SEMrush vs GA rankings drop since February and December 2018?

[kekepeche]

I am wondering if someone can help me understand what's going on with our site.

We had a 50% drop in the number of keywords ranking from February 2018 to October in SEMrush. Looking at SEMrush, I am actually seeing a drop after 2/208 with many competitor's sites as well. We saw moderate improvement in November, but around December 6th, we started seeing a decline the number of keywords ranking again.

In Google Analytics, there was a 10-15% drop in traffic after February 2018, which recovered September to December, but since early December, there is a drop again.

In GWT, I am seeing something similar to analytics with impressions and clicks.

We have done some SEO the past couple of years, but we have taken care to do things white-hat so as not to incur a penalty. We have also invested in writing content for our blog on a regular basis.

Any thoughts?

[shahryar89]

Hi,

I just got a client who has had the same problem as you do, different numbers - drop and goes back up again. I did some analysis as he also had taken some SEO services. Well, I wouldn't blame the backlinks that he had but yes, it was excessive backlinks produced during the Dec 2017 - Mar 2018. Which I believe wasn't required at all. Did some fixing with backlinks and now he is back up again.

When it comes to your case, Do not rely 100% on third-party tools like SEMrush they can be right up to some extent but not 100%. Second, season or competition could be another thing that may have pushed you down during a certain period of time.

Third, what does GSC says, High impression or Clicks? It's okay to have a higher impression but If clicks are somewhere around the same in comparison to organic traffic that it's okay as you do not get the 100% exactly the same data both in GSC and GA, numbers may differ up to 5%-10%.  Also focus more on High Impression VS. CTR. Do some comparsion what was working in Feb or June or anyother high months and what's not working this month. Which queries dropped in CTR or Impression etc. Do some analysis.

Last, we all know there was an update in August that has impacted most of the websites and experienced the dropped in traffic and such small updates are still impacting the sites.

My suggestion: Do an audit, go through the backlinks, check your keywords, see which pages were working good? What keywords went down? What could be the reason competition or do you need to change ON page.