How To Tell If Lower Website Traffic Is Caused By SEO or Lower Search Demand
Seeing your organic traffic drop is never fun. It can be quite frightening actually. How Do You Know If a Traffic Drop Is an SEO Problem? Before you assume something has gone terribly wrong with your SEO, there are a few things you should look at.
Sometimes your SEO really did take a hit. Your rankings dropped, a page lost traffic, or something on the website changed.
Other times, your rankings are basically the same. There are simply fewer people searching.
Seasonality, the economy, changes in an industry, and changes in how people search can all affect your traffic. Before you start changing your website, try to figure out what actually dropped and why.
Start With Google Search Console
Total website traffic is the shiny star everyone likes to look at. It is an important number, but by itself, it doesn’t tell us very much.
If you have Google Search Console set up, log in and compare the time when traffic dropped to an earlier period. You can also compare it to the same time last year.
That year-over-year comparison can be especially helpful for a seasonal business. A lawn care company shouldn’t expect December searches to look like June searches. Knowing the normal busy and slow times for your business makes the data easier to understand.
In Google Search Console, look at the big four numbers:
- Clicks
- Impressions
- Average position
- Click-through rate
Each one tells the same basic story from another vantage point.
A traffic drop alone does not tell you where the problem is. And if we don’t know where the problem is, it is a lot tougher to fix it.
A drop in website traffic can happen for a lot of different reasons. We can review your rankings, keywords, important pages, competitors, and search data to help figure out what changed and whether your SEO actually needs attention.
Did Your Search Impressions Drop?
Impressions tell you how often one of your website listings showed up in someone’s Google search results. It does not mean they clicked your website. It means an actual user searched and Google showed your listing.
Let’s say your website had 10,000 impressions last August. This August, you had 7,000.
If your rankings stayed about the same, there simply may have been fewer searches.
That doesn’t mean Google suddenly decided it doesn’t like your website. People may just not be looking for the same thing as often.
Not many people are going to Google the best place to buy a Christmas tree in July.
If impressions are dropping for some of your important keywords, this can also be a good time to look for other keyword opportunities. Long-tail keywords are often overlooked because they may only get a small number of searches. A few good long-tail keywords, though, can help you reach people who are searching in a more specific way.
Did Your Rankings Drop?
If your impressions, clicks, and average rankings all dropped, then SEO and digital marketing becomes a much bigger suspect.
Don’t just look at one big average ranking number either.
Look at which keywords lost rankings. Was it one keyword or twenty? Which pages dropped? Did other pages actually improve? Did one service lose visibility, or did rankings fall across the whole site?
One good page can sometimes bring a lot of traffic to a website. If that page moves from position two to position eight, you could see a noticeable traffic drop.
Now you have something useful to investigate.
Why did that page lose ranking? What changed? Did a competitor build a better page? Did you change something on yours?
Those questions are much more useful than simply saying, “Our traffic is down.”
What Happened to Your Click-Through Rate?
Sometimes rankings stay about the same. Impressions stay about the same too.
But your clicks go down.
People are still searching. Google is still showing your website. They just aren’t clicking on it as often.
Maybe competitors wrote better page titles. Maybe your description in Google isn’t getting attention anymore. Search results could also have more ads, map listings, AI results, featured answers, or other information keeping users from clicking.
This is where we might work on page titles, descriptions, or the wording on the page.
What makes SEO frustrating sometimes is that the answer isn’t always perfectly clean.
You could have slightly worse rankings, a title that isn’t getting enough clicks, AND fewer people searching at the same time.
If you’re looking at the numbers and thinking, “I have no idea what any of this is telling me,” that’s also when it can help to have Full Scope Creative take a look with you.
Check Google Trends and Keyword Search Volume
Google Search Console tells you what happened with your website. Google Trends can help show what is happening with searches in general.
Look up some of the products, services, and topics that matter to your business.
Are searches growing? Staying about the same? Falling? Do they rise and fall at certain times every year?
Keyword research tools can give you more information about search volume as well.
None of these numbers are perfect. I would never make a major SEO decision from one graph or one keyword report.
They are pieces of the puzzle.
Look at What Is Happening With Your Competitors
At this point, I would probably go back to the beginning and run another SEO audit.
We start our SEO work at Full Scope Creative with an audit because we want good data before we start making decisions. If something changes later, going through that process again can help us see what is different.
Look at your competitors too.
If several competitors are losing visibility at the same time, there could be lower demand, seasonality, changes in Google, or something happening across your industry.
If they are holding steady or improving while you are dropping, then it is time to look harder at your own SEO.
Maybe competitors improved their content. Maybe they built better pages. Maybe they’re answering the search better.
Maybe writing a blog twice a month doesn’t cut it anymore.
SEO isn’t something where you find one trick that works and repeat it forever.
Think About Anything You Recently Changed
We’ve had this happen at Full Scope Creative.
We made updates to an important page and later saw our SEO heading in the wrong direction. We went through our notes, looked at what we changed, and ran another SEO audit.
We realized we didn’t make the right updates.
So we fixed them.
After that, we started seeing the SEO move in a better direction again.
I’m fine admitting that because SEO involves testing and learning. Sometimes something you think should help doesn’t.
Look at your own recent changes. Did you rewrite an important page? Change the title? Change a URL? Remove wording? Redesign something? Change internal links?
You can even hurt a page by trying too hard to do SEO.
Writing spammy articles, stuffing the same keyword everywhere, or trying to game Google can create problems rather than solve them.
Don’t Start Changing Things Until You Know What You’re Trying To Fix
When traffic drops, the natural reaction is to start doing things.
Rewrite pages. Add keywords. Change headings. Add links. Write more blogs.
But none of that helps if you are fixing the wrong problem.
If fewer people are searching, rewriting every page on your website won’t magically create more searches. If people aren’t clicking because your listing doesn’t answer what they want, adding the keyword seven more times isn’t going to solve that either.
First, come up with the best explanation you can for why traffic dropped.
Then make a plan.
Work the plan.
Keep track of what you changed and watch what happens.
A Traffic Drop Doesn’t Automatically Mean Your SEO Is Failing
A drop in website traffic should get your attention.
It shouldn’t automatically make you panic.
If rankings and click-through rate are steady but impressions are down, search demand may have dropped.
If rankings, important pages, and visibility dropped while competitors stayed strong, you probably have an SEO problem to work on.
If rankings and impressions are holding steady but clicks dropped, look at your titles, descriptions, search intent, and what else Google is showing.
The goal isn’t just to find out that traffic dropped.
You want to know why.
Get Help Figuring Out What Your SEO Data Is Telling You
If your Google traffic has dropped and you aren’t sure what happened, reach out to Full Scope Creative.
We can run a new SEO audit, review your rankings, important pages, keywords, competitors, and search trends, and help figure out where the change is coming from.
Sometimes there is an SEO problem that needs to be fixed. Sometimes the market simply changed.
Either way, we’d rather start with actual data than start guessing.