Site traffic drop of 60% after 404 errors. Need your suggestions.

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Hi All,

One of my sites suffers from a 60% traffic drop. It all started back in Feb 2013 after I noticed a 15% traffic drop. I looked into Google Webmaster tools and saw a huge increase in 404 errors (from 800 to 12K). There are "No new messages or recent critical issues". I fixed all 404 errors really fast but nothing seems to help. My traffic has gradually been decreasing and still going down month after month.

Any ideas? Should I wait it out? Any suggestions would be welcome.

Thanks,

Ilse
#search engine optimization #404 #60% #drop #errors #site #suggestions #traffic
  • Why this increase in 404s?

    It could be a reason for drop for sure but I have never experienced anything like this personally.

    Even if you have fixed errors it doesn't mean anything. It will take some time to get back those positions, if at all. Anyway it always takes time to see improvements because of algorithm and database gear.

    So my only suggestion is just to add more content everyday. Backlink it a bit, wait and see what comes out in webmaster tools, backlink it again, add more content and so on.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • After you fixed the error did you go to Fetch As Google and submit the page to index so Google can update its index?
    • [1] reply
    • The site consists of pure html pages (600) + automated blog in a subfolder of the site. Early 2012, I deleted 12K automated posts and initially nothing happened, traffic was just doing fine since 99% of my visitors never visited the autoblog. In feb 2013, GWT reported 12K 404 errors. In order to fix the problem, I used a WP plugin that created a link to the main page of the blog for each 404 error. So my 404 errors dropped to 0 in approx. 12 days.

      Now, traffic never came back, instead site traffic keeps going down.

      That's the whole story.
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    Site traffic drop of 60% after 404 errors. Need your suggestions.

    Hi All, One of my sites suffers from a 60% traffic drop. It all started back in Feb 2013 after I noticed a 15% traffic drop. I looked into Google Webmaster tools and saw a huge increase in 404 errors (from 800 to 12K). There are "No new messages or recent critical issues". I fixed all 404 errors really fast but nothing seems to help. My traffic has gradually been decreasing and still going down month after month.