Rankings going up, traffic decreasing

[Lilala_Kids]

Hi there,

I have been burned 3 times with shonky/bad SEO experts so was nervous about paying another company, so I am trying to learn SEO myself. My rankings are going up, but my traffic is at an all time low. This doesn't really make sense to me. Can anyone help me?

Thanks, Astrid

[Lilala_Kids]

thank you for your insight. A whole lot I need to work on here.

[Lilala_Kids]

Thanks for your help.

[Lilala_Kids]

Thanks Logan. I will try these.

[Highland]

Depends on what rankings you're going up for. Have you done a keyword analysis on the keywords you're ranking better for? Ranking well for the term "blue kangaroo widgets" might sound awesome... until you realize nobody searches that term.

You might want to spend a little money on Adwords and play around with keywords to see what brings in actual traffic. More importantly, Google has been showing more ads above organic, so even if you rank #1, you might be #4 in the actual list behind ads. While the Keyword Estimator is good, real data is better. Moz also has the Keyword Difficulty Tool which can help you find keywords that are actually worth ranking for.

Lastly, are you tracking conversions? You need to be. Figure out what that incoming traffic is doing. Even if you bring them to your site, are they doing what you want them to?

[ClaytonJ]

Logan

I agree with Logan - Go through Webmaster Tools page by page and see if you can identify some traffic trends.  It should not take too long. Click all four clicks, impressions, CTR and position. See what is happening on each page, then you can narrow it down by search term.

On WMT's I would also do a custom comparison for 90 days, ie 45 days each (compare).  Or from when you noticed the trend - comparing with when you were ranking lower - only hiccup is only goes back 90 days.

Also I suggest Semrush you get a free use for one hit - i would pop your URL into Semrush and see what the graph for organic keywords looks like.

It is a bit of a puzzle but start with some basics and see how you go. Hope that assists.

[LoganRay]

Hi Astrid,

First things first, it's important to remember that the keywords you track are not the only keywords driving traffic to your site. It's entirely possible that people were finding your site by way of a keyword(s) that has actually dropped in rank that you're not monitoring.

A good way to gain some insight into what's bringing traffic to your site is through Google Search Console. Go to Search Traffic > Search Analytics. From there you can see things like position, CTR, impressions, and clicks based on queries. There are a number of ways you can slice data up here to give you some really good insights.

You can also take a look in Google Analytics at your landing page report for organic traffic and compare dates to see if there is any major differences in entry points to your site. This is a good way to determine topics people were searching to find your site. For example, if they enter from organic search on /blue-widgets they were probably searching for something related to that.