Question for those more experienced (Need an advice)
Hello folks, can someone tell me what could this traffic drop means? (Image below)
It's one of my sites and as you can see this organic traffic drop started at the end of February. I don't know is it some kind of Google Algorithm or what? I still regularly publish content on the website but don't know how to fix this traffic drop? lol
Thank you all in advance,
Danijel
Recent Comments
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Hey Danijel,
There have obviously been 3 major "Product Review" Google algorithm updates over the last year or so.
And in all honesty, these cannot be ignored by those who mainly target Affiliate Marketing through solely publishing Product Reviews, Best Of Articles, Top 10s, etc.
You'll even hear SEOs claim that "Affiliate Marketing is Dead", but nothing could be further from the truth.
It's simply about the way a website is constructed.
Obviously, I can't see into the future, but I would hazard a guess that websites that are solely based around commercial content will see dips in rankings and traffic over the coming year.
Clearly, a product recommendation can be seen as an ideal solution to a searcher's issue or problem.
However, unless you have a really good Domain Authority and E.A.T. (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust) with Google, you MAY be "punished" for producing SOLELY COMMERCIAL CONTENT.
What you can do is study Google Search Console to see what has happened.
So, initially you'll want to do a specific date search.
Let's say from November 15th 2021 to February 15th 2022 (judging by your graph).
Firstly, go to PAGES and note your top 10 pages, and total impressions and total clicks and AVG position.
Then click on the first url that at the top of the page that will have produced the most clicks in that 3-month period.
Next, click on QUERIES and note down the top 3 keywords that have been producing the traffic.
Also note down the number of impressions, clicks, and AVG ranking of those three keyword.
Do exactly the same thing for the other 9 top articles on your site.
Next, do a date search from February 16th 2022 up until yesterday.
Compare the top 10 urls (articles) for this 3-month period compared to the Nov-Feb 3-month period.
Are the same 10 articles the ones producing the most of your traffic?
Are there new articles now showing in the top 10?
Now, if you find that some of the top 10 articles for the results from Feb-May are the same as Nov-Feb, you need to compare the stats.
So, are these articles receiving the same number of impressions (or hopefully more)?
Are they receiving more or less clicks?
Has the AVG position gone down, up, or been maintained?
Are the top 3 keywords for these articles the same in Feb-May as Nov-Feb or have they changed?
Here is where your answer lies.
What you may potentially find is that your impressions have maintained, or even increased.
However, your clicks have OBVIOUSLY decreased, but check the AVG position as well. If that has decreased, you now know why your overall traffic has decreased.
Next, take one of those top 3 keywords and type it into Google.
Can you see your site "above the fold"?
Is there a Featured Snippet there?
Do some of the other articles on page one have an image to the right of their meta description?
Does your article have an image next to its meta description?
All of these things not only affect your rankings and traffic, but also your potential clickthrough rate.
I also wrote a blog post last year about how to use this information in Google Search Console to improve rankings and traffic.
This system seems to work extremely well if your articles are currently ranking between 5-20 on Google. How to Get EVEN MORE Google Traffic to Your Published Articles Hope that helps.
Partha
Interesting, I checked it in GSC and see that everything is fine except Impressions. Impressions dropped nearly double. AVG and CTR are nearly the same as it was.
I suppose that decline in clicks comes because of a decline in impressions.
Hahaha!!
It's usually the other way round.
Most people complain that impressions are increasing, but clicks and average position are decreasing.
Okay, you'll need to check QUERIES on each individual article and work out which actual keywords are the ones where your impressions are decreasing.
This can usually mean you've been pushed off the first page by newer published articles that are now ranking for those specific keywords.
As I've explained in the blog post I attached, you can actually increase your rankings for certain keywords by strategically placing them in your content.
So, let's say that your main keyword is "Affiliate Marketing For Beginners" (Don't worry, I was reading/watching your conversation with Kyle yesterday, LOL).
However, you find that from Nov-Feb your top performing keyword was "How Hard is it to Begin Affiliate Marketing" but now impressions have dropped and Average position has dropped (btw, even if average position drops by just one for your entire URL, so it was 5, but is now 6, this can be a HUGE difference in traffic - remember that url is typically giving you the average position for many 100s of keywords).
Go to your article and see where you can place "How Hard is it to Begin Affiliate Marketing?". The best place initially would be an H tag or subheading, so H2, H3, H4.
You can then also include this phrase again in your content. That should be enough.
Basically, you want to see which queries were getting lots of impressions, but aren't now.
Quite often you'll receive impressions and clicks for queries that aren't even in your content.
Google does this because your content is RELEVANT to that query.
However, if someone has written a newer article than yours and specifically targeted the queries you were ranking for (but weren't included in your content originally), they MAY now outrank you.
The result, you MAY have dropped off page one for that query.
If you go through the blog post I've included above, I go into more detail, and there's images to follow along.
Plus, I'm always here if you need, just ask.
Partha
Thanks a lot, man! I will check this too.
What I was worried the most about is Google's penalty.
