Search Traffic down 50% but rankings same?

[bvrob]

One of my client's sites is experiencing a major decrease in search traffic (by 50%) but the main terms she usually gets traffic for, she's ranking the same or even better over the period of time that the traffic has decreased.

What could cause this?

[seanmccauley]

I assume that you/your client are using google analytics? Have there been any changes in urls etc recently as this can affect how GA calculates your traffic. If your client any adwords campaigns, have they made any changes?

Otherwise, have their been any external changes eg

1. seasonal or other product/service demand changes which affect traffic to your clients site?

2. Changes in competitor SEO activity eg improved meta descriptions increasing their ctr

3. Changes in competitor adwords either spend or ad copy?

There will be an explanation though it may take some detective work..

[EGOL]

Over time, most of my first page Google rankings have delivered less and less traffic even though my positions on the SERPs have remained the same.

Google has placed image results in the SERPs, news results, product results, local map results, video results, left side bar options. Each time they implement these I see a drop in traffic.

Google is finally becoming a better webmaster instead of just a search engine.  They are learning how to keep traffic on Google.com instead of giving it to me.

So, the format of the SERPs can really cut into your traffic.

In addition, the actions of your competitors can cut into your traffic and even more into your sales.  Here are a couple of examples...

One of my competitors is a publisher who sells at MSRP.  I will never beat them in the SERPs for their own brand.  However, I can rank #2 below them and shout a discount price in my title tag.  Guess who started getting LOTS more traffic and lots more sales after that price went up?  My competitor lost what I gained.

I also was able to give something away for free that other people were selling.  I was ranking #4 at the time.  When I placed the word FREE at the front of my title tag, traffic shot up and the number of links, likes and tweets that I received also went up.  Not long after I was #1 and my competitors took a traffic loss - even before my rankings improved.

So, go out and look at the SERPs for changes that Google has made or changes that your competitors are up to.  THat might explain it.

Finally... if this ranking drop was recent, remember that public schools and colleges just dismissed for the summer.  Academic search is huge for some sites.  Another seasonal change might also be at play.

[bvrob]

Do you find that adding a word, like FREE to the title tag drops you at all? I was just nervous to tweak the title tag for fear that it would anger google:)

But if it's not a big deal, I'd love to change it to accomplish your larger point that you can try to get more mileage out of the real estate you're already getting from google.

[EGOL]

I was just nervous to tweak the title tag for fear that it would anger google:)

I experiment with title tags a lot.  I believe that Google will not be bothered if you tweak them once or twice.

Do you find that adding a word, like FREE to the title tag drops you at all?

We have lots of title tags with FREE in them - often as the first word.  They rank great and are in moderate competition.

More info on kickass titles here.

[evolvingSEO]

This is a pretty broad question, so hard to tell exactly what's going without more information.  Things I'd investigate first:

• Go to your Google Webmaster Tools account (assuming you have it installed on the site) and check number of impressions and CTR.  Has the site not been showing up in as many searches overall as compared to the past?

• Go to Google Insight and see if there has been a decrease in search volume overall for your keywords to correlates to the drop in traffic.

• Go a little deeper into the analytics, and see if you can pinpoint specifically where search traffic decreased.  Did it decrease across all keywords?  Can you segment out certain keywords and isolate ones which dropped where others did not?

• Also, check analytics for a drop in search traffic on all engines or just google, just bing, just yahoo etc.

Overall, at least the way you described the scenario, it seems when diagnosing an issue like this you really need more information.  And specifically, you need more information that correlates to the drop in traffic, ie other changes that occur parallel in time to the drop in traffic.

• Also, how are you tracking rankings?  You'll want to verify its accuracy perhaps by getting rankings from another source just to be sure.

[bvrob]

Thanks for the excellent detailed info. I'm going to check on all of it and get back...

[MarieHaynes]

This is probably not the case, but are you absolutely sure that there is no personalized search issue?  It could be that she thinks her rankings are high, but really they're not.

It's a long shot, but thought I'd mention it!

[ChristineCadena]

.....or make sure your OWN search results are personalize and "disable" web history on Google.   If you have your own search personalized, or if you have the web history "enabled", Google will serve up the client's site in the same ranking position but the rest of the world may not see it as you do.   I use RankChecker plug in to always get another set of eyes to check rankings.

[bvrob]

Thanks-I based the question on the rankchecker plugin results and I always make sure to log out of google, but I usually don't rely on my own search results. RankChecker shows either the same rankings over the last 2 months or improvement but actual visiters have dropped dramatically. I still need to go through the data in the webmaster central about actual impressions and all that.