The 12 Main Causes for a Sudden Drop in Website Traffic
A sudden, unexplained drop in website traffic can signify many things. The problem might be SEO-related, it might be caused by lost referral traffic, or it might just represent a shift in user behavior. If you can pinpoint the cause of your traffic loss, you can usually turn things around with a few modifications.
How to Determine Why You’ve Had a Sudden Drop in Website Traffic
To determine why you’re losing traffic, the first step is to visit Google Analytics. There are a number of factors to look at here. First, click Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels. From here, you can see where your primary traffic is coming from and where specifically it’s dropping off. If you’re noticing a sharp drop in organic traffic, the problem is most likely SEO-related. If direct traffic and search traffic are both falling, there are likely other factors involved.
As you investigate in Analytics, be sure also to check:
Referral traffic
Social metrics
Keyword-specific traffic
New vs returning visitors (Audience > Behavior > New vs Returning)
Device data (browser, OS, mobile vs desktop)
You’ll also want to spend some time in Google Search Console to determine if your site has been penalized in some way (more on that later).
Sometimes the cause of your traffic drop becomes obvious upon investigation. For example, if you notice that one of your top referrers suddenly stops sending traffic your way, you might visit the referring page and find that the link to your website has been removed.
In other cases, it’s a lot more difficult to identify why your traffic is slipping. And even if you do have a basic idea, it’s not always easy to restore that traffic—such as if you’ve lost a valuable Google keyword ranking.
Main Causes of a Website Traffic Decline
The following is a list of top reasons why web traffic drops. It covers the most common culprits. If you still can’t determine why your website is struggling, or if you can’t restore your inbound traffic on your own, you’ll want to reach out to an experienced SEO agency.
1. Google Core Algorithm Change
The most common reason for an unexpected drop in traffic is a Google algorithm change. Google is constantly adjusting its ranking factors, and algorithm updates are rolled out several times per year. Whenever a major algorithm change occurs, it results in a dramatic shift in search results. You could rank at the top of the search results for your most important keyword on Monday and fall to page 5 on Tuesday.
How to Check: To find out if you’ve been impacted by an algorithm change, take a look at your organic traffic over time. The drop will usually occur quickly and without notice. It’s not a slow, gradual decline. If you can pinpoint a specific date or time period when the decline happened, check to see if an algorithm update occurred at that time. If so, then you were likely impacted by it.
How to Fix: This is where it helps to have a knowledgeable SEO team on your side. If your website has been a casualty of an algorithm update, do some research to see what the update was targeting. Was it poor-quality links? Poor-quality content? Find out the answer, and then update your website accordingly.
2. Link-Based Penalty
Certain Google updates can actually land you in hot water. Google occasionally releases a link-specific update that targets unnatural and spammy linking behaviors. In addition, Google may employ human auditors who manually review websites for spammy links and other violations of Google guidelines. If you’re a victim of a link-based algorithm update or manual spam action, your site will be penalized. Your rankings will drop, and in extreme cases Google can remove your site from its index.
How to Check: Proceed to Google Search Console and click on the manual actions report. There you’ll find a breakdown of any penalties that have been manually imposed along with steps for how to remedy the violation.
How to Fix: This type of action results from poor-quality (i.e spammy) links. If you believe your site has been targeted by mistake, you can contest the action by submitting a reconsideration request in Search Console. Just click the Request Review link and outline why you believe your penalty was a mistake. If you do have problematic links in your profile, you’ll need to try and get them removed or disavow them by uploading a disavow file to Google with the offending URLs.
3. Loss of a Powerful Backlink
Even in 2023, a strong backlink profile is essential for SEO success. But whereas it used to be all about the number of links you had pointing to your website, now search engines care more about the quality of links to your website. One high-authority link from an industry leading website can be more valuable than a hundred links from low-authority websites. If you lose a juicy backlink, your rankings — and consequently your traffic — will plummet. This is especially true if that link was also driving referral traffic.
How to Check: If the link generated referral traffic, you can check to see which referring URL has dropped off (more on that later in the article). However, if it’s just an authority-building link that doesn’t get clicked, you’ll need to look beyond Analytics. Ahrefs is a helpful tool because it can generate reports on your entire backlink profile—including links that you lost before you ever even signed up for Ahrefs. You can even view the page authority of each link to determine which link loss most likely hurt you. This method isn’t perfect, though. Even Ahrefs misses some links. That’s why it pays to have a professional SEO company with enterprise-grade tools on your side.
