Organic Traffic Decrease WOW and YOY sitewide
-
My site is experiencing a decrease in organic traffic WOW for the last two weeks and for the first time all year is showing a decrease compared to last year's traffic for the same weeks. At first I thought this was a seasonal pattern due to spring break (we are mostly b to b), but the dip has sustained for another week. The only changes made during this time period were a few on-page updates and some title tag updates to a specific group of pages. However, the decrease is sitewide including branded clicks and impressions. I haven't noticed any changes in rankings. Impressions and clicks are down per Search Console, but CTR and Avg Rank haven't changed. Is it possible that we've been penalized or hit by an algo shift? What's the best way to know for sure?
-
It might be that your updated title tag language is decreasing clicks through to your site - so you're still ranking the same, but not as many people are clicking. Since you're wanting to target a more qualified audience, this dip in traffic might not be a bad thing if you're seeing a higher conversion rate or more qualified leads. If you're running AdWords, it might be worth testing both versions of the language from your title tags in ads to see if that is impacting your click-through rate.
-
I checked traffic trends in Adwords and Google Trends, and there was some decrease around spring break, but it wasn't sustained and we didn't see a similar dip last year. Traffic is starting to come back, but still trailing last month significantly. We did add some language to our title tags that targets more of a niche/qualified audience on some of our pages. I haven't seen a decline in rankings or avg rank in GWT, but now I'm wondering if this is somehow related. Anyone have this type of experience before?
-
Hi cckapow!
Any update on this? Did you ever get to checking the AdWords traffic, as Robert suggested?
-
Based solely on how you have written this, it is hard to believe it is algo change or any type of penalty. If you are ranking in the same places and CTR is same, it would seem that overall traffic for those terms is down. I realize it is not yet a month but have you checked the terms in Adwords to see if traffic is off this month?
Best,
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
-
Organic search traffic has dropped by 35% since 18 September, we don't know why.
Organic traffic to our website has dropped 35% since 18 September 2017 to date. From 1 January to 18 September 2017 organic traffic was up by just under 1% over all (Google up by 1.32%). Paid search traffic over the same time has remained steady. There is nothing we can think of that we've done that has caused the drop. We had an issue with Google page speed test failing when running a test but we resolved this issue on 20 November and in that time we've seen an even greater drop (44% in the last week). The drop is seen across the 3 main search engines, not just Google, which points toward something we've done, but as mentioned, we can't think of any significant change we made in September that would have such negative effects. There is little difference across devices. Is anyone aware of a significant event in September in the search engine world that may have influenced our organic traffic? Any help gratefully received.
Technical SEO | | imaterus0 -
Specifying Your Organization's Logo Schema Required If Corporate Contacts Schema is in Place?
Does anyone know if specifying the organization's logo schema is required if corporate contacts schema is in place? I have the corporate contact schema in place on my site but not the second one. The site is http://www.cobaltrecruitment.com/ Thanks,
Technical SEO | | the-gate-films0 -
Take a good amount of existing landing pages offline because of low traffic, cannibalism and thin content
Hello Guys, I decided to take of about 20% of my existing landing pages offline (of about 50 from 250, which were launched of about 8 months ago). Reasons are: These pages sent no organic traffic at all in this 8 months Often really similiar landing pages exist (just minor keyword targeting difference and I would call it "thin" content) Moreover I had some Panda Issues in Oct, basically I ranked with multiple landing pages for the same keyword in the top ten and in Oct many of these pages dropped out of the top 50.. I also realized that for some keywords the landing page dropped out of the top 50, another landing page climbed from 50 to top 10 in the same week, next week the new landing page dropped to 30, next week out of 50 and the old landing pages comming back to top 20 - but not to top ten...This all happened in October..Did anyone observe such things as well? That are the reasons why I came to the conclustion to take these pages offline and integrating some of the good content on the other similiar pages to target broader with one page instead of two. And I hope to benefit from this with my left landing pages. I hope all agree? Now to the real question: Should I redirect all pages I take offline? Basically they send no traffic at all and non of them should have external links so I will not give away any link juice. Or should I just remove the URL's in the google webmaster tools and take them then offline? Like I said the sites are basically dead and personally I see no reason for these 50 redirects. Cheers, Heiko
Technical SEO | | _Heiko_0 -
Good organic ranking/Poor local ranking
Hi, I am a local retailer with a physical store in a major US City. My website is very well ranked on major keywords related to my business from an organic result perspective (between 1st and 3rd spot). However, in terms of local results (google place), my website isn't even ranked (except for one specific long tail keyword). Anybody know why? Thank you so much for your help. This is driving me crazy:-)
Technical SEO | | larose370 -
35% Drop In Traffic Since March 23 2012
Hi, I am aware ofth e penguin and panda updates and have been monitoring my traffic for the last few months. I did notice that for some reason, from about 22nd / 23rd March we had a drop in traffic by about 50%, it stabilised in a few days but since then from april to present has been hovering around 35% drop in traffic. what perplexes me is hat I also monitored our rankings and that was fine, pretty much the same, yet traffic is down. I have noticed our longer tail keywords have lost traffic by as much as 60-900% I would really appreciate some input, do you think this could be down to panda pulling pages out. how can i find track pages indexesd for my site over time to see if this is where he problem is. I havea lso noticed that in webamster tools, a domain preferance is not set, it is set to default "do not set a preferred domain", would this not cause a dup content issue, what should it be set to, post panda? Any help would be greatly appreciated as this is really hurting our business. thanks you in advance
Technical SEO | | LiquidTech0 -
Good organic rankings but no shopping rankings
My site www.hair1direct.co.uk comes up well in the organic rankings but when I select shopping in Google it does appear. Why would this be? Thanks James
Technical SEO | | avecsys0 -
Traffic has dropped from my site.
Hello, I never had amazing traffic, but during the last week my site seems to have almost dropped of search engines. Nothing drastic has changed during this time that I can see would have caused this. The site is http://www.comparebestodds.com Does any one have any ideas that can help? Thanks
Technical SEO | | jwdesign0 -
How to achieve product extensions in organic serps
I have noticed some interesting changes in how google are returning searches for specific branded products. In this case 'tom ford glasses' position 12 result has three product extensions (see image) This is similar to the product extensions which occasionally occur on adwords. Have you seen this happen and if so any ideas how it all works? TR3nz
Technical SEO | | seanmccauley0