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8 Reasons Why A Website Starts To Lose Traffic And Semalt Answers On How To Fix It



Optimizing conversions, working out commercial factors, and other ways to increase income from the site - they all work and work well. But only if you have enough traffic. There is no point in wasting time setting up micro-conversions if the site has 20 visitors per week.

We have already written about what needs to be done to increase traffic, and more than once. But website owners and SEO professionals sometimes face a different problem. This is a situation where the site starts to lose traffic.

But almost always, everything is not as sad as it might seem. There are a lot of factors that influence the position and visibility of a site in search now, and some of them could simply have escaped your attention.

In this article, we have compiled for you a selection of 8 main reasons why traffic on the site may start to drop, as well as share tips on how to fix it.

Changes in the site structure

Making all sorts of changes on the site is one of the most common reasons for losing traffic. Especially when it comes to some edits on the client side that have not been agreed upon with the promotion specialists.

And okay, if these are edits at the level, add/remove something on the page or even remove some of them. Almost everything can be rolled back without much difficulty. But if without preliminary preparation, changes were made that affected the structure of the site itself, problems are already guaranteed.

The most common things that happen are:
  • deleting or renaming individual pages and entire sections;
  • changing the URL of the pages;
  • global change of the template of the formation of URLs.
Landing pages that generate a significant proportion of traffic, and even entire clusters, can drop out of search. Also, if redirects have not been configured accordingly, a large number of 404 errors are generated, which also negatively affects the site's search ranking.

Change of design

Fluctuations in search traffic can also be caused by the transition of a site to a new design. In addition to changes in the page code, this can also lead to serious transformations in terms of the appearance of the web project.

For example, a designer redesigned an important landing page in such a way that half of its content is simply removed or the structure has changed a lot. Functionality and information content is sacrificed for appearance. This situation is not uncommon, therefore, you should definitely consult with SEO specialists during the redesign process.

In general, if everything is done correctly, the attendance drawdown should not be at all, or it will be at a minimum level.

Slow loading pages

As in the case of adaptation for mobile devices, site speed has ceased to be just a possible option, but has become a necessity. Moreover, Google has officially announced that since the summer of 2018, a page load-speed directly affects its ranking in search.

The problem is complex since the slow operation of the site also negatively affects the behavioral factors (the percentage of refusals and returns to SERP increases), and also reduces the percentage of conversion. In the case of commercial projects - online stores and service sites - we are talking about lost profits and this may be in quite serious volumes.

You can check your download speed through the Semalt free SEO tool: Page speed analyzer

Problems in code and scripts

If everything was fine with your site yesterday, this does not mean at all that it will be so today. It is not for nothing that experts advise monitoring the state of the resource and conduct an audit every few months, since many errors remain "invisible" until they begin to create real problems.

Here's a simple example based on the popular WordPress engine. If you are using plugins from the official repository, everything might be fine. But problems arise in the following situations:
  • the developer has abandoned work on the module, and after the release of a new version of the CMS, it may start to conflict with the system;
  • sometimes even plugins themselves can cause errors when used at the same time;
  • when installing a large number of modules, the site slows down.
If such problems occur regularly, all this can negatively affect the state of the site in search. 

So you need a better SEO tool to do this audit. Which tool will you use? Sumrush? Ashref? Ubersuggest? Don't get confused! You need an all-in-one tool. Because if you use limited SEO tools, you won't have all the details and the website's problem might repeat again. The best one I can currently recommend is the Dedicated SEO Dashboard. A complete SEO tool that will provide you with all the details about the state of your site. See yourself the performance of the tool here.

The Dedicated SEO Dashboard includes : 
  • Keywords in TOP
  • Best Pages
  • Competitors
  • Webpage Analyzer 
  • Plagiarism Checker
  • Page Speed Analyzer
  • Report Center
  • Etc…

404 errors

Another common problem: moving or deleting pages without correctly setting up redirects. As a result, when trying to access the old address, the server issues a 404 error, notifying that the page is no longer available at the given URL.

If such errors appear in large numbers, the bounce rate increases as people simply close the tab. Search robots also perceive such things negatively and this can affect the ranking of the site as a whole.

The best way to deal with such errors is to simply prevent them from occurring. But a small number of "404" can still appear on the site for one reason or another. Therefore, you need to take care of creating a good template for such a page that would nudge the user to further interact with the site, instead of just leaving.

Here is an example of a good design for an error page:


Changing search demand

A simple and obvious example for everyone is the release of a new smartphone model. Even if the previous one was very popular, with the release of the new one, the demand for the old model will literally drop weekly.

And there is also such a thing as seasonality. Clients for promotion should also be warned about such fluctuations in order to avoid possible claims in future.

It is not a problem for a practicing SEO specialist to determine possible changes in the dynamics of traffic for specific keywords/clusters. And the best way to avoid potential problems as a result of changing demand is to prepare for them in advance.

For example, you can work out the semantics in such a way that the decrease in one request is compensated by the increase in other groups of keys.

Decrease in the pace of project development

There is such a problem, which is typical primarily for client-side SEO. Many sincerely believe that one day you can optimize everything well, promote the site to the desired indicators, and then simply rest on your laurels, reaping the fruits of past labors.

Unfortunately, in real life, everything is different. And in the conditions of modern competition, the quote from "Alice" by Lewis Carroll is becoming more and more relevant: to stay in place, you need to run as fast as you can, and to get somewhere, you need to run at least twice as fast!

Reducing the budget, reducing the frequency of publishing new content, and slowing down the pace of work on the project as a whole, when it comes to a highly competitive niche, almost always creates risks of reduced traffic.

Change in audience behavior

There are things in internet marketing that are impossible to control or even predict. User behavior is one such thing.

An example is the growth of mobile traffic and the popularity of public channels in messengers, voice search, and other similar trends that continue to gain momentum. Each of these points has had a significant impact on the business and the transformation continues.

For example, a site that is not mobile-friendly will almost certainly lose traffic as the proportion of mobile users grows.

Some trends can create quite significant risks, and it is important to learn to find opportunities to quickly adapt to ongoing changes.

Analyze and draw the right conclusions

If you have invested your time and energy in the development of your site and begin to notice that instead of growing, on the contrary, it is losing traffic - instead of panicking, just spend enough time analyzing. Understanding exactly what changes caused this effect allows you to get everything back on track.

Well, remember that you should not limit yourself only to your resource. Sometimes competitor analysis is the key to understanding the full picture of what is happening in a niche. That's why we recommend using the Dedicated SEO Dashboard.

What other reasons, in your opinion, are the reasons why the site traffic starts to fall? Share your opinion in the comments!