5 Reasons Your Website Has Lost Traffic
Fewer people visit your site than before. You have probably already wondered why this is happening. After analyzing dozens of possible reasons, you have not been able to figure out why the number of visitors has greatly decreased and what to do about it. However, do not panic! In this article, we will analyze the TOP 5 factors due to which traffic could drop on a web resource, and we will help to solve this problem. Read the material carefully and take the information into service!
REASONS YOUR WEBSITE HAS LOST TRAFFIC
1. You don’t invest in SEO
If the site is ranked higher in search engines, then the chances of receiving stable traffic will increase many times over. Remember: you cannot optimize an Internet resource once and not do it again. SEO is an ongoing process. You should always support it in order to be one step ahead of the competition.
Google regularly rechecks indexed pages using updated algorithms, so if your project is poorly optimized, traffic will gradually drop. Perhaps the SEO techniques you use are good, but no longer relevant. The search engine often adjusts its algorithms, and you need to keep up with all the innovations.
Think about what you have done over the past six months to optimize the site? If little or nothing, don’t be surprised by low traffic. However, you should not worry, because this situation can be corrected at any time by focusing on SEO promotion.
2. User behavior trends have changed
The decrease in attendance is not always your fault. The reason may not be directly related to the site. Don’t think of search sessions as static and repetitive as internet users get smarter, search engines get better, and even popular keywords change over time.
The culprit for the drop in traffic may be a change in user behavior trends that you have not taken into account. To avoid mistakes in the future, use Google Trends. This service will allow you to understand what changes are happening with keywords and help you optimize your website for them in time. We also recommend that you study the Search Console reports to find out what phrases users use to find your pages.
Perhaps you have never looked at the problem from this angle, but it is quite likely that it leads to a drop in traffic. Try to keep pace with all the changes in order to be out of competition.
3. Poor quality content
Remember the Panda algorithm? When Google introduced it, many sites dropped in search results due to low-quality content. Surely you have heard about this and you know for sure that content is the main thing. But not everyone knows exactly how the search engine ranks it today.
Google tries to provide users with only high-quality content. And the concept of “quality” in the search robot is always changing. First of all, the material should be relevant to the search query and answer visitors’ questions. Gone are the days when you could just stuff your pages with a lot of keywords and get traffic.
To determine the quality of content on an online resource, ask yourself 3 questions:
- Does its content answer the questions that users ask in the search engine?
- Does it solve their problems?
- Is anyone looking for such information today?
If there are more “No” answers than “Yes“, Google will not rank your site higher. Users will not like it, and they will simply exit without finding what they were looking for. And if the content also has a lot of technical errors, then this is doubly bad.
Good and relevant material increases the credibility of the site. If users and the search robot consider that the content of your resource does not meet these qualities, then the traffic will only go down.
Here are three key factors that can keep a site from ranking highly:
- Lack of content. Google will not promote websites with minimal content to the TOP.
- Stolen materials. This kind of stuff doesn’t need to be explained. You may have copied someone else’s content by mistake, or you have an unscrupulous person working for you, stealing information from others. Always keep track of what you fill the Internet resource so that it is highly ranked by search engines.
- Articles with the same titles. If you have articles with the same title, this can negatively affect search rankings. Focus not on the quantity, but on the quality of the published material.
4. You are ignoring the Mobile-First index
Google understands that many users use mobile devices to search for information on the Internet. Therefore, the company introduced the Mobile-First indexing system. What does this mean for you? This means that if your site is poorly optimized for mobile platforms, then it is highly likely that it will not get to the TOP positions. By focusing only on the desktop version of a web resource, you lose the lion’s share of traffic.
5. Slow site loading
Slow site loading = poor user experience (UX). The search robot considers this unacceptable and lowers the resource in the search results. If your pages load slowly, it’s not hard to guess what the user will do: he will close the site and go to a competitor.
Google quickly determines the loading speed of pages and ranks them according to this parameter. Slow loading will lead to the fact that your site will fall in the search results, which is fraught with a complete lack of traffic. For this reason, try to always increase the speed in all possible ways.
Conclusion
Since traffic is influenced by a huge number of factors, study site visitors comprehensively. Do not resort to “quick” strategies that instantly increase traffic, because they can be harmful in the long run.
Learn the root causes of traffic drops and fix the situation organically. This will take a lot of time and effort, but believe me – it will only get better!
