Traffic falling
-
Over the last couple of weeks the organic traffic on our site has fallen pretty significantly. With the latest update from SEOmoz it went down 25% this week. I know this can happen from time to time, but we have been pretty stable with our traffic for the last year or so for this particular site. We haven't spent a ton of time on it in the last month so the lack of fresh content could be a factor. I can't think of any reason we would be getting penalized. Is there even a way to tell if we are penalized?
-
First of all you want to check your Google Analytics account directly. The SEOmoz PRO platform only tracks organic (non-paid) traffic, and you also want to make sure your PRO campaign is attached to the right profile.
You can double check your rankings for your top referring keywords (from Google Analytics). Make sure they haven't fallen. If they haven't, then it's unlikely Google is penalizing you for anything.
Sometimes it's a matter of seasonal traffic fluctuations. This especially happens around the holidays. You can check Google Insights to see if your major keywords are seasonal.
Also check your PRO campaign for any increase in errors, to make sure all your content can be indexed properly.
Finally, sometimes your rankings, and your traffic, actually do drop. Freshen up your content, build good links and you should be on the road to recovery.
-
I have noticed that paid traffic from bing and yahoo will be counted as non paid traffic.
-
What information is taken into account for the SEOmoz organic traffic stat. Does this take into account everything that is not paid? Does SEOmoz offer me a way to track where each of those clicks came from? Is is possible that paid traffic is getting mixed in?
-
Our rankings have stayed pretty much the same. There has been some change here and there, but just the normal small fluctuations. We turned off some adwords campaigns, but this is from the organic traffic stat SEOmoz provides. I have had a suspicion this stat is pulling some adwords clicks for a while now. Is there something I have to set up to keep that data out?
-
How have your rankings been? Have they been falling. The lack of fresh content might be making your rankings go down thus your traffic.
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
-
We recently updated a large guide that takes the place of the original. The original has some nice organic traffic to it and I don't want to risk losing it. Should I 301 redirect to the new version, or update all the info directly on the original page?
We don't have a lot of content that garners much non-branded organic, so this is something I don't want to risk losing. We do not have a whole lot of external links into the page either.
On-Page Optimization | | AFP_Digital1 -
Help recover lost traffic (70%) from robots.txt error.
Our site is a company information site with 15 million indexed pages (mostly company profiles). Recently we had an issue with a server that we replaced, and in the processes mistakenly copied the robots.txt block from the staging server to a live server. By the time we realized the error, we lost 2/3 of our indexed pages and a comparable amount of traffic. Apparently this error took place on 4/7/19, and was corrected two weeks later. We have submitted new sitemaps to Google and asked them to validate the fix approximately a week ago. Given the close to 10 million pages that need to be validated, so far we have not seen any meaningful change. Will we ever get this traffic back? How long will it take? Any assistance will be greatly appreciated. On another note, these indexed pages were never migrated to SSL for fear of losing traffic. If we have already lost the traffic and/or if it is going to take a long time to recover, should we migrate these pages to SSL? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | akin671 -
How to handle outdated, unoptimized blog posts receiving little or zero traffic?
I'm doing some overdue spring cleaning on our WP blog. Some big visual updates are in the works, but currently I'm working on pruning and updating some poopy and outdated content. Many of the older posts weren't written with SEO in mind and were posted to the blog merely as an extension of our monthly enewsletter. Here's an example: http://pq.systems/2FkQyVG This post needs a lot of work to meet our new standards. The content is thin, readability is weak, kw targetting is non-existant, the visuals suck, zero links, and the charting software mentioned has since been replaced with another solution that we are currently promoting. There are quite a few other posts with similar issues... Any thoughts on the best way to handle these posts? From poking around similar Q&A threads, it seems my options are: Create new updated post, remove old post, 301 redirect from old to new Create new updated post, add blurb & link pointing to new post at the top of old post Edit/update old post, add "This post was updated....etc" blurb to top of old post Any other options or opinions on which solution I should go with would be much appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | SamKlep0 -
Does Google's algo look at all traffic mediums with regs to onpage metrics or only organic traffic metrics?
