Traffic drops, here are 5 causes according to Google
Why is my site losing traffic?
A user takes advantage of the YouTube dialogue hour to question the Senior Webmaster trends analyst of Google on the issue that plagues his site: “Since 2017 we are gradually losing ranking in general and on relevant keywords, as well” he says, adding that he also checked the backlinks received, which in half of the cases derive from a single subdomain, and the contents (self-generated using a tool, no longer used for a few years).
The user’s question is therefore twofolded: first, he asks Mueller for advice on how to stop the gradual decrease in traffic, but also a practical suggestion on the possible use of the Disavow link to remove all the backlinks of the sub-domain, fearing that such an action might cause further effects on the ranking.
Detecting the causes of the drop
Mueller starts from the second part of the question, and answers in a clear way: “If you remove with the Disavow a significant part of your natural links there can be some negative effects on the ranking”, confirming once again the impact of the links to rank on Google.
Coming then to the more practical part, and so to the possible causes of the decrease of traffic and positions, the googler thinks that the proposed contents can be good (“if we’re talking about extra informative documents regarding your site, the products or the services that you offer”) and then there is no need to block or remove them from the indexing. Therefore, at first sight it can be said that “neither the links nor the contents are directly the causes of the drop of the site”.
The reasons why a site loses ranking
Mueller articulates his response more extensively, saying that in such cases, “when you’re seeing a sort of gradual decline for a fairly long period of time,” there may be some sort of “natural variation in placement” which can be determined by five possible reasons.
- Changes in the Web ecosystem.
- Changes to the algorithm.
- Changes in user searches.
- Changes in user expectations of content.
- Gradual changes that do not result from great and dramatic problems of websites.
The Google ranking system is constantly moving and there is always who goes up and who goes down (the improvement in ranking of one site is the loss of position of another, inevitably). Given that, we can investigate the causes mentioned in the hangout.
When a site loses traffic and rankings
Among the changes to the ecosystem, according to the interpretation of Roger Montti on searchengineland, should be listed situations such as increased competition or the “natural disappearance of backlinks” because the linking sites have gone offline or totally removed the link, and anyhow all factors external to the site that can cause loss of ranking and traffic.
Clearer is the reasoning on algorithm changes, and we know how broad core updates are also becoming frequent (like the latest one, the January 2020 core update), which redefine the meaning of a Web page’s relevance to a search query and its relevance to people’s search intent.
And indeed the users are the “protagonists” of the other two reasons mentioned: we are repeating it in an almost obsessive way, but understanding people’s intentions is the key to make quality contents and to have a performing site, and therefore it is important to follow the evolution of queries but also to know the types of content that Google is rewarding (because users like them).
How to recover a site
According to Mueller, the way out of this situation is to roll up our sleeves and look more carefully at the global issues of the site, looking for areas where significant improvements can be made and trying to make contents more relevant to the types of users that represent our target.
More generally, the Google Senior Webmaster trends analyst tells us that it often takes to give “second look” at the site and its context, not to stop at what might appear the first cause of decline (in the specific case, the backlinks) but deepen the study and evaluate all the possible factors that influence the decrease of ranking and traffic.
