any new penalties. It’s important to have the flexibility to change your client’s keywords and SEO to accommodate these changes. – Hannah Tribbett, NUVEW Web Solutions
2. Old content
Slow website traffic is often caused by stale and unpopular content. Content should be reviewed daily and updated at least weekly, including new blog posts, press releases, and video interviews. It’s important to keep your site fresh and real. – Kim Pryler, Searle Communications Co., Ltd.
3. Chaotic updates
There are several types of update issues, such as website themes, plugins, navigation, and content. Themes should be natively mobile-first, plugins should be up-to-date or hacker-enabled, navigation should point to the most important content first, content should be very few You should focus on keywords (no more than 3). Failing to discipline updates can slow down your traffic. – Jim Caruso, M1PR, Inc. d/b/a MediaFirst PR – Atlanta
4. Broken technology
Most of our professional service clients do not use paid media. Instead, engage your ideal prospects with great content and digital promotions. We rarely see a drop in traffic, but in practice technical problems always occur. Perform comparative analysis of traffic patterns from past quarters to find and fix root causes. – Randy Shattuck, shattuck group
5. Website Overhaul
The most obvious is a website overhaul. Many companies do not invest the time and effort to carefully program redirects from frequently visited pages to newly created sites. We also forget about Google campaign landing pages and the need to recreate them on the new site. Please don’t let this happen to you. Consider all marketing outlets when moving to a new site. – Francine curve, Markitecs Co., Ltd.
6. Seasonality; Competitors
Dropping traffic can be as simple as how the data is queried. Are you comparing Mondays to Mondays? How was the weather for comparison? Is there seasonality in your business if the time period shifts? And of course, we’ve seen where our competitors have run massive PR campaigns and events to get more attention. – Douglas Carr, high bridge
7. Single channel focus
Advertisers often focus on specific channel results and forget that multiple channels influence those results. Online programs drive site traffic, but so do offline programs. Site traffic spikes when retailers mail out catalogs. Conversely, less investment in offline channels means less online traffic. Don’t forget interconnectivity between channels. – Lori Paikin NaviStone®
8. Keyword Cannibalization
If you’re constantly creating new content without having a true content/SEO strategy in place, you’re more likely to start cannibalizing some of your traffic-generating keywords, causing a drop in organic traffic. We see it in large organizations writing about the same topic over and over again. – Dustin Detorres, detorres group
9. Inactive Social Media Channels
Some of your web traffic can be traced back to social media channels (profile links, swipe-up links, etc.). I’ve seen traffic drop precipitously when businesses become less proactive in encouraging their social media followers to visit their websites. – Layla Lewis, Inspiration PR
10. Keyword Competition
If there weren’t any sudden changes in search algorithms, it’s very likely that someone is spending on your keywords. is high and you know how much budget you need to get your traffic back. – Stephen Pollack, pollack group
