Organic Traffic: Hockey-stick growth followed by slow rampdown of death!
-
My site, Site Builder Report, was started last year.
Months 1 - 6 saw modest organic traffic growth.
Months 6 - 9 saw explosive organic traffic growth.
Months 9 - 12 have seen a steady decrease in organic traffic.(I've attached a graph for visualizing this)
The site has not changed much over this time. In fact, in the last 3 months, I've done two things to try to get organic traffic trending upwards again:
- Increased the amount of long-form articles on the site (from 1 new article every 3 weeks to 1 new article every week)
- Fixed approxately 150 five hunded (500) errors in Google Webmaster Tools three weeks ago (converted them to 404s)
Neither fix has really been able to change the trend (although perhaps it's too early to tell with the fixing of errors).
Does this downtrend warrant concern? It's having significant business effects- would hiring an SEO consultant be the next step for reversing this trend? Any thoughts?
-
... killing me Steven ; )
It is really tough to say; however, I typed "website builder reviews" into Google Trends and it looks like there was a drop in searches for that terminology in March, which would correspond to what I am seeing on your graph.
Mike
-
I thought your graph displayed traffic and not rankings, how are you SERPs did they drop? Or are you still ranking in the same position for your keywords?
Because if the rankings are the same, it could be (I know generally this gets sorted out within first few months) but could be the issue of google still trying to figure out where to rank you: http://www.linkbuildr.com/reasons-why-new-pages-rank-well-then-drop/
-
Hi Vladim! I'm not sure I know what you mean- I attached a graph that might help visualize how the rankings have changed over time
-
Thanks Mike, sorry the post may be a bit unclear. I meant "Hockey Stick" as a metaphor.
The website actually targets keywords such as "website builders", "website builder reviews"
-
Hi Steven,
How are your rankings have they changed?
-
Hi Steven,
My guess would be you are seeing the downtrend, because of the season.
Here is the data I pulled from Google Trends for "hockey stick" - as you can see, the peaks tend to be in December and January for the year.
My guess things will be slow until next year when the season picks back up.
Hope this helps.
Mike
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
75% Overnight Drop in Organic Search Traffic
On April 10th my organic search clicks dropped 75% overnight. I have never seen anything like it. What Google algorithm change could have caused this? I have no manual actions and my indexed page count is about the same. I have noticed that several queries that I was number one for including my brand have dropped by anywhere from two to ten spots. The brand dropping out of the first spot is what really gets me. There is nothing similar to it at all. My speed score is moderate, so I don't think that is it. My site was down most of the day on the 9th or 10th, but that has never caused a drop in search clicks and the next day they were about the same. I noticed that the CDC now occupies the number one spot for my brand. Even though the exact brand name is nowhere in the text of the CDC page. I think this might be due to Google trying to help official health organizations do better due to COVID19, but the queries I have dropped on have nothing to do with Coronavirus. Also, none of my other sites have seen this type of problem. Only the health site seems affected. I recently did a press release campaign and my link counts are up, so I don't that is it either. The brand page is https://stdcarriers.com and an example of an effected query is Celebrities with STDs.
Algorithm Updates | | STDCarriers0 -
WT.Srch - parameter recorded as organic traffic?
Hi I have a lot of revenue for yesterdays organic traffic attributed to ?WT.srch=1&WT.mc_id=slGO&kw=8695 When looking in Google at what this means I have found this: To ensure you can accurately differentiate traffic from paid placements from organic traffic, use the WT.srch=1 parameter in the URL from the referring search engine for all paid searches. This parameter always has a value of 1. Organic searches do not include this parameter in the URL. Note that Search Engine Campaign results are displayed in the Marketing > Search Engine >section of the Webtrends Analytics 9 Complete template, not in the Campaigns section. We no longer use webtrends, what I need to know is, did this traffic/revenue come from organic or paid?
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Anyone else notice a traffic drop around June 28th 2016?
