Our Sites Organic Traffic Went Down Significantly After The June Core Algorithm Update, What Can I Do?

[NBJ_SM]

After the June Core Algorithim Update, the site suffered a loss of about 30-35% of traffic. My suggestions to try to get traffic back up have been to add metadata (since the majority of our content is lacking it), as well ask linking if possible, adding keywords to alt images, expanding and adding content as it's thin content wise. I know that from a technical standpoint there are a lot of fixes we can implement, but I do not want to suggest anything as we are onboarding an SEO agency soon. Last week, I saw that traffic for the site went back to "normal" for one day and then saw a dip of 30% the next day.

Despite my efforts, traffic has been up and down, but the majority of organic traffic has dipped overall this month. I have been told by my company that I am not doing a good job of getting numbers back up, and have been given a warning stating that I need to increase traffic by 25% by the end of the month and keep it steady,  or else. Does anyone have any suggestions? Is it realistic and/or possible to reach that goal?

[jasongmcmahon]

Hi there,

What efforts have you made to date?

Have you audited the site in more detail?

• Where the drops occurred via Search Console?
• What keywords dropped the most & when
• Audited your website to see if there are any technical issue?
• Conducted a backlink audit - do you acquire backlinks

You appear to lack the basics such as:

• meta-data
• alt tags
• substantial content, possibly due to the lack of a content strategy

25% by the end of the month doesn't sound realistic, an external agency probably won;t turn anything around in less than a few months.

[NBJ_SM]

Hi Joe!

Thanks for your response! Much appreciated!

We have not audited the site, we are not even on Search Console. Resources are very limited as I am the only person working on this and don't have the technical skills or support to do any of that.

I have been doing basic on-page SEO but can't bring up the numbers after the core algorithm update. I tracked the drop on June 4th on Google Analytics. All the articles we used to rank high for organically dropped significantly (#35, #62, #15 etc when they used to be in the top 10).

I have only been able to track keywords through Moz. A few keywords that used to rank #1 are now #51. I also wonder if it's because of our ad to content ratio. It's not the most aesthetically pleasing or user-friendly site.

[willcritchlow]

I think you know this, but there is no way of guaranteeing getting back to your prior traffic levels in short order (or +25%), nor keeping it steady. Algorithm updates can fundamentally change the winners and losers in a given segment, and there may be no quick win to return to old results as the underlying variables have changed.

Some ideas and thoughts though:

1. I don't know what kind of site you are running, but with ecommerce / lead gen sites, we have sometimes seen that this kind of core update can lead to a traffic drop without a drop in true performance (sales / leads) because the update was actually aligned with user expectations and dropped in areas where you weren't performing anyway (see e.g. slide 116 onwards in my colleague's presentation here). If you happened to find that you were in this situation, you may find that you can make the case to the business that the situation isn't as dire as it seemed at first
2. For practical ideas, I'd advise checking out Marie Hayne's work - see for example her presentation at our recent SearchLove conference in Boston on practical tips for improving EAT (Expertise Authoritativeness Trustworthiness)

Good luck!

[jasongmcmahon]

Hi,

What's the URL & What keywords are you tracking?