Possible penalty question - need expert help
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hallo everyone,
I am posting this question to the MOZ community, because I could not find any useful information or proper advice so far, even after consulting a few local SEO experts.
I noticed from the end of september a steady and consistent decrease in visits (please see attached pdf) for my website https://bastabollette.it
I lost so far almost 40%.
Please consider that I have not changed my habits in blog posting lately, both in quantity and quality. I have not made any subtantial change on the website lately.
I did a general audit of the site asking to an expert but apart from some generic suggestions (like: "work on increasing PR, add more quality backliks, use more no-follow links, fix broken links" - things I am currently going to fix anyway) I don't really understand the reason of the drop.
Please also note the strange drop of 11/22/15 (see search console screenshot).
Can you please help me?
thank you.
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Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium. Select Bing/Organic
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Thank you Marie for your honest and complete answer.
One question: how can I check bing traffic in google analytics? I looked for it on google but (how funny) could not find the answer.
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It's not uncommon to see weird blips like that in Google Search Analytics. I wouldn't get too worried about that unless the rankings stayed down and were legitimately down.
Do you see any manual action in Google Search Console --> Search Traffic --> Manual Actions? If not, then it's not a penalty.
This sounds like a question that would need quite a bit of investigation to answer, but here is where I would start:
In Google Analytics - Audience - Acquisition - All traffic and then click on Google/Organic as well as the other options. Is the drop across the board? Or just in Google traffic? If it's Google traffic only and other sources like bing traffic or direct visits are stable, then I'd be worried that you're being considered low quality by an algorithm change in Google. It could be Panda or the Quality (Phantom) update, but it would be hard to say without digging in deeply.
If the changes are across the board, then I'd be looking at things like a seasonal change. (It's not uncommon for sites to see a gradual decline going into the winter.) Or, perhaps a site issue such as a technical problem or a hosting problem or malware, etc.
It could also be that a competitor is outranking you. A drop from #1-#2 on some keywords can have a drastic effect.
From what you've written, it seems like a penalty is unlikely. But, unfortunately I don't have the answer for you.
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