Hi folks, This is something I've pondered for a while. I've ask a couple of Googlers but no reponse yet and I don't I'll get one! In your opinion, do you think Google looks at on page metrics like bounce rate for example from all traffic mediums (organic, paid, email, social referral etc etc) or they only look at on page metrics from organic traffic? I'm not talking about direct correlations from other mediums. I'm only talking about when a user lands on a website, do the actions they take matter with regards to Google's search algo no matter of the referring medium, or do Google only look at onpage metrics on visits which came to the site via organic search as a medium. Option 1 As a very simplified example: Google gives extra weight in the SERPs to website A which has an average bounce rate of 30% from all mediums compared to website B which has a bounce rate of 50% from all mediums. Option 2 Google gives extra weight in the SERPs to website A which has an average bounce rate of 30% from organic traffic only compared to website B which has a bounce rate of 50% from organic traffic only. I'm not sure if anyone outside Google has the answer/proof of this but was keen to get other people's thoughts. If you think the also uses one or the other, can you give an insights/proof of one or the other? For me it would make sense for them only to use onpage metrics from sessions which came from organic seach traffic, but who knows! Merci buckets, Gill.
On-Page Optimization | | Cannetastic0 -
How can I drive organic traffic to a specific landing page?
HI, I have a site which is attracting traffic for my target keywords but to the wrong pages. I usually create a series of articles on the topic (10-15) an start getting organic traffic, but I have not been able to drive the traffic to the main page for that topic. How can I get the main page rank over sub pages? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | Rajaindiain0 -
Best way to move traffic/juice from one page to another?
I’ve got some pages that provide information on some companies in my website topic space, and also corresponding pages that allow users to rate and review those companies. So, for example: Company A information Company A reviews Company B information Company B reviews Google searches for “Company A” or “Company B” generally result in my information page ranking #2 behind the actual company’s website, and the reviews page ranking #3. (Probably not good to have two pages ranking for the same keyword in positions 2 and 3). The information pages do very well in Adsense while the review pages do not. The review pages have always had comments open for reviews, and I’ve just recently opened the information pages to comments. This has resulted in less of a need for the reviews pages as the comments on the Information pages are now serving the same purpose. I can even add a star rating to the information pages if I want so the review pages are completely unnecessary. So, I’d rather strengthen my information pages 1) to more solidify their rankings, and 2) get more visitors there than the review pages as they convert way better in Adsense. Question is, what is the best way to proceed? Option 1: remove internal linking to the review pages (I have sidebar links too), so less link juice just naturally goes to the review pages. On the review pages, direct people to click the link to the information page to go there instead. Eventually, the review pages will fall off the front page of the SERPs and people will just go to my #2 ranked company information page instead (and maybe #1 if I’m lucky, but doubt I’ll get ahead of the brand). Option 2: 301 Redirect the review pages to the information pages. Functionally, this would work well for me, but I fear that Google may not like it for some reason. My information pages are ranked so well that I do not want to risk them dropping. Are these fears unfounded? Is either of these two options better than the other, or does anyone have a better idea? Whatever I do, I don’t want those company information pages dropping from their #2 positions.
On-Page Optimization | | bizzer0 -
Should old pages that have being 301 redirected but have no/mimimal traffic be deleted?
In other words, I have pages from years ago that are redirected but how can I tell if traffic still flows through them? And if there is no or minimal traffic should the 301 be deleted? Linck
On-Page Optimization | | LinckB0 -
Authorship and 50% Drop in Search Traffic
Hi. I had some problems with my content being copied by other sites, and was suggested to claim my pages. Immediately after Google started listing the posts with my photo next to them my traffic picked up slightly but since, over the past few weeks, it has dropped by about 50%! It seems that the average position has declined (as has the CTR) At the same time as claiming authorship I added the post date to my articles which I have now removed. Does anyone have any ideas for me? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | ben10000