Website traffic
Website traffic can be measured by the number of visits or sessions your page receives.
1. Tracking errors
If you see that the number of impressions, clicks, visits or sessions have fallen this could indicate that there is a problem with your website tracking (e.g Google Analytics, Google tag manager etc) Your website analytics provides important information about your site. From this data you can learn about your users’ behaviour and improve the user experience.
If you suddenly notice a drop in website performance, website tracking is a good place to start. Check that your Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager tracking is working correctly. If you can pin-point the date that your traffic started to fall, it’s worth asking your web developer if any website changes made around that time could have affected your website tracking.
2. Broken links
Broken links and redirect errors could prevent vital traffic from reaching your web page. Having broken links can affect your SEO performance which could ultimately lead to low rankings on the search results page.
3. Changes in Google’s algorithm
Google continuously makes algorithm changes to improve the user’s experience when using its search engine. This could have an impact on your website. If you keep abreast of these updates before they are put into place, you could adjust your site to migrate any negative impact. You could also use a cross channel marketing strategy to limit your reliance on just search engine marketing. This will soften the blow if your ranking performance drops.
4. Page speed
If a user gets frustrated with the time it takes for your website to load, this could result in them leaving your site and not returning. This can reflect badly on your reputation with Google which could lead to low search engine rankings. The reason for having a slow page speed can vary. If you would like to learn more about this specific topic, checkout our article about why website page speeds are important.
5. Poor content
If the content of your website isn’t of a high quality it is likely that users will not find value in your site leading them to leave your site and not return. With high quality content you will attract users that are more likely to engage with your site and return.
6. Low ranking
If your website has suffered from any of the issues above this could have caused your website to suffer low rankings on the Google result page. In addition to improving these performance factors, you should also look at how well your website addresses key questions that your target audience could be searching for. Adding some targeted, well-written content to your site can help address these ranking gaps.