Organic Traffic Decrease WOW and YOY sitewide

[cckapow]

My site is experiencing a decrease in organic traffic WOW for the last two weeks and for the first time all year is showing a decrease compared to last year's traffic for the same weeks. At first I thought this was a seasonal pattern due to spring break (we are mostly b to b), but the dip has sustained for another week. The only changes made during this time period were a few on-page updates and some title tag updates to a specific group of pages. However, the decrease is sitewide including branded clicks and impressions. I haven't noticed any changes in rankings. Impressions and clicks are down per Search Console, but CTR and Avg Rank haven't changed. Is it possible that we've been penalized or hit by an algo shift? What's the best way to know for sure?

VLGLUTt

[RobertFisher]

Based solely on how you have written this, it is hard to believe it is algo change or any type of penalty. If you are ranking in the same places and CTR is same, it would seem that overall traffic for those terms is down. I realize it is not yet a month but have you checked the terms in Adwords to see if traffic is off this month?

Best,

[MattRoney]

Hi cckapow!

Any update on this? Did you ever get to checking the AdWords traffic, as Robert suggested?

[cckapow]

I checked traffic trends in Adwords and Google Trends, and there was some decrease around spring break, but it wasn't sustained and we didn't see a similar dip last year. Traffic is starting to come back, but still trailing last month significantly. We did add some language to our title tags that targets more of a niche/qualified audience on some of our pages. I haven't seen a decline in rankings or avg rank in GWT, but now I'm wondering if this is somehow related. Anyone have this type of experience before?

[RuthBurrReedy]

It might be that your updated title tag language is decreasing clicks through to your site - so you're still ranking the same, but not as many people are clicking. Since you're wanting to target a more qualified audience, this dip in traffic might not be a bad thing if you're seeing a higher conversion rate or more qualified leads. If you're running AdWords, it might be worth testing both versions of the language from your title tags in ads to see if that is impacting your click-through rate.