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It might be one of the worst nightmares of every e-commerce owner: a huge drop in website traffic. One day it is all great, and the next – boom, all gone. And the worst part of all: if someone asked you why it happened, you wouldn’t know.
Rest assured because there are some easy yet powerful steps you can take to find out why this horrible and scary situation happened. Solving this issue may take up some of your time, but one thing’s for sure: it is possible, and you can do it. So, if you are ready to find out what you should do when your website traffic drops, keep on reading…
1.Think About Recent Changes to Your Website
Did you make any big changes to your website lately? If you have, chances are that the root of your problem lies somewhere in those changes. It could be something like a new website design that affects loading times, something which search engines don’t like very much. Moreover, you can use Google Search Console’s function called “Crawl Errors” to see if there have been any differences since you renovated. Check your SERPs (search engine results pages) and start monitoring them, as well.
2. Check on SEO Technical Elemants
You can start with this easy step that involves using tools that are free and available online to check if there are any technical problems with your website.These sites are a great starting point– Google Analytics, Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test, Google Webmaster Tools, Moz, Alexa… You may find that there is more than one thing wrong with your site, but fear not.
It is important to act ASAP,so start solving the “easier” stuff first ( things such as some 404 errors showing up, long page load times, or on-page SEO elements that are missing or incorrect), and then move on to the more complicated ones – user experience, heat-mapping, performance optimization and alike. Once you’ve fixed all of the possible tech issues, it’s time to move on to the next steps…
3. Check Up On Your Competition
We know you won’t like hearing this, but your sudden traffic drop could also be the result of one of your competitors getting ahead of you. Check to see if maybe you have been outranked by any of them and if you have, you may have been outranked by one of them.
If you figure out that this is the issue, this can mean that the hardest part will be getting it back. Get ready – it might be a bumpy ride, but we’re sure you can do it. You can also use a great little tool called Rank Tracker and its SERP History feature – this will allow you to track the dynamics, as well as your competition’s positions in the search engines.
4. Perform Keyword Research
Keywords and their relevance could be a serious problem that is messing up your website traffic, even more so if you are mainly focused on your organic traffic. Since you are focusing on the visitors coming from different search engines (but most importantly, Google), you need to check the ranking of your keywords. Google’s Keyword Planner tool is a free tool which can help to figure out whether you’ve been using the wrong words and how to get back on the right side of search engines.
5. Did Google’s Algorithm Change?
The source of your issue might also be something that was completely out of your control, such as a change in Google’s algorithm. Google’s team is constantly working on ways to improve the overall quality of search results. They might have penalised some of your content that they consider low-quality or unnatural links. Check search engine news to find out if you’ve missed out on an important update that may have resulted in this traffic drop. It may also be the time to improve the quality of your content and to think about hiring a professional writing service to help you get back on track.
The Final Word
If you’ve become a victim of a huge and sudden traffic drop on your website, we know the feelings of frustration you are going through.But it isn’t all doom and gloom, it is a time to start figuring out what you did wrong and make sure it gets taken care of.
Your problem could be an easy fix, so don’t fall into despair. If you follow our steps, you are well on the way to figuring out what it was, and you’ll know what needs to be done. It might take some time to put things back in order, but once you do it, you’ll see your traffic coming back to its normal volume. So, get ready for some hard work, and be prepared to potentially ask for professional help, by doing these tips you’ll see that everything will be back to where it’s supposed to be in no time!
