Traffic falling

[ClaytonKendall]

Over the last couple of weeks the organic traffic on our site has fallen pretty significantly. With the latest update from SEOmoz it went down 25% this week. I know this can happen from time to time, but we have been pretty stable with our traffic for the last year or so for this particular site. We haven't spent a ton of time on it in the last month so the lack of fresh content could be a factor. I can't think of any reason we would be getting penalized. Is there even a way to tell if we are penalized?

[tom14cat14]

How have your rankings been? Have they been falling. The lack of fresh content might be making your rankings go down thus your traffic.

[ClaytonKendall]

Our rankings have stayed pretty much the same. There has been some change here and there, but just the normal small fluctuations. We turned off some adwords campaigns, but this is from the organic traffic stat SEOmoz provides. I have had a suspicion this stat is pulling some adwords clicks for a while now. Is there something I have to set up to keep that data out?

[ClaytonKendall]

What information is taken into account for the SEOmoz organic traffic stat. Does this take into account everything that is not paid? Does SEOmoz offer me a way to track where each of those clicks came from? Is is possible that paid traffic is getting mixed in?

[tom14cat14]

I have noticed that paid traffic from bing and yahoo will be counted as non paid traffic.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

First of all you want to check your Google Analytics account directly. The SEOmoz PRO platform only tracks organic (non-paid) traffic, and you also want to make sure your PRO campaign is attached to the right profile.

You can double check your rankings for your top referring keywords (from Google Analytics). Make sure they haven't fallen. If they haven't, then it's unlikely Google is penalizing you for anything.

Sometimes it's a matter of seasonal traffic fluctuations. This especially happens around the holidays. You can check Google Insights to see if your major keywords are seasonal.

Also check your PRO campaign for any increase in errors, to make sure all your content can be indexed properly.

Finally, sometimes your rankings, and your traffic, actually do drop. Freshen up your content, build good links and you should be on the road to recovery.