Before we even start discussing the issue of a fall in traffic, you need to understand that this is not always caused by your own error. Sure, a sudden fall in traffic can be an indicator that there’s something that you’re not doing right, but it’s also a thing that might be completely unavoidable in some scenarios.

Google may change their rules, your competitors might out-compete you and your allies in the digital world (influencers and bloggers that you collaborate with) may experience changes that will affect you, as well. A sudden fall in traffic is a serious thing but it’s not necessarily a doomsday scenario. Here are the top seven tips for those who are looking for a way to recover from this.

Do the analysis

Before you even start devising a strategy, you need to understand the main reason behind this fall in traffic. Now, the only way to do so is to start analyzing your traffic, where it comes from and what caused this negative trend. For instance, there might be a part of the year during which you have less traffic than usual, then again, there are other parts of the year when the traffic is at its peak.

Comparing these two periods will create an illusion of a massive discrepancy, when, in truth, this is only a normal seasonal fluctuation. Then again, if there’s a newcomer to the market, it’s only natural that things will change. For instance, both Snapchat and TikTok took some audience from Instagram and there’s no reason why a similar trend might not happen in your industry, as well.

Check algorithm updates

The first thing you need to understand is the fact that it might not be about anything that you, yourself have done. You see, the algorithm gets updated every now and then. When this happens, you need to check algorithm updates and see if there are some adjustments that you can make in order to set things straight.

Keep in mind that these guidelines don’t appear overnight, which is why you should have enough time to prepare for the update even without having to wait for your traffic to drop. Algorithm updates are definitely a major concern but also a recurring one, which is why you need a system and not a one-time fix to the problem.

Crisis response

Another thing worth mentioning is the likelihood that your name has been slandered in the public, which is why you’re losing followers and readers. When this happens, the best way to respond to the situation is with a skilled PR team on your side.

This is a subtle art, seeing as how waiting for too long to respond may be interpreted as a clear sign of guilt, while responding too soon may be seen as too defensive and, once again, a clear sign of guilt. Then again, trying to respond before you have all the available information may also be quite problematic. Needless to say, from these several simple examples alone, it’s more than clear why you need professionals to tend to this issue.

Rank drop

Your SEO rank is one of the main determiners of your average traffic. You see, there is a statistic according to which about 33 percent of all searches end after the user clicks on the first link. This means that anyone who is not in this position automatically loses two-thirds of the entire user pool.

In other words, dropping from rank 1 to rank 2 can drastically reduce your traffic and the situation gets worse the further down you go. This is why more and more companies from major business hubs like Sydney prefer to team up with SEO specialists in order to keep this prestigious position. With the help of experts from SEO agency from Sydney, you can easily battle your competitors both locally and globally.

Earn new backlinks

In order to understand why your traffic has fallen, it’s important to try and understand where all of this traffic is coming from. There is a lot of traffic coming from quality backlinks but links degrade and disappear over time. Losing several such links, which naturally happens in content progression, may lead to a serious decline in your traffic and there’s not much you can do to stop it.

All you can do is continuously try to earn backlinks so that you have a steady traffic volume even if one or two of these crucial backlinks eventually disappears. In other words, the net loss and net gain of the traffic of these backlinks should be either neutral or net positive at all times. For this, you need a great outreach strategy and a solid content marketing campaign.

Competition

Previously, we’ve mentioned the fact that dropping just a couple of positions on the list can drastically reduce the amount of traffic that you receive. However, it’s not necessarily that you’re losing rank that can cause this problem. Your competition may start investing more in marketing, reinvent their branding approach or just adopt the latest digital marketing trends faster and more efficiently than you did.

Needless to say, this is something that you need to keep up with. The majority of companies set aside about 10 percent of their average annual revenue as a marketing budget but there are some who set aside as much as 20 or even 50 percent in order to stay on top. The choice is yours and it needs to be made after careful market analysis.

Site redesign or migration

Lastly, you need to understand the fact that, at one point, you might face a website redesign or migration in which case, you will initially experience a drop in traffic. If you do things right, you will be able to recover from this fairly soon but the period of adjustment may be a cause for alarm.

This is especially true, seeing as how even the smallest of oversight may have long-lasting consequences. Pay special attention to the Not found tab in your Crawl Errors section on the Google Search Console. This is something that definitely needs your attention and something that you should definitely focus on.

In conclusion

At the end of the day, analytics should always be a starting point, seeing as how you can’t devise a solution to the problem without identifying the problem first. Still, having a contingency plan, in advance, can facilitate your problem-solving abilities a bit. Also, regularly checking your traffic and all the relevant metrics can also ensure that you identify the problem as soon as it appears, thus giving you a significant edge at maintaining your brand reputation.