Reasons For A Drop In Organic Traffic

Natural referencing, or SEO, occupies an essential place in web marketing. However, several factors can influence its effectiveness. What could be the causes of a drop in organic traffic to your Site? This article gives you all the details.

What Is Organic Traffic?

Organic traffic is when visitors access a website through search results without paid advertising. It is generated when the Internet user searches using keywords relevant to your Site. The latter click on the link leading to your page in the search results of their own accord. It should be noted that this traffic is considered organic because it comes from natural SEO efforts.

It results from the quality of your Site’s content and not direct advertising. When visitors arrive at your Site through this traffic, it suggests that your content interests them more than anything else. Since they found your Site through an active search, your services appeal to them.

As many experts in the digital field have demonstrated, organic traffic is of great importance in natural referencing. It constitutes an indicator of the effectiveness of your SEO strategy and the relevance of your Site to search queries carried out. However, you may see a drop in organic traffic on some sites. Several factors explain this state of affairs.

What Are The Reasons For A Drop In Organic Traffic?

Organic traffic drops when the number of visitors arriving at your Site through organic results decreases significantly. It can be noticed over a long or short period. Either way, it can result from various factors, such as algorithm changes and increased competition.

An Update To The Google Algorithm

Google algorithm updates can significantly impact how sites rank in the SERPs. Indeed, Google regularly updates its algorithm to improve the relevance of search results. This also allows it to offer a better user experience and fight against abusive SEO practices. So, when Google makes a significant update, it can cause abrupt changes in site rankings.

For example, some sites may be ranked high in search results. On the other hand, others may be downgraded or even removed from search results. Google doesn’t always reveal the details of these updates. This means that you cannot know the exact reason why your traffic is dropping. Adjusting the Site with each algorithm update becomes difficult, mainly when they occur frequently. It is, therefore, up to you to follow good SEO practices to reduce the negative impacts of these updates.

Problems With Crawling Or Indexing The Website

Issues with Site crawling and indexing can significantly affect organic traffic. Indeed, to indicate to the engine crawlers which parts of the Site to explore or index, you must configure the “robots.txt” file. Otherwise, it may prevent Google Bot and other search engines from accessing these pages. This reduces the visibility of this content.

It should be noted that the same problem can occur when the file blocks access to important sections of the Site. Like the robots.txt file, sitemap.xml files are essential in a site’s organic traffic. Indeed, they help search engines understand the Site’s structure. Site Discover all its pages. Errors in this file may result in incomplete indexing of the Site. Sitetain pages will not be considered in the results.

The Inaccessibility Of The Site

The Site maintains good natural referencing, and the Site’s accessibility for site engines and users is essential. When your Site is inaccessible to Google, crawlers cannot access the content. This may result in lower rankings in search results. It is then evident that search engines attach importance to the accessibility and constant availability of a site.

Additionally, inaccessibility of the Site to usE for any reason can also harm the user experience. Visitors may, for example, be discouraged. Therefore, they will be tempted to look for alternatives that are not beneficial for you. All these technical issues can lead to a drop in organic traffic and affect the overall SEO of the Site.

A Pity From Google

One reason that may explain a drop in organic traffic concerns Google penalties. This search engine uses complex algorithms to evaluate websites. These are also designed to identify and sanction abusive SEO practices or low-quality content.

Two primary algorithmic filters known to Google can effectively play these roles: Panda and Penguin. The Panda penalty is generally linked to content the search engine considers low quality, repetitive or useless to users. The Penguin penalty, on the other hand, is associated with artificial link-building practices and low-quality backlinks. It also occurs when the search engine detects abusive SEO strategies on the website.

Either way, when a penalty hits your Site, it drops its ranking in the SERP. In some cases, you may witness its removal from the results page. It should be noted that Google penalties can be automatic, particularly when algorithms trigger them. Likewise, these penalties are triggered after an expert’s analysis. In this case, it is a manual penalty.