Hey guys, i know there is a lot of chatter about a potential google update on / around June 28th... well, one of the sites I manage was hit pretty bad. I have attached an image showing what our ranking looked like before and after the unconfirmed update. As you will see, we plummeted that day and have not yet recovered. Has anyone else experienced drops? I'm trying to identify potential causes. I've started an SEO audit and so far I have identified 1 big fish and a few niggly bits. Big Fish: non-www version of site had redirect rule overwritten by CloudFlare page rules and is using a 302 redirect instead of a 301. Now could this be the cause? Niggly bits: technical SEO issues and optimisations like having unique meta titles etc. If you have noticed drops or think you can shed some light on my situation that will help me then I would love to hear from you 🙂 Thanks upload.png upload.png
Algorithm Updates | | OptiBacUK0 -
Sudden Drop in Organic Traffic through Image Search
We've have been facing a strange issue with our Organic Image Search Traffic since July month, 10th July 2016 to be precise. There is a significant decline in our Organic Image Search Traffic that we can see in our Google Search Console Account, We have noticed a sudden drop (Almost 80%-90%) in our daily clicks through image search in Google Search Console, Does anyone here have any idea why this has happened suddenly though everything is same as it was before and we haven't done any changes in image names and images path. IWPbQ
Algorithm Updates | | tigersohelll0 -
Traffic drop only affecting google country domains
Hello, I have noticed that our our traffic is down by 15% (last 30 days to the 30 days before it) and I dug deeper to figure out whats going on and I am not sure I understand what is happening. Traffic from google country domains( for example google.com.sa) dropped by 90% on the 18th of September, same applies to other country specific domains. Now my other stats (visits organic keywords, search queries in WMT) seem to be normal and have seem some decrease (~5%) but nothing as drastic as the traffic drop from the google country domains. Is this an https thing that is masking the source of the traffic that came into effect on that date? Is the traffic that is now missing from google country domains being reported from other sources? Can anyone shed some light on what is going on? qk0CS7X
Algorithm Updates | | omarfk0 -
Impressions & Traffic WAY Down. Where to start?
Beginning around November 1st, I began to notice a continual, gradual drop in impressions and traffic. During the holiday season we typically see a decline in business so I initially passed it off as that, but there has been no rebound and I'm really confused on where to begin looking to figure this out. Daily impressions have now dropped from 20,000 all the way down to 5,000 and it has taken a major toll on the business (see attachment for graph of this). Some Background Information: My Site has been very static for the past 8 month's (since April '12). Admittedly Overly static with very little other than a blog post here and there added. However, during these 8 month's traffic jumped 30% so we were riding that wave and feeling confident that our past efforts built a great foundation. I'm not aware of anything even remotely black hat that has ever been done. Everything is very much on the up and up and done with the user in mind. I'm unable to track anything to a Panda update due to the consistent, gradual nature of the decline. However, with some important search queries completely falling off the map, it feels to me like we are being penalized or affected by a permanent algo change. In GWMT that are a variety of important search queries that show a change of -100%. These terms do show an average position, but when I manually search for them they are no where to be found in Google search results. This is very strange to me. It feels like we've been blacklisted for some of our more important keywords. We had a major site relaunch on January 20th (a week ago). However the downward trend was in place well before this. The site is www.mycreativeshop.com To sum it up, I'm extremely confused and very concerned with what this drop is doing to the company. I've never been in this position as we've worked very hard to lay a solid foundation and have always seen a continual, positive traffic increase. It then seemed to just start turning downward one day and won't stop. If anybody has some suggestions of how to try to get to the bottom of this and learn what is really taking place it would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, -J Wdab7Sk
Algorithm Updates | | cre80 -
Decline in traffic but no change in rankings
I'm comparing our best search traffic month in 2011 (March) with our current traffic (April)and have seen significant declines in traffic, despite no change in our rankings or even improved rankings for the same terms. Trying to sort out an explanation. We have been a white-hat SEO site since our inception over 10 years ago. Our SEO consultant doesn't think we've been affected by any algo changes, at least not to any significant degree. My only explanation for this possibly anomaly is: decrease in the use of the KW terms in search over time (how to determine?) generalized increase in PPC instead of organic search driving traffic possibility that Adv Web Rankings is no longer accurately collecting SERP rankings Does anyone have any other thoughts or considerations that might explain the decline in traffic, despite maintenance or improvement in rankings? Thanks.
Algorithm Updates | | ahw0 -
Decrease in Organic Traffic Due to Google Places
Hello there, we are national junk removal company and have franchises in most major cities in the US. We wanted to check to see if anyone else has seen a drop in organic traffic with the changes that Google has done with the amalgamation of Google Places with the organic rankings. All our places pages are ranking quite well and we are ranking higher organically but it appears that people go to the Google Places page and then either leaving or picking up the phone and calling our 1800 number to book a job instead of going to our website to make the booking. The interesting thing is that although Google started these changes back in October 2010 we have seen the drop in organic traffic mostly starting in April, even though we have seen a steady increase in organic ranking across the board. Has any other franchise based company seen this happen as well? Your feedback is greatly appreciated!
Algorithm Updates | | imspecialistgotjunk0