When you start seeing a drop in traffic on your company’s website, it can be worrying. A sudden lack of visitors is often a warning sign of an impending drop in sales. This usually means that when your website traffic decreases, you will have fewer customers. Problems should be diagnosed and addressed as soon as possible to reduce the impact on the bottom line of the business. That job is often delegated to agency partners.
Members of the Forbes Agency Council leverage their extensive expertise in this area to explain the potential causes of a sudden drop in client website traffic and the negative impact this could have on your business. Follow their recommendations to identify the cause of drop-offs and fix website traffic issues.
Members of the Forbes Agency Council share potential causes to consider when website traffic suddenly drops.
Photos courtesy of each member.
1. Algorithm update
I know the common cause is an algorithm update, so I’d investigate that first. At the same time, you should review and identify if anything has changed in your internal content strategy, publishing, and optimization. Great tools to use are Google Search Console and SEMrush.A continuous “stay on top” strategy is most likely to prevent or reduce traffic decline.-Peter Belvita, Noble House Media
2. Tech stack changes
Declines in traffic are most often related to changes across the tech stack or actual marketing efforts. If the tool isn’t broken, you may have made some changes to your current paid channels and need to figure out which one is which. Unless you change the platform of the source or break the tracking, there will be no traffic spikes. – Faique Moqeet, Hamster Garage
3. Change keyword performance
It can be either paid traffic or organic traffic. If it’s paid, look into budgets, campaigns, etc. If it’s organic, it can get a little tricky. Look at the top reference sites. Look at your keywords. Where did the traffic disappear from? The short answer is “Google changed their algorithm”. That may be true, but dig deeper and see what’s performing. – Michael McFadden, eAccountable
4. Old content with irrelevant keywords
If you trace back from your site traffic, you’ll notice that you’re looking at searches. What keeps your site from ranking well in searches? Know your keywords and make sure your content reflects them. If you don’t keep your keywords relevant to your audience up to date, your search results will suffer. This may be the time to conduct an SEO audit on your site and optimize those keywords. – Lori Paikin, NaviStone®
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5. Consumer change
Agencies sometimes forget that sales declines are not always caused by product flaws or poor publicity. It may be the decline in consumers with disposable income. We encourage you to analyze data in real time, identify issues at hand, and adjust your marketing strategies and product offerings in response to changing demand. – Greg Carney, Freedom United Social
6. Technical issues
A sudden drop in traffic could be a technical issue, such as a broken link or broken plugin, as updates need to be made. Regularly running full diagnostics and checking for updates can help prevent problems before they occur. It’s important to have a reliable partner with a managed website maintenance routine to ensure your website is in a healthy state. Please do not forget. – Michelle Abdow, Market Mentors, LLC
7. Less traffic to specific pages
In Google Analytics,[獲得]>[概要]You’ll see all your traffic under There you will find categories such as organic search, direct, referral, display, paid search, social and other. You can drill down into each channel to see why there were drops. You can detail specific websites, pages, campaigns, etc. to determine what has changed and why. – Peter Boyd, PaperStreet Web Design
8. CHANGES TO PRODUCTS OR OFFERINGS
A drop in site traffic should be addressed immediately and is usually the result of changes in products, offerings, or online algorithms. So, evaluate any changes that may have impacted your site traffic and make any necessary changes to get your site traffic up to baseline levels. – Jessica Hawthorne-Castro, Hawthorne LLC
9. Policy Violations on Paid Advertising Platforms
Analyze your Google Analytics and Search Console data to identify the sources of traffic that show a sharp drop. If the source is a paid channel, your account may have been suspended for policy violations or an expired credit card. Organic traffic can decline due to Google algorithm updates, link or ranking loss, and search engine penalties. —Dejan Popovic, PopArt Studio
10. New digital initiatives
A sudden Google update often causes a sudden drop in site traffic. Reconcile your traffic dips with the latest information published by Google in Google Analytics. Or your traffic may change in line with new digital initiatives, such as launches on Amazon. If your Amazon sales are up even though your site’s traffic is down, it’s possible that your traffic has shifted to another platform. – Bernard May, National Positions
11. Multiple reasons that analysis may reveal
It is impossible to give one reason. Your site may not rank on Google due to increased competition, outdated design, lack of external links, algorithm updates, etc. Site traffic can sometimes seem unpredictable, but evaluating analytics on site data can yield valuable information. After all, you can’t find a solution to a problem without finding out what caused it. – Dmitry Kustov, Regular Expression SEO
12. Causes other than algorithm update
Algorithm updates are often the cause of a sudden drop in website traffic, but penalties from search engines, loss of keyword rankings, and redirects can also lead to a drop in traffic. You can verify this in Google Search Console and take the necessary steps to fix these issues and get your organic traffic rankings back. – Elyse Flynn Meyer, Prism Global Marketing Solutions
