In the process of building and maintaining a website, facing a decrease in website traffic is inevitable. According to HubSpot, up to 40% of websites experience a decrease in traffic within the first 3 months of the year. The main reason behind this phenomenon can come from subjective or objective reasons. By clearly understanding the causes of the decrease in traffic and finding ways to fix them.
Reasons for website traffic decline
Reasons for website traffic decline
When website traffic decreases, many questions arise. So what are the problems related to the decrease in website traffic?
Subjective reasons leading to reduced website traffic
A drop in a website’s traffic can be due to a variety of technical reasons.
Technical issues
Technical issues are difficulties or problems related to the technical aspects of building, deploying and maintaining a website. These can be issues affecting user experience, page load speed, services, compatibility, security issues and many other technical aspects.
Technical issues that affect website traffic include:
URL not indexed
When a URL is not indexed, it will not appear when users search, leading to a decrease in website traffic.
Main causes:
Not declared to Google
Sitemap is having problems
Website blocked by Google robot
Check website traffic using google search console
Check website traffic using google search console
To fix the above related issues, you can:
First, check your indexing report in Google Search Console for errors. Next, use the URL inspection tool to check if important pages are still in the index. If not, use the “REQUEST INDEXING” option in Search Console.
Robots.Txt Rules are not correct
Robots.txt is a plain text file placed in the root directory that tells Google which pages to crawl.
Incorrect Robots.Txt Rules occur because using the “nofollow/noindex” or “disallow” directive in the robots.txt file on a site can tell Google not to crawl it.
Check Robots.Txt Rules That Cause Website Traffic Drop
Check Robots.Txt Rules That Cause Website Traffic Drop
If you want your website to show up in search results and attract traffic, you need to remove the “nofollow/noindex” directives from your robots.txt file via Google Search Console.
Your website is not optimized.
Websites that do not display properly on mobile devices result in a poor user experience as over 91.04% of the world’s population is using mobile phones. There are many reasons for the decrease in website traffic mainly due to:
Website is not mobile friendly
Website not optimized
To fix the above problem, you can:
Check mobile friendliness via Google Search Console
Optimize website content through support tools such as Yoast SEO, Rank Math,..
Website page loading speed is slow
Websites take too long to load, eroding users’ patience and affecting their experience. The main reasons are:
Resource size too large
Server response slow
Not using caching properly
Through the Pagespeed Insights tool, learn about page loading speed, analyze website errors, and improve:
Optimize images and resources: compress images and resources, and use appropriate image formats
Remove unnecessary spaces and blank lines in CSS and JavaScript code, you can use Minify tools to optimize code.
Set up caching to store previously loaded versions of pages.
See more: Factors affecting website loading speed
Non-technical issues
Some non-technical issues also affect website traffic, such as:
Content is outdated or of poor quality for readers
Engaging and regularly updated content is an important factor in attracting visitors to your website. If your website lacks quality content, uses AI automated content, uses plagiarism, contains irrelevant and outdated information, then neither users nor search engines will see any real value.
Create new content that provides value to readers to address declining website traffic
Create new content that provides value to readers to address declining website traffic
Technical difficulties are the hurdles or issues encountered during the processes of designing, launching, and maintaining a website. These challenges can affect user experience, loading speeds, functionality of services, compatibility, security, and other technical job function email list components. If you want to know more, don’t hesitate to reach out to us—we’re here to help you quickly. You can also visit our website for additional information.
No user wants to read information they already know. Therefore, if you want to increase website traffic, you should regularly update content and create valuable content for readers.
Backlinks, incomplete referrals
In addition to natural traffic, your website can also receive traffic through links and referrals from other websites.
There are several reasons that can lead to incomplete backlinks or referrals on your website:
Irrelevant links: links that are not relevant to the content or do not provide value to the reader, the person may not be interested in clicking on that link.
Incomplete and illogical content affects the website.
