Reasons Why Your Website is Losing Visitors

Website traffic is a key indicator of business performance. Traffic leads to sales and inquiries. Consistent visits from the exact same users mean repeat customers. If your website traffic drops suddenly or your rankings drop, you will lose opportunities that can impact your conversions as well as your sales.

Your Website Is Losing Visitors

Finding out the reason your site is losing visitors is the first step in fixing this problem.

These are the top 10 reasons traffic drops:

1. Trends and Updates on Algorithmic Updates

An algorithmic upgrade could cause a drop in web rankings. Google’s algorithm changes are adjustments to factors that help produce the best results based on submitted queries, specific page relevancy, content quality and website uniqueness. Google could have penalised your website as a result.

A website traffic problem caused by an algorithm update could be illustrated in the 2012 case where several websites saw huge drops in traffic.

Websites were automatically ranked higher on the basis of inbound links in 2012. Some marketers took advantage of this signal and were able create all sorts of linking strategies to get back links to their websites. These black-hat strategies drove irrelevant content higher up search engine results pages. Google responded with the Penguin update. This update was created to detect web spam, reduce some shady hyperlinks, and encourage high-quality content.

This case perfectly illustrates a situation where marketers use tactics that they consider normal and then have those tactics invalidated or withdrawn by Google. Their rankings dropped or their websites didn‘t show up in search engines due to the update.

Check if your website has been penalised by a search engine. If your website is not ranking on one particular search engine, but still ranks on another.

Google Search Console will show you warnings. It also has a Manual Action section that will allow you to see if there are any broken or non-compliances Google might have found on your site. These issues can be avoided by focusing on high-quality, informative content and not leveraging cheap or shady techniques. Here is the mindset gap in business that you need to change.

2. Design and Website Changes

Other than algorithm updates, there may be website changes that have had an impact on the site’s performance. Most website speed and load times are affected by design changes. Also, make sure to check if the website has been migrated.

Here are some things you should be aware of:

Correctly mapped are 301 redirects
Images load correctly
No issues are reported with the content
Your new site has an inbound link structure.

To check for any onsite errors, you can regularly check Google Analytics to monitor traffic sources and Google Search Console.

3. Keyword Cannibalisation

Keyword cannibalisation occurs when multiple pages on your website are competing for the same keyword search query. This could be due to the fact that some pages have the same topic as others, or because you accidentally optimised pages for the same key phrase.

Google Search Console allows you to check for keyword cannibalisation. Simply go to the performance report and you will automatically see a list containing queries that people use to locate your site. You can click on any of these queries by clicking the ‘pages tab’, and you’ll be able to see a list with URLs and pages that rank for it. This could indicate that multiple URLs are showing. It will also have associated stats that will allow you to determine which page may be the most valuable for your query. Then make the required adjustments.

4. Tracking Code Errors

Are you sure your tracking codes are working correctly?

An issue with Google Analytics or Tags may cause a traffic drop. Verify that your code works properly. If you have any questions, please contact your web developer.

5. Failed Redirects

Broken redirects can be the reason your ranking drops, especially when you have just launched a new website or moved to a new server.

You should ensure that your 301 redirect strategy is in place. Search engines will be notified by 301 redirects that a page or page on your site has been removed. You’re asking them for all visitors to the new address, not your old one.

Search engines may take some time to rank a page when it is moved to a different URL.

Your hosting server or site will determine the implementation of 301 redirects. Many platforms provide plugins or solutions that make it easy to implement redirects.

6. Competitors Are Getting Better

The drop in traffic might not be due to Google‘s changes, but to your competitors increasing their game.

Analyse the activities and SEO strategies of your competitors and their content. To analyse your competitors’ activities and SEO strategies, use tools such as Semrush competitor analysis tools.

You can also work with an SEO company to determine the strategies your competitors are using and how you could outperform them. They will then help you implement the appropriate activities.

You can find out what your competitors are doing to be ahead of you by analysing their ranking and how they are outranking you.

7. Inadequacy of Meta Information

Although meta-information is an important ranking signal for Google it‘s often overlooked. Meta information is used by Google to match keywords to users’ search queries. It also allows Google to quickly determine the content of a website.

You should check if there is any meta information on a page. Next, check if your meta title and description contain the root keywords that accurately describe this page.

Google Analytics can be accessed to determine if the dip was due to organic search, paid searches, or social media.

Check your Google Ads, keywords and metadata to determine if the traffic potentially could be coming from paid advertisements. If the traffic is organic, you should review your sitemap.xml, robots.txt and SSL.

8. Server Overload

Server problems are not uncommon and may cause your site to experience a drop in traffic. This could be due to a broken caching function or an empty markup by a Googlebot.

Use Google’s Fetch & Render tool in the Google Search Console to determine if the problem is a server issue. This will display information about how your website is crawled or what it renders.

9. Page Speed

Page speed is a key factor in user experience. Google’s Page Experience update addresses this metric under Core Web Vitals.

If a page takes more than three seconds to load, it will get bounced higher, which means Google knows that people don’t want to view your content. Page speed is affected by many elements, including large image files, unneeded plugins and web design.

To see the performance of your pages, use Google’s page speed Insights.

You can fix, update, or remove any elements on your website that are slow to load. Large files can slow down page speed.

10. Lost Links

Losing links can have a major impact on your website and lead to significant traffic drops. Google considers losing an inbound link to a page a sign that it isn’t authoritative anymore. This can lead to lower rankings, fewer site visits, and reduced traffic.

Link building is one of the best ways to increase your website’s rank on search engines. It validates your content as well as your website’s credibility.

By using other link-building strategies, you can always recover lost links:

Guest posting
Influencer marketing offers links to earn affiliate links
Social media marketing: Earn more social shares by diving into here are some Useful Business Behaviour Strategies for you to use in your small business

Be calm and optimistic

Although traffic decline can be a source of anxiety for marketers, it is a natural part of the cycle.

There will be adjustments to any marketing strategy, no matter if it’s internet marketing or traditional marketing. You can only adapt and equip yourself with the necessary SEO tools in order to create a better strategy.

Search engine optimisation will continue to exist for as long as people use the internet. It will also continue to evolve. There may be other issues that you are facing. You can take a calm approach to the problem and use the list to help you evaluate it. You’ll find the causes of traffic problems and be able to fix them.

Take a look at our most recent blog: Do You Have a Market Engagement Strategy

ActionCOACH can help you with business coaching and mentoring sales training and marketing assistance. No matter what stage your business is in, our team of experienced coaches can help you take it to the next level.

If you’re serious about increasing your website traffic, ActionCOACH is the perfect partner to help you get there.

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