Traffic drop analysis. Hey, Google, what’s the heck?
Publishers and webmasters have troubles if some traffic drops happen. Especially if you try to earn some money and get your traffic higher, you may have serious issues when Google shows you some sudden surprises. No one alarms when traffic decreases and falls down. If there is an unexpected traffic drop, you may use free tools by Google. This is how you effectively diagnose what’s happening.
Vimmy is going to tell you some brilliant information about this issue. And this is a way to learn the most common causes for traffic dips. So you will be able to fix or cope with them. Here is a guid about the most common causes of traffic drops and its diagnostics, some tips about traffic statistics and other traffic sources to check. Here we go!
The most important thing about traffic drop is analyzing and checking all the sources of traffic to find out where the problem is. You are to figure out where you’re losing your traffic. So first, here are the main sources of it, the most valuable – just five basic types.
01
Five basic types
- Direct - visitors who came directly typing the URL into their browser’s search bar or by clicking on a saved URL bookmark.
- Organic - users who came after searching (Google, etc).
- Paid - visitors who came via paid advertisements (any banner ads, Google Ads).
- Referral - traffic from any links to your website.
- Social – guests who arrive via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
Here are all the sources where publishers and bloggers gain all the traffic. Check them and get to the place of failures. Now here is a list of the most common causes of Google Search impressions, clicks and position drops. This is what you use after you searched and found the traffic drop point.
02
Your website definition does not correspond to the URL of your website
The most common cause of “missing” search traffic is a mix-up of HTTP and HTTPS. it is not a case of traffic drop but it is a technical case.
03
Your site still hasn’t been crawled by Google
You updated something or may be released and published your page, but Google hasn’t indexed it. This does not happen at once, though many users suppose that Google works immediately.
Unfortunately this issue can take a week or more. And you have to stay calm, drink tea and wait till it is completed.
04
Your site has gone missing
Your page may be removed or harmed, and this problem usually happens because of some manual action. Go, test and verify that your website is still searchable on any search engine.
There are some clear instructions to solve the problem, or maybe you have to put the request for your blog or page to reappear in search.
05
Your website was recently relocated
Changing the domain name or existing pages on the same site to new URLs may be a cause of some traffic issues. And a switch from HTTP to HTTPS is a trouble making thing too.
You can manage this if you go to your Index Coverage report and check it. Your index must be covered. Check the chart for any changes in the indexed pages. Display indexing errors, warnings and find out all the spikes that match your indexing drops and investigate this issue further.
The next part of diagnosing all the traffic drops is to check the statistics of all your traffic. Search it and look through it.
This is a checklist on how to find out numbers for your site have changed.
- Go to your site’s Performance report
- Look at the impressions, CTR, position data
- Find a decrease in a particular category by looking it all by query and country
- Check your page’s Mobile Usability report, find out it your traffic coming from mobile devices has been decreased too
- If there are some particular countries with lowering traffic, it may be cause you set your site targeting incorrectly by some accident
- The URL Inspection tool is a thing to see if your traffic decreased around any specific page
06
Dropping CTR and impressions
- Check your page’s compatibility with mobile devices. Run the Mobile-Friendly test or go to the Mobile Usability report.
- Сompare your mobile and desktop impressions separately and complete a report. Analyze desktop vs. mobile impressions.
- Check your webpage index, if it is okay or not.
- Check if someone outperforms you, go to Google and just google - an incognito search for those queries is necessary. If anyone is ranking higher than you, here’s the thing.
- Check the correct audience and language, sometimes target errors occur, and the ad aiming may be wrong.
- If your page is not canonical, it does not appear in Google search results. Only pages which are supposed to be canonical are included into search results. You can use the URL inspection tool and monitor your pages.
- Copied content is a huge disaster. Some people steal big pieces of someone’s unic texts and materials to improve their webpages. So some real portions of websites come to somewhere else in order to attract visitors. But there is a tip you can use. Put a bogus takedown request, so if someone took your posts, you can try and punish them.
A tiny list of tips helping you to improve your CTR and impressions. If there is a significial drop, you may use the hints Vimmy gives you.
07
Conclusions
Your organic traffic may be decreased because of various reasons. It drops, but do not panic if you notice that it declines or dips. Check if your page has filters or penalizations. If not, it is just a perfectly normal ongoing SERP fluctuation. It happens and you need to monitor all the stats, changes and traffic drops.
And if you use Vimmy, go to your account and check your statistics too. This is how you may find new insights on your website profits and revenues.