To fix the above, you can take the following measures:
Use keywords relevant to the content
Optimize link placement and format
Use action words like “read more,” “learn,” “see examples,” to encourage readers to click on the link.
Keyword ranking drop
Keywords falling in rank is also one of the reasons why website traffic suddenly drops. Keywords falling in rank is mainly due to:
Innovation comes from competitors
Keyword abuse: using too many keywords (keyword stuffing) can cause your website to be considered spam by search engines.
Few people are searching for the keywords you are using
Improve your website’s keyword ranking problems and increase traffic through Google Analytics and Search Console to track your website’s performance:
Keyword optimization: keyword research through Google Keyword Tool, Google Trends,..
Check and update content that is relevant to keywords and provides value to readers
Adjust website according to SEO criteria
Design/UX (user experience) related issues
As more and more people leave your site, search engines like Google will notice that your site is not mobile-friendly. When your site does not provide a good user experience, Google will lower your site’s ranking on SERPs.
Users will feel frustrated when they visit a website that has many problems:
Too many pop-ups at once, messy website layout, contains a lot of advertising content
Content is distorted, lacking images, videos and is less eye-catching
Take the time to research your own website:
Optimize page load speed
Mobile friendly interface design
Create clear menus and site structures so users can easily find the information they need
Improve images and graphics to make your website more eye-catching
And most of all, you should choosing the right keywords for your blog posts listen to the feedback of customers when they rate your website to improve the best user experience.
Objective reasons leading to decrease in website traffic
Website traffic declines can come from many objective reasons, which often do not depend on the quality or performance of the website but can be influenced by external factors. Below are some objective reasons leading to a decrease in traffic:
Google algorithm changes
Google often updates and changes its search algorithm to improve the quality of search results and better meet user needs. After Google updates, it can affect your website’s ranking, leading to a sharp decrease in website traffic.
Facing the problem of reduced website traffic after Google changed its algorithm, you can handle it by:
Find out what Google has changed after the update
Compare the effects after Google update using Ahrefs, SEMRush, especially Rank Math’s Top 5 Losing Posts feature.
Additionally, you can use Google Analytics to track your site’s performance after algorithm changes to adjust your strategy accordingly.
Google Penalty to Your Website
A more serious case involving Google is that your website is being penalized by Google which severely affects your website traffic. Google can reduce your website ranking, remove it from the index (page is not indexed) or even worse your website can disappear from Google.
There are many reasons why a website is penalized by Google:
Duplicate and copied content
Too much spam backlinks
Poor quality content, false content, thin content
Data Abuse
Rank Math’s Top 5 Losing Posts Analysis Tool for Website Analysis
Rank Math’s Top 5 Losing Posts Analysis Tool for Website Analysis
If your website is having problems, you can apply the following methods:
Identify the reason why Google penalized you
Follow the principles when doing SEO
Improve your content and website
Go for natural backlinks aleart news and don’t overdo them
Use Google Analytics to analyze the reasons for the decrease in website traffic.
Use Google Analytics to analyze the reasons for the decrease in website traffic.
Increased competition from other websites
You may be doing everything right but your website traffic is dropping and the reason could be your competitors. If your competitors are doing a better job, you will definitely lose a lot of traffic and users.
Increased competition from other competitors
Increased competition from other competitors
You can monitor and observe your competitors’ activities and communication strategies related to marketing. You can take advantage of tools like Wayback Machine or Versionista to track the changes your competitors have made. If the above activities are positive, you can learn and improve your website.
Changes or restrictions on hosting services
Changing the actual hosting does not significantly affect the website traffic. However, moving to a new hosting plan may bring more restrictions than the old plan and this has a direct impact on page load speed, accessibility, caching, some core logic on the website.
To work around hosting service changes or limitations, you can:
Contact your hosting provider to understand any changes or restrictions they have implemented.
Backup your data while ensuring your website doesn’t lose important data.
There are countless reasons why your website traffic has dropped. At this point, it is important to find out the reasons for the drop in website traffic to find the right solution.