Is it possible that my site suffers from penalty or it comes to newer sites taking my place/rankings? lol
What I noticed while searching keywords I was ranking for is that the first 3 to 4 places in results are paid ads so my site cannot be seen until scrolling down. Can it affect losing impressions?
An impression generally means a searcher can see or potentially see your article on the CURRENT SET OF RESULTS, without having to click to see more results.
So, as an example, if you're ranked number 10 on DESKTOP, the searcher may not actually "see" your article, but the impression counts because they would not need to click onto another page.
However, the fact that there are 4 Google ads and 9 other results above yours means that they probably won't click on your result.
If you're on page 2 on DESKTOP then that won't count as an impression, because the searcher needs to click onto the next page.
However, when it comes to mobile searches and Google Discover, things change slightly, as they sometimes offer INFINITE SCROLLING.
Google does make it difficult to understand, LOL.
Type - What are Impressions on Google Search Console
into Google and check out Support.Google(dot)com/Webmasters info on this
Personally, I don't think it's a penalty, as your articles are still receiving some impressions, i.e. they haven't completely disappeared from the search results, or you haven't suddenly dropped from position 1 to position 100.
It could be a case of just including some more phrases that were previously receiving impressions in your top 10 articles, and then things may completely turn around in a month or two.
I'd also check the QUERIES in GSC to see if they are some that are getting a lot of impressions, but NO clicks.
You may even be able to write a completely new article around some of these high impression no click keywords.
Hi Partha, about this: "Do some of the other articles on page one have an image to the right of their meta description?"
This thing is relatively new, just a few months as far as I remember. I have a feeling that we cannot do anything about it. From what I notice in my sites, Google sometimes add this thing and sometimes not. I do not see the way how to convince it to show the picture which is always available, but sometimes not shown in SERPs. Do you see a way?
Hey Jovo,
It's called "Open Graph" - if you Google something like - Open Graph Internet Protocol - you should find information about it.
I believe it's something started by Facebook years ago.
Google currently may feature a thumbnail for some content, then again, it may not.
However, there is a way to almost say to Google, "Please place a thumbnail next to my description".
I'm not 100% sure of exactly how it works, but once more, there will be information of Google.
It has something to do with changing your open graph meta tag on your images.
The code is something similar to:
<meta property = ”og: image” content = ”http://www.domainname.com/name-of-image.jpg” />
So, you add "og:image" within the meta data somehwere.
As I say, I'm not 100% certain of how it works, plus I never really play with the HTML stuff on WordPress, I'm scared of what I might accidentally do, LOL.
Partha
Do you have a lot of Product reviews.
Google has come out with a new guideline for product reviews.
developers.google dot com/search/docs/advanced/ecommerce/write-high-quality-product-reviews
Google seems to not like "best of" Drylan mentioned it in one of his WA blogs.:
It is hard to say without knowing an details about your website.
Well, luckily I don't have many reviews or Best of posts.
Let's say that 90% of all posts are informational
Hello, Google did change their algorithm and if you write reviews it may have affected your traffic.
The thing to do (and you may have done this) is to dig deeper into the behavior of your site on analytics.
Look at which posts are drawing in traffic, which ones have dropped and how long people are staying on your site.
Jay did some excellent videos on Google analytics and how to determine what monitor and what it all means.
I would send you the URL but there are so many that it is best to go to the search bar and put in "analytics." This search will pull up all of his teaching videos.
I hope this gives some better insight into what you can do to determine the issue.
Laura
You have received so much valuable information on this thread. I just have 2 things to add, one of which Ivan spoke of.
1. Identify which posts have dropped and up them to rank them above the other posts again. Use keywords that your competitor used in your update.
2. Backlinks matter - one of Jay's latest sayings. Increasing your backlinks will increase your domain authority. A higher DA will result in higher rankings.
Google recently changed the algorithm reference product reviews and is more strict over who can write reviews of products this may have affected your traffic if you have a lot of reviews on your site
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Maybe one or more of your top posts fell out of the top 3 in SERP and because of it, your traffic dropped. This is usually the case with my traffic goes down (or up!).
Grab Ahrefs or SEMRush to see how your posts were doing before and after this period and you might get some insights.
And if position drop is the case here, simply identify which posts dropped and update them with fresh information.
Thanks a lot, Ivan! I will check it!
It is strange. There are days when I am getting 500+ per day and sometimes it drop to 200-300 per day. Again after some time it recovers, comes back to 500+ per day, and again drops. -_-
It might be that Google is testing one of the high ranked posts for UX to learn whether users "like" it better than other people's posts for that keyword.
That was happening to me as well. One day the post would be on first place, and then it would drop on 4th. A week later it would climb again to the top and then it would drop.
I'm guessing the algorithm does this to learn more about how users react to your content vs other posts in the top 10 in SERP. Then, it gives the highest ranking to the post that has better UX (together with other SEO elements, of course).
If you can determine which post is in question, you could measure UX yourself. But the best approach is to make sure that the info is top-notch and eventually, you will cement 1st or 2nd position for a long long time.