You’ve been updating keywords, ensuring content stays relevant, and measuring your performance metrics often. Despite taking all the proper steps, one day during your daily check, you notice that your traffic drops substantially. Despite your almost immediate desire to fret, remain calm and rest assured that the issue will be resolved. Your first stop should be your Google Analytics platform to perform a more thorough diagnosis of the impacts. Then, you’ll want to explore these common culprits to resume your web journey.
1. Google made an update.
Google tweaks its algorithm an estimated 500 to 600 times yearly, meaning more than once daily. Google may not always reveal its plans in advance of these updates, potentially complicating matters. If you’ve noticed that your traffic has dropped suddenly, you’ll want to scour the web for any published notices or releases concerning updates. Delve into your analytics to see which aspects of your results have taken the hit, apart from traffic, and determine if you can relate these impacts to the details surrounding the latest Google update.
2. Your keywords are officially outdated.
This one can happen to the best of us–irrelevant keywords. What is popular and trending today may not necessarily be a top search term in the weeks or months ahead. If you’re facing a drop, perform a new keyword audit first, and consider updating your content with your latest findings. You may find it helpful to conduct searches with your existing keywords to see where and if you’re presented in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
3. Your site speed increased.
This possibility may be one of the more straightforward fixes. Perform a quick check of your site speed and pay special attention to each page as it loads to dissect issues. Because Google relies on site speed for its rankings, your position could be negatively impacted quickly if the root cause is not identified. Once discovered, you can make the proper adjustments and optimizations to decrease those loading times.
4. You’ve lost links.
If your site has been relying on backlinks to boost traffic, this may be the culprit. Backlinks are essential to SEO, as they resurrect users to a specific page of your site. You should scan your links for quantity and quality. If you determine that backlinks are the culprit, you should be able to replace or delete them easily.
5. Check your tracking code.
Your Google Analytics tracking code is a special identifier that Google assigns to your website. Google leverages this code to identify and collect user traffic and behavior data. It scans the data on each page and then sends it back to Analytics to report on the most accurate metrics. If you’ve noticed that your traffic has taken a dip, you’ll want to check to see if your code is still working. You want to be particularly mindful of this, especially if you’ve recently made changes to your website. You can check this by clicking on “Real-Time” on Google Analytics’ main page. You can move on if you can spot live data being reported here. If it is not, you may need to re-insert the code.
Rentbot can help.
Rentbot websites are strategically designed to attract, convert and retain tenants. Each site offers the latest features, like online payments, real-time availability, mobile-friendly designs, and more. With already built-in SEO packages paired with Google Ads, you’ll notice immediate website traffic and more high-quality leads in a shorter time. And, with Rentbot, you don’t have to worry about playing detective with sudden website issues, as you have free full-service administrative support and quick response times. Schedule a free consultation here if you’re ready to launch your new site.
About the Author
Jonsette Calloway joined the Rentbot team in 2015. With a background in public relations, advertising, and copywriting, she has helped many clients achieve their marketing and communications goals within various fields, but she particularly enjoys working with the apartment industry.