How to Fix: The fix will depend on the nature of the link. If the original page that linked to you no longer exists, you may be able to contact the webmaster and suggest a different page on their site where your link would be of value, but this is a long shot. If the page on your website no longer exists, you can contact the webmaster and send them a replacement URL that they can link to. If restoring the link isn’t an option, you’ll want to focus on strengthening your backlink profile overall. Build different types of links from high-authority sources in your niche.
4. Website Update Error
Certain web development actions can wreak havoc on the technical integrity of your website and sink your rankings. For example, updating your website’s category page template can break your internal link architecture and create thousands of broken internal links. Other seemingly tiny actions could literally prevent Google crawlers from crawling and indexing critical pages on your website.
How to Check: The best way to identify crawling errors, broken links, problematic response codes, and other source code issues is to invest in a good technical SEO tool like Screaming Frog. These tools offer a way to easily generate reports highlighting major technical issues.
How to Fix: Identify your major issues using your SEO tool of choice. Then fix the errors one by one in the back end. For more complex issues you will need the help of a knowledgeable web developer.
5. Outdated On-Page Content and Keywords
Stagnant or outdated content will inevitably suffer loss of rankings over time and will lose traffic. Let’s say your article “Best New Sports Cars for 2022” has been generating 2,000 visits a month from queries like “best new sports cars”. Since we’ve moved beyond 2022, it’s unlikely that Google will continue to rank your page for the term “best new sports cars” - instead, it will look for more recent information to provide searchers. The date is obsolete, and the vehicles highlighted in the article are no longer relevant to the interests of people searching for new sports cars.
How to Check: Go into Analytics and check to see which pages are responsible for the biggest traffic drops. Determine if any of those pages have outdated or obsolete content.
How to Fix: Keep your content—especially your popular content—up to date. In fact, it’s a good idea to periodically refresh all of your important content, even if it’s evergreen. This will help you to stay ahead of the curve as your competitors cover the same topics more exhaustively and even steal your content on occasion.
6. Strong New Competition
One solid competitor can really mess with your traffic numbers. Search studies have found that the #1 ranked page for any Google query receives nearly 30% of all clicks. The #1 ranked page will typically receive more than double the traffic of the #2 ranked page and four times the traffic of the #3 ranked page. So if a hot new competitor knocks you from the #1 spot to the #2 spot, you could potentially see your traffic slashed in half.
How to Check: Go to Search Console and determine which keywords have dropped off. You can then analyze your search engine competitors to see if a particular competitor has overtaken your previous position. You shouldn’t notice a huge dip if your ranking drops from #5 to #9, but a drop from anywhere in the top 3 placements will cause your traffic to decline.
How to Fix: This is one of the tougher ones, as you have to beat your competitors at their own game. Audit the pages and websites that outrank you. Try to determine what makes them stronger - quality of content, depth of information, backlink strength, etc. Then improve your own page accordingly: better backlinks, better content, etc.
7. A Tracking Error
Sometimes you’re not actually losing traffic at all. Sometimes the problem is just a simple tracking error. Google Analytics can only provide reliable data if you have the appropriate snippet embedded in your source code. If the tracking code is missing or broken, Google can’t do its job.
How to Check: If your traffic has declined but not disappeared, your tracking is probably fine. However, if Google suddenly stops recording sessions altogether, you might have a tracking issue. Look at your Analytics tracking code and make sure it’s properly deployed. It should be in the header of your site.
How to Fix: If the code is missing from your site, or if it doesn’t match the code on your Analytics dashboard, correct it to restore the proper tracking. Here’s Google’s guide for settings up Analytics 4.
8. Seasonality
Not all traffic drops are SEO-related. You also have to consider user behavior. For instance, seasonal highs and lows are common in many industries, presenting challenges for a lot of ecommerce businesses. If you sell fitness equipment, you might expect a jump in traffic around the new year followed by a gradual decline. If you sell school supplies, you can expect a gradual decline in traffic throughout the school year and a sharp drop in the early part of summer.
How to Check: Consider whether your product line might have seasonal considerations, and then consider whether your own traffic decline corresponds to this seasonality. If you suspect that seasonality might be a factor in your industry but you aren’t 100% certain, use Google Trends to analyze the historic search behaviors related to your primary keywords.
How to Fix: If you’re selling strictly seasonal products (like beach apparel) then plan out your year accordingly. Otherwise, diversify your product offerings. For instance, offer a winter clothing line alongside your beachwear. Or diversify your seasonal tax prep services with other types of year-round financial planning and consulting.
