Why Would My Organic Traffic Drop?
If you have never audited your website and it’s SEO, you may not realize some potential issues that might cause your site to drop in search ranking. However, we have compiled 5 reasons that are capable of making your organic traffic drop:
1. Website Redesigns and Changes
Deciding to redesign your site or update its themes or plugins is good, but it can affect its search ranking. Before you embark on a complete redesign of your site, ensure to get the metrics reports with details of traffic, links, page URL mapping, and website audit. You will be able to retain your SEO strategies and update your website.
2. Plagiarism or Duplicate Content
Publishing duplicate content on your website will hurt your site’s search ranking. If the content on another website appear on your site, and Google decides that it is to manipulate rankings and drive traffic to your website, Google will penalize your site. Google can even remove your site’s URL from its index.
3. Competition from Other Websites
There is a severe competition among webmasters to keep their websites on the top of the search engine result pages. As a result, competitors are upping their games, inventing new SEO strategies, and applying fresh approaches to drive traffic to their websites. If you do not take any proactive steps to improve your ranking, your site will drop in search ranking while others climb higher.
4. Poor SEO Strategy
Your website’s SEO profile or strategy will determine its position on the search engines. Using outdated keywords strategy or following unhealthy SEO practices such as keyword stuffing and use of unnatural links will affect your site’s SEO profile as well as your website’s search ranking. To avoid being penalized, carry out a proper SEO audit on your website to identify foul-plays and rectify them as soon as possible.
5. Hacked Website
Hackers target websites to damage the design or appearance of a website or steal users’ information. Apart from the loss of data and other types of losses that result from the hacking, a website’s search ranking will also be affected. Therefore, beef up your site’s security and get rid of any signs suspicious users may have left behind.