Help! Need to Get Traffic Back Up in Saturated Market
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I was looking in one of my client's Google Analytics profiles, and noticed that they had two major drops in traffic before we started working with them—and they've never really recovered. The first, and most significant drop was around January 2015. And then the again, but not as drastic of a drop, was around September 2015. They are a heating and cooling company, but they are located out west so this shouldn't be a seasonality thing.
Here is a link to what the BIG drop is traffic looks like in January 2015: http://imgur.com/a/Y1s8U
To get a clearer picture, here are the numbers for the overall website traffic:
September 1, 2015 - September 30, 2015: 30,923 sessions
September 1, 2015 - September 30, 2016: 13,768 sessionsYear over year traffic to the website dropped by 55%.
Here is a link to what year over year looks like in Google Analytics: http://imgur.com/a/TPdJQ
Like I said, we weren't working with them at the time so I don't know specifics about what might have caused this, but their numbers have never even come close to reaching what they used to be prior to the noticeable drop after September 2015.
Does anyone have any insights into why this might be? Was there an algorithm change back then that could still be impacting them? Any ideas how to get them back to where they once were?
Any input is greatly appreciated! Thanks.
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Hey there, I have to be honest that from the screenshots you posted this looks fairly normal to me? I mean, it may be helpful to see the full traffic so we can see what's happening, but it seems that they had a big spike and then it dropped back down, and has been building after that with more spikes and then returning to a normal growth curve.
What am I missing?
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Thank you, Zack! I will definitely check out these resources.
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Since you've already checked for seasonality, here are a couple other places I'd recommend checking:
- Google Trends: Have other similar businesses out there seen a similar decrease as well?
- Google Algorithm Change History: Did anything happen around the dates mentioned that could have impacted site rankings?
Best,
Zack
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