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Huge Traffic Drop

by longrobnc
8 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I checked my Google analytics a few days ago and it alarmed me a bit. I've always kept a close eye on serpfox also and I have seen no drop in any of my main keywords. I'm also still getting my normal amount of leads. Was there an update that would cause my site to drop off like this? I just looked at webmaster tools and I see no issues. I was getting 1800 visitors a few months ago. Now, I'm down to under 700. The numbers posted are only in my local area. I'm a brick and mortar business and really that's what counts for me.


Attachment 22520
#drop #huge #traffic
  • Profile picture of the author netanel23
    Where did the traffic drop from? Just because SERPFox rankings are OK doesn't mean your SEO as a whole is OK. You may have been getting traffic from other keywords that you had ranked well for and either changed something or got into algorithm trouble on those rankings.

    Dive deeper into your analytics to determine where the traffic loss came from.
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    • Profile picture of the author longrobnc
      Originally Posted by netanel23 View Post

      Where did the traffic drop from? Just because SERPFox rankings are OK doesn't mean your SEO as a whole is OK. You may have been getting traffic from other keywords that you had ranked well for and either changed something or got into algorithm trouble on those rankings.

      Dive deeper into your analytics to determine where the traffic loss came from.
      Thank you for pointing out what should have been obvious to me. However, I didn't even think to look to see exactly where I lost the traffic. I pretty much lost all of the organic traffic on my site that wasn't for local keywords.

      I was getting traffic for some brand terms, but those have dried up. I wasn't really doing any real SEO, so I can't be sure what exactly happened. I will continue to dig. Thanks again.
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  • Profile picture of the author rahulmishra
    Their are so many reason dropping traffic
    If you do bad SEO link building
    Then you ranking lost
    and if your serach engine ranking lost then your website traffic droped..
    Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author emptee
    Sounds like it might be a good thing to me!

    Let me explain...

    If you were accidentally ranking for terms which weren't particularly relevant to your visitors, they would likely leave straight away (if you've got enough data, check the bounce rate, average time and page views for the KW's you lost).

    High bounce rate, low time on page = bad news..

    So, if you've lost some bad traffic that wasn't generating real business for you, I'd imagine your stats should improve.. and as they do, you'll stand a better chance of ranking for additional KWs that might be related to your business.

    So.. sounds like a positive to me, on the face of it

    Michael
    Signature

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    • Profile picture of the author longrobnc
      Originally Posted by emptee View Post

      Sounds like it might be a good thing to me!

      Let me explain...

      If you were accidentally ranking for terms which weren't particularly relevant to your visitors, they would likely leave straight away (if you've got enough data, check the bounce rate, average time and page views for the KW's you lost).

      High bounce rate, low time on page = bad news..

      So, if you've lost some bad traffic that wasn't generating real business for you, I'd imagine your stats should improve.. and as they do, you'll stand a better chance of ranking for additional KWs that might be related to your business.

      So.. sounds like a positive to me, on the face of it

      Michael
      Actually,

      My time on site goals, pages visited and bounce rate are all going in the wrong direction. I don't understand it.
      Attachment 22521

      The odd thing I'm seeing is about 200 referral visits from a site called

      social-buttons.com
      site25.social-buttons.com

      I tried to see what the site was, but the site doesn't come up. Never had a visit from there until recently. The funny thing is that it registers 100% all new users but 0 time on site.

      I've got 518 backlinks from this site. pinbud.com

      http://www.ygaskme.com/
      This looks like a spam site and nothing more.
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    • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
      Originally Posted by emptee View Post

      High bounce rate, low time on page = bad news..
      High bounce rate doesn't necessarily mean anything. It's really hard to say without seeing the full picture. It's possible that people are finding the site lousy and leaving for that reason, but it's as likely that they're coming for a single article and leaving after reading the piece. Both count as a bounce. You need to know what kind of material you have ranking, and what kind of campaigns and social media links you've got going at the moment.

      Also, there's no reason for Google to care about your bounce stats unless the traffic is coming to your site from their search. And as the above example shows it's not easy to interpret.

      Low time on page - well, that's more alarming.

      I find it likely that they use clicks from SE and time on site for something, but it's not that straightforward. And they're not telling how it actually works.

      Social buttons is some kind of spam site. Seen the name somewhere before, perhaps on this forum?
      Signature
      Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
      Who told me this? An ex Google web spam engineer.

      What's your excuse?
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      • Profile picture of the author shellerik
        Those "buttons.com" users are what is known as "Referrer Spam". Nobody actually visited your site from those sites. Instead someone sent a request directly to Google Analytics to make it seem like they sent you visitors in order to show up in your usage data.

        You can filter those out of your data to get a more accurate picture of your true usage. Do a Google search for "referrer spam".
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  • Profile picture of the author zeyfah
    if you havent changed anything on your site... like for example the urls, etc.., and if your incoming traffic comes mainly from google, i think this page from MOZ can help: Google Algorithm Change History - Moz
    Signature
    Building Your Online Brand - Blog Articles
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