Negative Referencing

Negative SEO is a malicious practice where individuals or competitors try to harm your Site. The Site uses tactics contrary to the guidelines established by search engines. This can take different forms, including:

From the massive and sudden creation of poor-quality backlinks to the Site
HackiSitehe site to Site wanted content
Implement techniques aimed at manipulating signals used by search engines for site ranking.

In either case, these malicious actions aim to lower the Site’s ranSite’s search results. The goal is to de-index it completely. Regardless, these practices create damage to the Site conceited. They can result in severe penalties from Google, affecting the Site’s ranking and visibility in thSiteRP. It would help if you remained vigilant and regularly monitored suspicious activities. This allows you to detect and counter any harmful SEO attempts. When you see suspicious activity, you should take immediate action to limit the damage.

A Hack Of The Site

HackiSitean hurts your Site’s SEOSite’sed, SEO hacking is a form of attack in which hackers exploit a site’s vulnerabilities to insert unwanted content. They can create pages to generate fraudulent revenue or redirect site traffic to malicious destinations. These actions harm the quality and legitimacy of your Site in the sites of search engines, including Google.

To protect yourself against such attacks, keep all software, plug-ins and themes used on the Site current. You should also constantly monitor the Site for site changes or additions of suspicious content. It should be noted that Google reduces the ranking of pirated sites in its search results. The goal is to protect users from potentially harmful content.

Fall In Organic Traffic: How To Deal With It?

If organic traffic to your site drops, you must act quickly to identify and remedy the situation. This will involve implementing certain practices by the rules set by search engines.

Conduct A Site Technical Audit To Avoid A Drop In Organic Traffic

When SEO traffic decreases, you can perform a technical website audit. This in-depth assessment allows you to identify technical problems that could impact the Site’s SEOSite’sg The points that you will have to clarify during this audit you have:

Loading time
Architecture
The markup
Security
User experience.

Checking load time is essential in that a slow site can discourage users. You need to properly implement HTML markup to make it easier for search engines to understand the content. Likewise, it would help if you emphasized security to protect your Site from sites.

Carrying out this audit helps identify potential issues that could cause traffic to drop. This enables you to take corrective action to improve the Site’s SEO site. You have completed this audit, and if you do not find any anomalies, you should review using Search Console.

Check The Coverage Report In The Search Console

The coverage report is valuable for assessing your Site’s pre-site in Google’s index and identifying errors. In practice, it allows you to view the pages of your Site which are not indexed. It also provides details on:

Valid pages
Pages with warnings
Indexing errors
Excluded pages.

Because it offers all of this information, this report is a valuable tool you can leverage when SEO traffic is down. When you notice that indexing errors have suddenly increased, this may indicate issues that could be causing the traffic drop. For example, essential indexed pages may have suddenly been excluded from the index.

Furthermore, to know if these errors impact the visibility and traffic of the Site, you Site implements specific strategies. It would help if you analyzed the indexing errors graph and some data like the impressions curve simultaneously. This way, you can identify problems and work towards their resolution.

Examine Search Trends And Query Seasonality

When organic traffic drops, the next step is to review search trends and query seasonality. This strategy aims to understand how user behavior changes over time. To do this, you can use Google Trends to identify keywords that drive traffic to your Site.

This Site can also help you visualize how interest in these searches has changed. You will see if these terms have seasonal variations or if they maintain a constant level throughout the year. If these search terms show strong seasonality, this may mean a spike in interest.

Variations in search trends for your keywords may account for a temporary drop in traffic during periods. This may be normal for specific sectors of activity. If so, no corrective action is necessary. With this analysis, you will better understand the influence of seasonal variations on traffic to your Site.

This Site helps you explain fluctuations in SEO traffic. Accordingly, you will be able to adjust the strategies. For example, you can anticipate times of peaks or drops in traffic linked to search seasonality. The drop in organic traffic to your Site is anSitesential element you need to consider. It can be attributed to several factors that you need to identify. This allows you to put adequate measures in place to rectify the situation.