Organic Traffic: Hockey-stick growth followed by slow rampdown of death!
-
My site, Site Builder Report, was started last year.
Months 1 - 6 saw modest organic traffic growth.
Months 6 - 9 saw explosive organic traffic growth.
Months 9 - 12 have seen a steady decrease in organic traffic.(I've attached a graph for visualizing this)
The site has not changed much over this time. In fact, in the last 3 months, I've done two things to try to get organic traffic trending upwards again:
- Increased the amount of long-form articles on the site (from 1 new article every 3 weeks to 1 new article every week)
- Fixed approxately 150 five hunded (500) errors in Google Webmaster Tools three weeks ago (converted them to 404s)
Neither fix has really been able to change the trend (although perhaps it's too early to tell with the fixing of errors).
Does this downtrend warrant concern? It's having significant business effects- would hiring an SEO consultant be the next step for reversing this trend? Any thoughts?
-
... killing me Steven ; )
It is really tough to say; however, I typed "website builder reviews" into Google Trends and it looks like there was a drop in searches for that terminology in March, which would correspond to what I am seeing on your graph.
Mike
-
I thought your graph displayed traffic and not rankings, how are you SERPs did they drop? Or are you still ranking in the same position for your keywords?
Because if the rankings are the same, it could be (I know generally this gets sorted out within first few months) but could be the issue of google still trying to figure out where to rank you: http://www.linkbuildr.com/reasons-why-new-pages-rank-well-then-drop/
-
Hi Vladim! I'm not sure I know what you mean- I attached a graph that might help visualize how the rankings have changed over time
-
Thanks Mike, sorry the post may be a bit unclear. I meant "Hockey Stick" as a metaphor.
The website actually targets keywords such as "website builders", "website builder reviews"
-
Hi Steven,
How are your rankings have they changed?
-
Hi Steven,
My guess would be you are seeing the downtrend, because of the season.
Here is the data I pulled from Google Trends for "hockey stick" - as you can see, the peaks tend to be in December and January for the year.
My guess things will be slow until next year when the season picks back up.
Hope this helps.
Mike
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Traffic cut-off since Google core update
Hi all, I am the webmaster of www.chepicap.com/en (Cryptocurrency news), and since the 3rd of june (Google core algorithm update) we got the hammer from Google. Organic traffic dropped with 90%+ overnight. We are still in the dark whether we can do to improve the current situation. Does someone have suggestions regarding this issue?
Algorithm Updates | | NielsDE0 -
Reduced traffic from google news
I have a question for my site. Can you advice me for situation? Last 1 months my site reduced traffic from google and google news.. And i dont know why? I need your advice. Thanks. Yunus Altindag Diyarbakir/Turkey
Algorithm Updates | | maxbilgisayar0 -
PPC vs Organic CTR
Hello, I found two studies that seem to contradict themselves about PPC vs Organic CTR:
Algorithm Updates | | Cornel_Ilea
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2200730/Organic-vs.-Paid-Search-Results-Organic-Wins-94-of-Time
http://brandongaille.com/google-organic-click-through-rate-statistics/ Which one is true? Thank you
Cornel0 -
My Site PR lost to PR4 ! I worked as per SEOmoz Suggestion - No Traffic Drop, Organic Search is good and higher than referral or Direct Traffic !
My Site PR5 lost to PR4 ! I worked as per SEOmoz Suggestion - No Traffic Drop, Organic Search is good and higher than referral or Direct Traffic ! What might be the problem ? Nov 29-2012 my site was hacked very badly and google Blacklisted me for the first time and if you see now " it says, Past 90 days nearly 19 times my site was acted as medium to spread virus" Even thought we checked our FTP, Cpanel or Home Directory - Everything seems good. My domain which was hosted - has other domains in the same network and some are porn - those sites are injecting malicious code ! May be that's the reason or please give me some idea how to improve it !
