Website traffic naturally ebbs and flows. If you’re a webmaster or website owner, chances are you’ve noticed a general range within which your web traffic varies on any given day. However, if you’ve spotted a lasting decline in your website’s traffic across consecutive days or weeks, then you might have a problem on your hands.
On May 4, 2020, Google rolled out a new core update to its search algorithm. Since then, I’ve heard from many webmasters who have found their traffic declining as higher authority domains have usurped the top positions on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Fortunately, there are steps you can take to remedy the situation and boost your number of daily unique visitors back into or above the normal range. I’ve spent nearly a decade helping small businesses and large enterprises alike rebound their traffic figures after Google updates by following these steps.
Undo Over-Optimization
I’ve found that the introduction of this recent core update has resulted in larger brands and high domain authority websites taking the place of smaller sites that were “over-optimized.” In other words, websites that utilize high keyword ratios (i.e., keyword stuffing) to rank.
To put your web properties back in Google’s good graces, consider editing your existing content so that your rankable keywords aren’t used more than 10 times per 1,000 words at the absolute maximum. Instead, edit your content so that it reads more naturally and focuses on providing value and originality rather than pure on-page optimization.
Check For New Google Penalties
If your website has taken a hit in traffic, your first step is to diagnose the cause. Making a causal determination can be difficult, if not impossible, but often Google penalties are the culprit.
Google penalties are adjustments to Google’s algorithm that negatively affect a website’s search engine optimization (SEO) performance. Such penalties are given out as a punishment when a website owner utilizes black hat SEO techniques that violate Google’s rules. Common culprits behind Google penalties include:
• Duplicated blog content.
• Use of paid guest posting or private blog networks (PBNs).
• Invisible text.
• Internal 404 errors.
• Excessive link swapping.
To check if you’ve received a Google penalty, sign into the Google Search Console, and read your notifications. Alternatively, you could use free tools that track organic traffic over time, such as this one. If your Google penalty audit comes back positive, you must switch your SEO strategy and edit your content so that your website is compliant with Google’s rules.
Run A Backlink Audit
There are two driving forces behind SEO rankings: the quality of the content (i.e., on-page SEO) and the number and quality of backlinks that refer to your content (i.e., off-page SEO).
Since the quality of your content probably hasn’t changed (unless you’ve recently edited your content), it’s more likely that your backlink profile has been altered. Luckily, there are handy tools with free trial options that allow you to run a backlink audit in only a few minutes, such as SEMrush and Ahrefs.
If these SEO tools notice a drop in the number of referring domains that correspond with your drop in traffic over time, then you may have found the culprit. If you’re aware of which links you may have lost, contact the webmaster of the referring website, and ask them if there’s anything you can do to reinstate the link. Otherwise, you’ll have to start link building from scratch.
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