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We spent the last 12 months targeting a particular search term (mortgage broker) and have been ranking well for it consistently for about 6 months now. We have decided to change the target search term to something else (insurance broker) but noticed that our traffic has started to decline since we started doing this. We are still ranking well for the initial search term, and our ranking is slowly improving for the new targeted search term in SERPs but traffic is down about 60% from January. Is it normal/expected for this to happen?

Our company is a full service law firm with a main website and 6 microsites relevant to each practise area. Over the last 2 years, we have had significant traffic growth and ranked well in SERP, conversions were good and everything was tracking along nicely. Come January 2019, the traffic on 2 of our microsites have dropped by 20% and is not recovering. We have done a site audit and there are no issues with the website, we are still ranking #1 in SERP for our targeted search terms but the traffic just isn't there. Has anyone else with legal websites had this issue or can provide insight into the drop in traffic? It just doesn't make sense why all of a sudden the traffic isn't there anymore. Any advice on what other actions we can take to try and find the issue would be appreciated.