Algorithm Updates | | Esaky0 -
Organizing Website Content
Hey everyone! I am looking for some opinions on organizing website content. Here are two thoughts. I am open to alternative suggestions as well. Thanks for any consideration in this matter! **Aviation Supply Store Thought A ** **Helicopters Airplanes Rockets ** Helicopter engines Airplane engines Rocket engines Helicopter Fuels Airplane Fuels Rocket fuels Helicopter Accessories Airplane Accessories Rocket Accessories Aviation Supply Store Thought B Engines Fuels Accessories Helicopter Engines Helicopter Fuels Helicopter Accessories Airplane Engines Airplane Fuels Airplane Accessories Rocket Engines Rocket Fuels Rocket Accessories I simply chose aviation as an example. I'm just having difficulty deciding on how best to catagorize. Thank You!
Algorithm Updates | | APICDA0 -
"No Follow", C Blocks and IP Addresses combined into one ultimate question?
I think the the theme of this question should be "Is this worth my time?" Hello, Mozcon readers and SEO gurus. I'm not sure how other hosting networks are set up, but I'm with Hostgator. I have a VPS level 5 which (I think) is like a mini personal server. I have 4 IP addresses, although it is a C block as each IP address is off by one number in the last digit of the address. I have used 3 out of the 4 IP addresses I have been given. I have added my own sites (some high traffic, some start-ups) and I've hosted a few websites that I have designed from high paying customers. -one man show, design them, host them and SEO them With the latest Penguin update, and with learning that linking between C Block sites is not a great idea, I have "No Followed" all of the footer links on client sites back to my portfolio site. I have also made sure that there are no links interlinking between any of my sites as I don't see them in the Site Explorer, and I figure if they aren't helping, they may be hurting the rankings of those keywords. Ok, so...my question is: "I have one IP address that I'm not using, and I have a popular high traffic site sharing it's IP with 5 other sites (all not related niches but high quality) Is it worth it to move the high traffic site to it's own IP address even though making the switch would take up to 48hrs for process to take affect? -My site would be down for, at the most 2 days (1 and a half if I switch the IP's at night) Is this really worth the stress of losing readers? Will moving a site on an IP with 5 other sites help the rankings if it was to be on it's own IP? Thank you very much ps- I can't make it to MOZcon this year, super bummed
Algorithm Updates | | MikePatch0 -
Lost 50% google traffic in one day - panic?
Hi girls + guys, a site of us were hit by a google update or a google penalty. We have lost 50% google traffic in one day (25th april, 2012). (Total visitors in average per day: 6k, yesterday: 3k) It's a german website, so I think google.de (germany) was updated. Our rankings in google.at (austria) are also affected, but it's not that bad as in google.de. We have not done any specific on page seo activities in the last two months. GWT doesn't have any message for us (no critical errors). After my first analyse I can say this: google has indexed 17k pages (thats fine) we are on 1st place with our domain name the last three days, the google traffic went up (+20%), but yesterday it was 50% below average (so -70%) last week we had a very good day, we had twice the traffic than normal, but this calmed down the following days we have lost number no. 1 places at two high traffic keywords. We had these no 1 rankings for years. We have been outranked by two of our competitors, but they have not done any onpage changes. We have lost a lot of positions at a lot of keywords. But there are also keywords which moved up. We have good content, useres are visiting 5 pages in average. No virus, no hacker (no hidden cloaking page) it's an old domain (2002) Lot of (good) inbound links Lot's of likes, g+. Good twitter activty. So, all in all I think it's more likely a ranking algo change than a penalty (a penalty for what reason?) My specific question(s): Is there any "check list" which could help me to find out the reason for this mess? What is the best strategy to regain the positions? New HTML code? New On page seo? (seomoz grades most of our important pages an A) Any idea would be appreciated! Best wishes,
Algorithm Updates | | GeorgFranz
Georg.1 -
Are you guys finding more No Follows being counted as links?
Wonding if anyone is finding more and more no follows actually being counted as links.
Algorithm Updates | | barrystix30