You’ve been receiving a steady flow of traffic to your website, but suddenly this traffic has halted. What’s causing the traffic jam? Well, there are many different possible causes. This post explores a few potential common causes.
Most lapses in web traffic are due to falls in search engine rankings. Search engine rankings can be affected by so many factors including:
If you think search engine rankings could be to blame, it could be worth hiring an SEO consultant to see what you can do to boost your rankings. It’s possible that you may need to adapt to algorithm changes or find a way of separating yourself from competition by targeting new keywords.
A public scandal may initially result in a rise in visitors, but after this you may see a significant drop in traffic. Similarly, recent negative Google reviews can put off visitors. These are both worth looking into - it’s possible that you may need to find a way of boosting your reputation again to get people back on board such as investing in a PR company or encouraging happy customers to leave positive reviews.
A slow loading webpage could result in a high bounce rate. In other words, you could be getting visitors, but they could be leaving straight away. As a result, other pages that visitors may have previously taken time to explore once on your site may no longer be getting visitors.
Page speed can also affect a page’s rankings, which could mean that you do experience a drop in traffic in the long run. There are many things that can affect page speed including file size of images, use of videos and even the server that your website is on. Check out this guide for a few tips on how to speed up your website.
If you had redirects in place, you may also want to check that they’re still working. If a certain web address is no longer redirecting visitors to the right page, this could be a clear reason as to why this page has seen a drop in traffic. Fix this in order to help regain traffic.
It’s possible that your website may be getting flagged by security software if security issues have been identified. Be wary of old plug-ins that could be seen as a gateway for viruses or links leading people to pages that are now considered unsafe. There are website security checkers that you can use to determine if your site is deemed secure.
Many other functional issues with your website could be causing you to lose traffic. This could include buttons that no longer work or important images/videos that no longer load. Scour your website to make sure that there are no bugs that need fixing.
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