9. Shifting Trends
There are other trends besides seasonality that can impact your traffic—and sometimes these trends are ephemeral. For example, let’s say that you run a blog or e-shop for UFO enthusiasts. You might have noticed a huge spike in traffic in 2019 as “Area 51” was one of the top trending searches of the year. But as the “Storm Area 51” event fizzled out and people started focusing on other concerns (like the emerging pandemic), you might have noticed a significant, rapid traffic drop. All too often, we’re at the mercy of the trending topics.
How to Check: As with the seasonality example above, Google Trends can be your friend here. First determine if your lost traffic is related to any specific keywords or groups of keywords—and/or any specific type of referral traffic. Then examine Google Trends to see if there’s a correlation. If you’re selling products (especially higher-end products), you’ll also want to consider the state of the economy—as this is arguably the biggest outside trend that can affect your traffic and revenue.
How to Fix: If you’ve lost traction with the decline of a particular trend, focus your SEO and other marketing efforts to promote other pages. Trends come and go, but if you consistently focus on promoting your brand and its products, you’ll be in a better position to maintain a healthy flow of traffic to your site.
10. Weakened Social Media Visibility
Social media is an integral marketing channel for many websites and online businesses. In 2020, Facebook alone was responsible for more than a billion website referrals. YouTube was responsible for more than half a billion referrals, and Twitter was responsible for nearly a quarter billion. If you rely heavily on social referral traffic, your level of social visibility can make or break your website traffic.
How to Check: Review your social media traffic in Google Analytics. You can also view engagement metrics in many of the social networks themselves. (NOTE: social platforms like Instagram will only let you view these metrics if your profile is set up as a professional account). Determine if a significant portion of your traffic decline is due to decreased visibility on social.
How to Fix: If you’ve been less active on social media since the traffic decline, get back into the habit of posting content and engaging followers daily. If there’s no obvious cause that you can identify but your engagement has dropped sharply on a particular social network, it’s possible that you have been shadow banned. Overcoming a shadow ban varies by social network. Sometimes it requires reaching out to customer support. Sometimes it’s just a matter of continuously posting high-quality, engaging content until you dig your way out of the sandbox. The key is to follow the network’s terms of use and continue to deliver high-quality content that users connect with.
11. Less Referral Traffic From Other Sites
If your site has relied heavily on referral traffic in the past, you might want to double-check those referrers. They can drop off without notice, decimating your web traffic even when your search rankings have remained unchanged. This is a common issue for sites that rely on affiliate traffic (if a top affiliate drops their endorsement of your site, it can have a major impact), but any type of website may be affected.
How to Check: Go into Analytics and click on your Referral traffic. Look at your top referrers, and see if any have dropped off. If you can pinpoint one or more sites that are delivering less referral traffic, visit those sites and investigate.
How to Fix: The solution will depend on the cause. If it’s a dead or outdated hyperlink, you can contact the webmaster and request an updated link. If you’re losing referral traffic from multiple sites due to outdated content or discount codes, update your page accordingly and let the webmasters know. If you’re unable to restore your referral traffic, focus on boosting your organic traffic.
12. A Cool-Off in Email Marketing
Email marketing is a leading traffic generator for many sites. If you cut back on this marketing channel, you might notice a major drop in the total number of visitors. Likewise, if your email blasts are repetitive, too frequent, or lacking in substance, readers may start to tune them out or unsubscribe. Either way, your traffic suffers.
How to Check: Assuming you’ve configured your email marketing campaign in Analytics, you can view the appropriate segment in your Audience Overview. Otherwise, you can refer to your traffic sources to determine if email traffic has declined. Many email clients, like Mailchimp, also have their own built-in analytics and reports that you can reference.
How to Fix: If you’ve cut back on email marketing, try to get back to a steady, regular schedule. If your open rate is falling or you’re losing subscribers, consider ways to make your email marketing more effective. If you’re bombarding readers with daily emails, cut back on the volume. Look for ways to make your emails more engaging, giving readers more of what they want while still offering a clear call to action and accompanying website link when appropriate.
How to Restore Your Lost Website Traffic
If you’ve read through all of the items on the list above, you hopefully have a better idea of why your traffic is falling and what you can do about it. In the majority of cases, the problem is SEO-related. So while you need to weigh all possibilities, your best course of action will usually be to focus on your key organic factors: inbound links, content, website structure, etc. A reliable SEO partner is invaluable for this.
Regardless of why your traffic is falling, there are ways to get it back on track. It might take some effort, and you might have to adjust course in areas where you’ve become complacent, but there’s always a solution. So don’t let your traffic slip away!
